(diaryland) December 04, 2008 - 1:41 p.m.

The good thing about the twenty first century is that all the things you got off your cousin on a floppy disk that ate itself in the 80s is now freely available online.

I am way into text adventures right now. As of this morning. It is very handy because downloading it off the net isn't going to make your internet account go into the red and when you're playing, it looks like you're writing up a very important document if you're at work.

In the days when text adventures were already way less exciting than playing Summer Games with the kid down the road because he was allowed video games and you weren't, I tried to play The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy text adventure and failed miserably. I must have been about nine. I knew that I had to lie down in front of the bulldozer, but I couldn't. I don't even think I could get out of the house. I had the book right there next to me, yet I was fucked. I kept getting killed. I was like, "GET TOWEL. USE TOWEL. LIE IN FRONT OF BULLDOZER." By then, it was too late. Let's not even get into the game Zork right now.

So, anyway, all those years later, I found the Hitchhiker's Guide game on the net and started playing it. Yay to me, because my grown-up skillz got me to lie down in front of the bulldozer. Then I consulted a walk-through because I was stuck again. So I went to the pub with Ford Prefect. I had a shitload of beers and then died. So I'm stuck again. I really thought I'd be better than this because I'm big now.

I tried a completely different game called 9:05, and in that one, I had a shower and then went for a drive. Then I got stuck trying to get onto the freeway. Fuck you, text adventures, but also, I love you.

The only game like that I ever finished was Brad: the Game. But the only reason why I finished that one was because I pressed on every single option over the course of several very slow-moving days.