This story caught my eye on the
Oklahoma KSBI-TV site
Interactive Fiction Comes of Age
Before there was Doom or Grand Theft Auto, there was a computer adventure game called Zork.
Released by Infocom in 1980 to huge success, it had no motion-captured action figures and no fully rendered 3-D environments. In fact, it had no graphics at all; it was simply text.
These text-adventure games became known as interactive fiction (IF), drawing record numbers of readers and pushing sales figures for Infocom into the millions.
Die-hard fans compared Zork to reading Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" for the first time, with a twist. You could be transported to a mystical world and caught up in a powerful and addictive story with one key difference: you were the main character and you controlled the story.
Now, 25 years after Zork first appeared, one entrepreneur is using today's technology to reinvent the unique genre of interactive fiction.
An original Zork fan, Howard Sherman founded Malinche Entertainment in 2002 with the goal of introducing interactive fiction to a new generation of fans.
Sherman's first three interactive fiction titles have sold more than 100,000 copies and he anticipates that sales of his latest horror fiction title, "The First Mile" (Malinche Entertainment, July 2005, $9.95-$29.95), will exceed all three previous titles for one important reason: on July 15, "The First Mile" is available for download by anyone with an iPod. Readers can also access Malinche titles with a personal computer, laptop, PocketPC or PalmOS handheld, and selected cell phone models.
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