Depicted below are the absolute nerdiest things I own, as determined by me while unpacking the office after our recent move. I challenge anyone to top this. Your answers to this challenge should be documented and included in the comments here or on your own site. Here we go:
That’s right. A complete set of Infocom novels. Novels loosely based on Infocom’s text-only interactive fiction games. Not the choose-your-own-adventure style books they put out, which at least fit into the Infocom brand in a broad conceptual sort of way and so are 20% less nerdy. Nor are these novelizations of the games themselves (which would actually probably be more nerdy now that I think about it. Well, Wishbringer was pretty close to a novelization why am I making this distinction for you stop it stop it). No, these are the most ancillary of ancillary tie-ins (of the “set in the world of” variety), with no real reason to exist except to allow you to proclaim, loud and proud, that you were really, really obsessed with Zork and even the more obscure Infocom games. If the strategy of bringing your C-64 floppies to class and placing them conspicuously on your desk did not succeed in allowing you to snare unwitting classmates in long conversations about Duncanthrax the Bellicose and the poignant death of Floyd the Robot, then you could supplement that strategy by conspicuously reading these between and sometimes during classes, audibly guffawing in hopes that you could explain the reference to a complicated in-joke you share with some people you met in the text-adventure chat room on Q-Link.
Not that I did that. I’m just saying you could.
That said, I remember The Zork Chronicles being really funny.
I guess this is my dorkiest. comparatively I’m not nearly the dork you are.
Ha! That’s pretty good. Have you seen this? (You have to scroll down for the Thomas Covenant gag.)
gapes at picture, hits alt+F4 several times and goes outside, crying
I’d throw a bunch of ABBA album covers at you, but I’m too stupid to make a digital camera work.
VG
Zork novelizations are impressive, but pshhhh…. you played games on your C-64? I use my +2 vorpal sword of geekery on that
somewhere at my parents house, there is a floppy that contains the program I wrote to fully control the C-64’s sound card using the paddles for the Atari (which I shoplifted from the department store up the street) as analog controllers.
Nerdiest thing I own is a set of Star Trek stationary (complete with images from the show) with “Starfleet Officer” listed below my name. It was a gift from my brother sometime during high school. I know my brother is a good guy and didn’t want me to spend all of high school getting the crap kicked out of me, but, damn, when would it have ever been cool to send someone, anyone a letter that suggested that I considered myself a “Starfleet Officer”?
I dunno, maybe I should send some job letters out on those suckers…
Okay, first of all, this is . . . this is completely humiliating. Prof. is one of those rare, amazing people I know who can straddle the worlds of text adventure, indie rock, and superhot wives. Probably the only guy I know who played football and Wasteland on the Commodore (you did play Wasteland, right?).
And for that, I salute you.
Also, the Zork choose-your-own-adventures are AWESOME. (And I think you gave me one I didn’t have).
Admission: MANY Stryper cassettes.
>You are in a dungeon; the wall has a glow that seems to come from an indigenous moss. There are exits to the north and west.
Just seeing “Q-Link” made me realize just how far I haven’t come in the passing years.
I have to say, though, that in terms of playability and enjoyability, the C-64 (sorry: C=64) version of the Microprose (I think) game “Pirates!” was unbeatable. Literally and figuratively.
I want to know how you felt while unpacking these gems, first, when you said, “I must throw these out,” and then what you felt when you said, “I must immortalize these on my blog.”
Are they now on your bedside table?
At thanksgiving I helped my mother decorate for Christmas. In the eaves among the Christmas paraphernalia I found a box of 1964 Republican memorabilia, including the Barry Goldwater dash doll (mine has the original glasses), and a can (empty) of Goldwater Soda. And yes, this is the candidate who only won 52 electoral votes, thankfully.
Hey, but we also have him to thank for creating the version of the Republican party that has wrecked the country these last 8 (at least) years! So he was a “success” in that sense.
I remember in the latter days of college going through and trading in or giving away all my Dragonlance novels, my Piers Anthony novels, Raymond Feist, David Eddings, Katherine Kerr, pretty much all the fantasy and sf that I consumed in my high school and early college days. I kept my Tolkien and my Lloyd Alexander stuff because they’re good (at least I think the Lloyd Alexander stuff is good—haven’t re-read it), but the Infocom stuff I kept out of pure affection and nostalgia—I seriously can’t overstate how important those games were to me as a middle-schooler (okay, and high-schooler).
Also, I may have lost an entire day of productivity a couple weeks ago when I stumbled upon this site.
For a while someone had set up an Infocom bot on instant messenger, and you could play some of the games over IM. It’s still online sometimes. Add it as a friend, see what happens. Its handle is infocombot.