The Retro Adventurers

Classic text adventure news so late-breaking that we have to interrupt our news to bring you new news about that news! Presented again this month by Retro Adventurers Nick, Tim, and Jason. University of Winchester alumnus https://www.hampshirechronicle.co.uk/news/26175575.university-winchester-alumnus-won-award-game/ ABP: Help preserve Amstrad Infocom interpreter source code! https://www.facebook....

Unofficially official text adventure sequels to beloved media properties both published in 1984. That's what these two have in common. Laugh While You Can, Monkey Boy! because this John Lithgow Appreciation Podcast features Nick and Jason playing the Adventure International-published unofficial sequel Buckaroo Banzai before marching into the world of post-war New York City as imagined in the world...

Your monthly classic text adventuring news update delivered this month by Jason, Nick, and Tim. The top stories are  game contests still open for players votes at time of publication! Don't delay, listen and click today! Text Adventure Literacy Jam 2026 https://itch.io/jam/talp2026 https://gameobserver.com/6th-annual-game-jam-inspires-next-generation-of-developers-to-keep-text-adventures-alive/ Ir...

It's an Infocom antiheroic classic and a throwback Infocom parody this time out as modern IF legend Andrew Plotkin (Zarf) joins Jason and Nick for two perilous adventures. Lurking Horror sendup The Smirking Horror by Jason Davis leads off, a reasonably faithful re-interpretation of The Lurking Horror from Infocom. It's the first Amstrad CPC exclusive on the show and makes surprisingly minimal use...

There's news out there in classic text adventures and neo-retro interactive fiction, and it's past time The Retro Adventurers got serious about delivering it! So, welcome to the first installment of a new monthly feature, OPEN MAILBOX -- where you GET NEWS AND LISTEN TO IT. This episode compiled and presented by Retro Adventurers Nick and Jason covers multiple new Infocom/Z-Machine interpreters, A...

Thank you for another year of Retro Adventuring with us! To celebrate we've gathered together to share important news about a change in the team roster, an exciting new monthly department, and to share a first look at our new handcrafted artwork (thank you, Emily Sergent)! Spend a little time with Jason, Nick, and Tim and watch for more game, interview, and news episodes coming soon to your feed (...

Hyperspace adventure awaits as Tim Gilberts joins Jason to play two underrated science fiction games from the 1970s. For starters it's Dog Star Adventure, the first type-in text adventure in Softside Magazine. True to its 1979 roots it's steeped in Star Wars lore and vocabulary, and was ported to plenty of classic platforms in its heyday. The feature game is Aldebaran III, one of the games created...

Ron Martinez, our guest from Episode 11 , returns! This is actually a holdover from the 2025 Year-End Chatisode sessions, but it really stands alone as an exploration of Ron's recent work in narrative design involving generative AI, large language models, and other 21st century interactive storytelling techniques. Joining us on the call are regular Retro Adventurers Jason and Nick, along with This...

It's the Infocom classic Zork, but in two unusual formats! First Nick and Jason explore the unusual covertape edition of Mini-Zork I , a stripped-down, memory-resident version of the original Great Underground Empire created in 1987 and later provided free to readers of the November 1990 issue of ZZap 64 magazine for the Commodore 64. It's a bold undertaking, but is it art? Indeed, does it even wo...

Holiday merriment with many past guests and minimal editing! Retro Adventurers Jason and Nick chat about the year that was including recent developments in classic adventure open source, plans for 2026, and more with many of our past participants: Robin Raymond, author of Kingdom of the Seven Stones (Episode 9) Tim Gilberts of Gilsoft (Episodes 5, 13, 17, 25) Scott Adams of Adventure International...

Nick and Jason deliver holiday cheer straight from Santa's Grotto in the form of two 1980s Christmas classics. First up is the bite-sized Quill adventure A Spell Of Christmas Ice by Mike Turner, originally published on the tape-based 16/48 Magazine for ZX Spectrum users. For the main course, enjoy Brian Howarth's very British adaptation of the very American monster mayhem classic Gremlins. Curl up...

No one has reviewed more text adventures and works of interactive fiction over the past decade than MathBrush. A self-described newcomer to the scene he has nonetheless posted over 3,600 reviews and counting of games old and new, along with creating or collaborating with others to create 30 games of his own. MathBrush's thousands of reviews MathBrush's IFDB profile MathBrush's games Intfiction.org...

Get ready to type out every letter in "dodecahedron"! Nick, Jason, and Ben play two games steeped in math, science, and trippy physics in this episode. Beyond the Tesseract by David Lo is the appetizer course, a game originally designed in TRS-80 Level II BASIC, then ported to C and published on a variety of platforms before later being reimplemented in Inform 6 by Andrew Plotkin. A self-professed...

WE'VE GOT TEXT ADVENTURE SIGN!! Ben, Jason, and Nick stooge their way through two comedy games. First up is the 1993 Matt Barringer "classic" Detective as put (unofficially) through the wringer of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 crew by CE Forman and a collection of subsequent riffers. One player was (and remains) completely baffled by this format in which a man and two robots are forced to watch...

Ben, Jason, and Nick set sail for adventures new and old on this episode, starting with 10 CAVE ADVENTURE, so named for the number of BASIC lines making up its entire codebase. They then head to the Commodore VIC-20 for a crack at Young Arthur's Quest before journeying to the not-so-long-ago 2021 release Captain Cutter's Treasure, a neo-retro style adventure created in the PunyInform system. Capta...

Ben, Jason, and special guest Dave "Velociraptor" of This Week in Retro take on a double dose of robot-themed games. First up is Souls of Darkon by Andy Walker, published by Taskset and Bug-Byte for Amstrad CPC, Spectrum, and Commodore 64. The robot "Komputa" aids the player on their quest to combat a variety of dread evil forces. For the main course we take on Epyx's text adventure adaptation of...

Creator of games including Hadean Lands, Spider and Web, and Shade, as well as a long-time maintainer of Inform and participant in Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation (IFTF) leadership, Andrew "Zarf" Plotkin was also a teenager once. And back then he wrote Inhumane, as covered in Episode 27 . Jason and Nick welcome him to the program discuss the creation of Inhumane, the evolution of his wor...

All the way back in Episode 1 we promised to play Level 9's Knight Orc. Ben and Jason chip away at that obligation by playing... the first of three independent-load sections of the game. (We're working on it!) They do their best to navigate the aptly-named "KAOS" engine and assemble rope. (So much rope.) But first, a clearout of news and listener mail, and a visit to the wry parody of Infidel, And...

Ben and Jason take on the text adventure distillations of two uniquely British phenomena. First up is the "prolific musical innovator" genre with Number 9 Software's Beatle Quest, a psychedelic trip into lots and lots of Beatle song concepts and name-checking. For the main course, the duo explore the "slobs in space" phenomenon through the storytelling of shareware highlight Jacaranda Jim by moder...

Tim Gilberts is back for another rummage through the magazine rack, this time with Jason and Dave. We pull a corporate newsletter and three full-length issues, all from the 1982-1984 period. We look at the first (and only?) newsletter put out by Spinnaker sub-brand Trillium (later Telarium), browse through the general-interest UK mag Personal Computer Games and compare it to a similar American cou...

Peter Golden, author of Sherlock Holmes: Another Bow and a key figure in Bantam Software's Living Literature series joins us for a conversation about his work in text adventures and subsequent work as a novelist. PeterGolden.com Bantam Software's Living Literature

For this roundup of Sherlock Holmes adventures from the 1980s, Ben and Jason call in an expert: Sherlockian playwright Christian Neuhaus, co-creator of You've Ruined a Perfectly Good Mystery . The trio of amateur sleuths take on the three major commercial releases in chronological order. First up is Sherlock from Melbourne House, written in the same "Inglish" system that powered The Hobbit... and...

POW! KABOOM! KWAH! Dave and Jason explore two 1980s text adventures pulled from the world of comic books! (At the time, comics were just one of many forms of narrative expression and not the dominant storytelling platform as they are this century.) First up it's Redhawk from Melbourne House, which experiments with text/graphics adventure presentation by building a three-panel comic on-screen based...

🎂It’s our first birthday!🎂Enjoy an anniversary celebration with all the hosts and minimal editing! Founder Ben holds a contest of Retro Adventurers knowledge–who will reign supreme? How many countries have at least one download per episode? Who will be named the Seven of Nine of text adventure podcasting? Will the boys have a polite conversation about expanding to other genres or will chairs fly...

Dave and Jason confront a double dose of terrifying terrors! First up is the RamJam Corporation's Valkyrie 17, a Cold War thriller set in a pseudonymous Eastern Bloc nation, boasting excellent off-screen production values but some quirky on-screen choices. The title was originally published for ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64, with a Windows update released more recently. Then we travel to South Amer...