PC Gamer is remembering "the weird HeroQuest novel that combined Beowulf, Discworld, Dying Earth, and American Psycho", and I am reminded of the completely surreal Zork Chronicles by George Alec Effinger.
I still think it would be so fun to throw a text adventure party. Line up a bunch of computers running old school text adventures, and letting everyone go nuts
So, both text adventures (Zork etc) and CRPGs (Ultima, Wizardry etc) came around late 70s early 80s.
But I've never seen a hybrid of the two. I mean an Infocom style puzzle/adventure game, but with combat, items etc.
Or a dungeon crawler with the flavorful exploration and puzzles of a text adventure.
It seems like a good fit, and closer to P&P than the pure hack & slays of the time. So why wasn't this ever a thing?
Cowardly #Elon essentially backed out of the much-hyped #fight with #Zork because he spends his evenings curled up on the floor in a K-hole, and he didn't want to be subjected to the #medical#exam, and #drug#testing required for a legally sanctioned fight.
#Elon is a #coward, and he was never going step into the ring with #Zork. He was never going to subject himself to the legendary ass-kicking Zork surely would have delivered. Both are insufferable billionaires, but Zork is a well-trained martial artist who works out every day while Musk is an elderly blob of boiled cabbage. His ego simply would not allow the possibility of being humiliated on the world stage.
The source code for Infocom's Z-machine interpreters for a large number of 8 amd 16 bit microcomputers has been posted to Github (github.com)
Historical source code for Infocom's Z-machine interpreters - GitHub