• (cs)

    Hey, I have an issue of Conan the Barbarian with that exact front cover pic from the Compuserve ad!

  • Dan Moore (unregistered)

    You know, it sure looks like some word has been deleted from that Compuserve ad, right after the "two". Maybe "hundred" or "thousand". Either would make more sense as a prize.

  • evilspoons (unregistered) in reply to Dan Moore
    Dan Moore:
    You know, it sure looks like some word has been deleted from that Compuserve ad, right after the "two". Maybe "hundred" or "thousand". Either would make more sense as a prize.

    I agree - there's enough room for the word "hours" on the previous line, so why isn't it there?

  • (cs)

    The real WTF is the "discette" syntax for "diskette" in the Nemesis ad, I never heard of the former. "Floppy disk" and "floppy disc" yeah, but never "discette".

  • MrOli (unregistered)

    Why is your inability to play, as well as your hatred of, text based games a WTF?

  • EFH (unregistered)

    The description of Compuserve in that MMORPG contest advert touts "CB Simulation" as one of the features; they're obviously talking about online chat rooms. The youngsters here might not realize "CB" stands for "Citizen's Band (radio)" -- truckers use them to talk to each other. For a few years in the 1970s -- back before the age of the cell phone -- having a CB radio in your car was a big fad. You could talk to strangers from your car! Whoopee!

  • foo (unregistered)

    The real WTF is WTF is this article to do with WTF?

  • Xyzzy (unregistered)

    look You are in The Daily WTF Comment Forum. There are many comments lying here in disarray. Exits are: back, google post comment You have no comment! look comment It's a comment lying on the floor. It's probably more clever than anything you can come up with. (But a touch pedantic. You'd never do that.) take comment You can't take that, it's not yours! kick comment You sprain your toe! invent You have: unlit lamp coins empty cage bad attitude CAPTCHA look CAPTCHA It says: "saluto". Maybe it speaks Esperanto? north It's dark. You may be eaten by a grue. south You are in The Daily WTF Comment Forum. There are many comments lying here in disarray. say saluto You gain: comment post comment

  • Walleye (unregistered)

    The article's author may be eaten by a grue.

  • Dugeen (unregistered)

    The old ads are fun - but could we have some dates to put them in context?

  • (cs) in reply to Xyzzy
    Xyzzy:
    > look You are in The Daily WTF Comment Forum. There are many comments lying here in disarray. Exits are: back, google > post comment You have no comment! > look comment It's a comment lying on the floor. It's probably more clever than anything you can come up with. (But a touch pedantic. You'd never do that.) > take comment You can't take that, it's not yours! > kick comment You sprain your toe! > invent You have: unlit lamp coins empty cage bad attitude CAPTCHA > look CAPTCHA It says: "saluto". Maybe it speaks Esperanto? > north It's dark. You may be eaten by a grue. > south You are in The Daily WTF Comment Forum. There are many comments lying here in disarray. > say saluto You gain: comment > post comment

    ahahaha, that may be the first "ironic meta-comment" I have ever actually laughed at. My hat's off to you.

    EDIT: no grammar/spelling trolling mentioned though? s/grue/grammar nazi/ !

  • (cs) in reply to Xyzzy
    Xyzzy:
    > look You are in The Daily WTF Comment Forum. There are many comments lying here in disarray. Exits are: back, google > post comment You have no comment! > look comment It's a comment lying on the floor. It's probably more clever than anything you can come up with. (But a touch pedantic. You'd never do that.) > take comment You can't take that, it's not yours! > kick comment You sprain your toe! > invent You have: unlit lamp coins empty cage bad attitude CAPTCHA > look CAPTCHA It says: "saluto". Maybe it speaks Esperanto? > north It's dark. You may be eaten by a grue. > south You are in The Daily WTF Comment Forum. There are many comments lying here in disarray. > say saluto You gain: comment > post comment

    And that is why I hated Zork. It's not an exercise in reasoning or logic, its an exercise in thinking exactly like a guy who is so far deviated from the norm that he writes text adventure games.

  • Crash Magnet (unregistered)

    You read twisting comments all alike.

  • (cs) in reply to Xyzzy
    Xyzzy:
    > look You are in The Daily WTF Comment Forum. There are many comments lying here in disarray. Exits are: back, google > post comment You have no comment! > look comment It's a comment lying on the floor. It's probably more clever than anything you can come up with. (But a touch pedantic. You'd never do that.) > take comment You can't take that, it's not yours! > kick comment You sprain your toe! > invent You have: unlit lamp coins empty cage bad attitude CAPTCHA > look CAPTCHA It says: "saluto". Maybe it speaks Esperanto? > north It's dark. You may be eaten by a grue. > south You are in The Daily WTF Comment Forum. There are many comments lying here in disarray. > say saluto You gain: comment > post comment
    Blue - Now!!
  • Anon (unregistered)

    "If I were a level twenty raver..."

    lol and kudos to the author; man I miss those parties.

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to kastein
    kastein:
    Xyzzy:
    > look You are in The Daily WTF Comment Forum. There are many comments lying here in disarray. Exits are: back, google > post comment You have no comment! > look comment It's a comment lying on the floor. It's probably more clever than anything you can come up with. (But a touch pedantic. You'd never do that.) ...

    ahahaha, that may be the first "ironic meta-comment" I have ever actually laughed at. My hat's off to you.

    EDIT: no grammar/spelling trolling mentioned though? s/grue/grammar nazi/ !

    I think the "touch pedantic" was directed at grammar nazis.

  • Anon (unregistered)

    Ah, the joys of struggling with the parser it a text-based adventure game. The joy of not knowing if what you just tried didn't work because it's not the solution to the problem, or if you just didn't word it correctly.

  • Shmork (unregistered)

    What's nice about the Compuserve ad is that they basically acknowledge that its a huge rip-off: "And practice, practice, practice. How else will we be able to afford the T-shirts?" Har-dee-har-har.

  • (cs) in reply to Xyzzy
    Xyzzy:
    > look You are in The Daily WTF Comment Forum. There are many comments lying here in disarray. Exits are: back, google > post comment You have no comment! > look comment It's a comment lying on the floor. It's probably more clever than anything you can come up with. (But a touch pedantic. You'd never do that.) > take comment You can't take that, it's not yours! > kick comment You sprain your toe! > invent You have: unlit lamp coins empty cage bad attitude CAPTCHA > look CAPTCHA It says: "saluto". Maybe it speaks Esperanto? > north It's dark. You may be eaten by a grue. > south You are in The Daily WTF Comment Forum. There are many comments lying here in disarray. > say saluto You gain: comment > post comment

    Brilliant! Nicely done. Made me laugh.

  • (cs)

    Scene from Zork II: TDWTF edition.

    You are in The Daily WTF forums.
You can see:
  a rusty old TinyMCE.
  a troll.
  another troll.
  another troll.
  actually, really quite a lot of trolls.

    

    EXAMINE MCE
Which MCE?  The crap one, the crap one, the crap one or the
crap one?
    

    

    

    TINY
It looks like it might delete two characters when you press
backspace once!  Fucking hell!
    

    

    

    PLUGH
A hollow voice says "Fool".
    

    

    

    IT'S PROBABLY JUST MPS
Yes.  >Sigh<
  • Grub (unregistered)

    An angry mob of commenters, all alike.

  • (cs)

    THROW BABY

  • Forte (unregistered)

    "Grand Masters (plural) win 2 hours free time." Maybe it's easy to be a Grand Master, so there are a lot of winners.

  • (cs)

    THY DUNGEONMAN

    YOU ARE THY DUNGEONMAN!

    Ye find yourself in yon dungeon. Ye see a SCROLL. Behind ye SCROLL is a FLASK. Obvious exists are NORTH, SOUTH, and DENNIS.

    What wouldst thou deau?

    GET YE FLASK

    Ye cannot get the flask. It is firmly bolted to a wall which is bolted to the rest of the dungeon which is probably bolted to a castle. Never you mind.

    What wouldst thou deau?

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    Ah, the joys of struggling with the parser it a text-based adventure game. The joy of not knowing if what you just tried didn't work because it's not the solution to the problem, or if you just didn't word it correctly.

    Tie rope to doohickey You can't do that

    Fasten rope to doohickey I don't know how to "Fasten"

    Use rope with doohickey You can't use those things together

    Arrgghhhhh I don't know how to "Arrgghhhh"

    Tie doohickey to rope You tie the doohickey to the rope

  • SomeCoder (unregistered) in reply to Xyzzy
    Xyzzy:
    > look You are in The Daily WTF Comment Forum. There are many comments lying here in disarray. Exits are: back, google > post comment You have no comment! > look comment It's a comment lying on the floor. It's probably more clever than anything you can come up with. (But a touch pedantic. You'd never do that.) > take comment You can't take that, it's not yours! > kick comment You sprain your toe! > invent You have: unlit lamp coins empty cage bad attitude CAPTCHA > look CAPTCHA It says: "saluto". Maybe it speaks Esperanto? > north It's dark. You may be eaten by a grue. > south You are in The Daily WTF Comment Forum. There are many comments lying here in disarray. > say saluto You gain: comment > post comment

    WIN. Especially the part with the Grue :)

  • Anonymous (unregistered)

    A geniune thanks for not putting the images in an AdBlocked folder. Just for that, I'm clicking on a bunch of your sponsors. Cheers.

  • Lisa (unregistered)

    All I have to say is: plugh.

    Also, xyzzx.

  • (cs)
    OP:
    Basically, you could get to one point in the game, unable to proceed because you don't have a certain item...
    You went and ate the fricken' candy, didn't you? [image]
    OP:
    ...and you can't go back unless you have an old game save.
    Yeh, but you also have to be dumb enough to think that eating a packet of chocolate-coated insects is a good idea.

    I mean, come on! Does it SOUND like human food? Well DOES IT?

  • evert (unregistered) in reply to Andy Goth

    Smack dennis?

  • (cs) in reply to evert
    evert:
    Smack dennis?
    No thanks, I never touch the stuff. And stop calling me Dennis!
  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to DaveK
    DaveK:
    evert:
    Smack dennis?
    No thanks, I never touch the stuff. And stop calling me Dennis!
    Wow, a comedian from the seventies!
  • anon (unregistered)

    http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail94.html

    Obvious exits are: NORTH, SOUTH, and DENNIS

  • (cs) in reply to DaveK
    DaveK:
    Scene from Zork II: TDWTF edition.

    This wins so much.

  • Crash Magnet (unregistered) in reply to Lisa
    Lisa:
    All I have to say is: plugh.

    Also, xyzzx.

    Itn't it wxyzzy?

  • medium geezer (unregistered) in reply to DaveK

    I don't know about the chocolate, but fried crickets are delicious

  • (cs)

    I remember that Compuserve used to cost a lost more than $12. Back in the early 80's, it was like $35 an hour or so. So two hours might have actually been the legit prize.

  • Daniel (unregistered)

    Just a clarification for you youngsters. 56 K refers to the RAM requirements: 56 kilobytes of RAM (56 x 1024 bytes) to be shared between the game and the operating system, CP/M (which took between 6 and 8 KB).

  • mjfgates (unregistered)

    The only good thing about the "sadistic text adventure" genre is that it spawned Space Quest, which was just as sadistic as any of 'em but at least provided you with interesting graphical depictions of your various ends. We spent a week or so just finding all the cool ways to die in that game... oh, look, a hole! I'll go look at it and GET SUCKED IN, LISTEN TO THE CHEWING NOISES AND WATCH MY BONES SPIT BACK OUT ONTO THE GROUND! Good times, good times.

  • (cs) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    Ah, the joys of struggling with the parser it a text-based adventure game. The joy of not knowing if what you just tried didn't work because it's not the solution to the problem, or if you just didn't word it correctly.

    Oh yes. And the 'advance' that was graphical adventures, where the main challenge involved sweeping your mouse over the whole screen waiting for the cursor to change when it passes over some tiny indecipherable part of the picture.

    btw +24 to Xyzzy

  • (cs)

    These comments are great. But, honestly, why do we keep having these What The Ad articles? What are they for? What do they have to do with TDWTF? Basically, WTF?

  • (cs) in reply to Daniel
    Daniel:
    Just a clarification for you youngsters. 56 K refers to the RAM requirements: 56 kilobytes of RAM (56 x 1024 bytes) to be shared between the game and the operating system, CP/M (which took between 6 and 8 KB).
    Thanks grandpa, because we're all too stupid to know what 56k means...
  • Stan (unregistered) in reply to Andy Goth
    Andy Goth:
    > THROW BABY

    Kick the baby!!

  • lmao (unregistered) in reply to Xyzzy

    BCE (Best Comment Evar!)

    Looking for a laugh, change of thought pattern, whatever, I turned to WTF (of course).

    And succeeded beyond any hope I could have had.

    To those of us that played StarTrek on a DECWriter, or any other verbose typing game, the comment was so just right...

    Captcha: causa "causa" it's a real laugher -Thanks!

  • Shimon (unregistered)

    I happen to love What the Ad. It's a nice break from the brain damage inducing code. If you don't like it, you can easily just skip past it. It's not like Alex is hiding them in the middle of non-Ad posts.

    Why do so many people feel that if they don't like something, no one else is allowed to like it either?

  • (cs) in reply to Otto
    Otto:
    I remember that Compuserve used to cost a lost more than $12. Back in the early 80's, it was like $35 an hour or so. So two hours might have actually been the legit prize.
    Two hours would not be a legit prize regardless of what the hourly rate was. You'd have to pay that rate for something like 8+ hours to win the prize, so winning two hours back would be an insult. I agree with others' observation that there seems to be a "hundred" whited out. On the other hand, I would love to have the CompuServe Adventure T-shirt.
  • OldCoder (unregistered)

    I remember Nemesis, wasted far too many hours playing it back in (mumble). Ravers are nasty creatures from the Thomas Covenant books by Stephen Donaldson, not hippies from the seventies.

  • rmz (unregistered)

    The "having to go back to a prior save because you forgot an item" is hardly unique to text adventures. Pretty much all of the classic Sierra graphic adventures (King's Quest, etc) did this, and that was a part of what made the games challenging. Too many adventure games in the modern age (well, what's left of them) are basically visual novels, with no way to die, no way to lose, and no way to ruin your game, forcing you to reload. I like The Longest Journey and all, but sometimes I wish that I could do something to actually mess up and force me to reload, rather than just have to go scouring the nearby areas for the item I need to click on.

  • Jay (unregistered)

    You see a ferocious green dragon.

    attack dragon

    You are unarmed. Are you sure you want to attack the dragon? [Yes, No]

    file not found

    The dragon disappears into the recycling bin.

  • (cs) in reply to Shimon
    Shimon:
    I happen to love What the Ad. It's a nice break from the brain damage inducing code. If you don't like it, you can easily just skip past it. It's not like Alex is hiding them in the middle of non-Ad posts.

    Why do so many people feel that if they don't like something, no one else is allowed to like it either?

    I'm not complaining because I'm forced to read it. I'm complaining because it appears instead of the actual WTF post I came here expecting. I wanted my brain damaged dammit!

    I don't mind non-WTF posts being put on TDWTF, but they should be in categories of their own, and hence they should be over and above the daily feature article, not replacing it. What the Ad is clearly a different type of post to the feature articles. It's not The Daily WTF if there isn't a WTF daily!

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