Forgotten text game from the 90s

September 27, 2006 1:32 PM

I played a text-based adventure game in the early 90's but I can't remember its name.

It was around the same time as Full Throttle, Sam and Max, etc, but I don't think it was a Sierra or Lucas game. It was text-based, but in the upper left quarter of the screen they'd put pretty good illustrations of whatever you were looking at.

I think the company that came up with the engine made many different games, but the two I remember were a bladerunner-esque one and a "nerds go to college and win over bimbos" themed one. The bladerunner one was pretty exciting; I remember receiving email each day in the game world and thinking how exciting it would be if BBSes were all connected so people could have a single BBS email account for the whole world.

posted by jragon to computers & internet (8 comments total)

lets see. I'm guessing Spellcasting 101 and ...
posted by cosmicbandito at 1:38 PM on September 27, 2006

I'm going to guess the other was The Journeyman Project The remakes don't have as much text adventure stuff in them, but I recall the original was text based with graphic windows.
posted by cosmicbandito at 1:46 PM on September 27, 2006

Woo! It was Gateway. Thanks for the help.

And it looks like the graphic was on the top right.
posted by jragon at 1:47 PM on September 27, 2006

Another option would be Gateway, which was made by the same company as Spellcasting 101.
posted by cosmicbandito at 1:49 PM on September 27, 2006

Wow, I remmeber playing Gateway on a friend's computer. I had no idea it was based on a series of books...
posted by alan at 2:08 PM on September 27, 2006

If you wanted to, uh, revisit the games, (perfectly legally, of course), Home of the Underdogs might be worth a search.
posted by Iridic at 2:19 PM on September 27, 2006

Wow, I remember that Spellcasting 101 game. Seemed so 'titilating' when I was a young teen.

Nowdays I guess it would seem pretty lame... :)
posted by ranglin at 4:13 PM on September 27, 2006

Wow, I remmeber playing Gateway on a friend's computer. I had no idea it was based on a series of books...

Not only a series of books. An awesome series of books. :-) 6 so far, I believe.
posted by dgeiser13 at 4:40 PM on September 27, 2006