“You mean to tell me that we have just purchased a mega-expensive computer that will build robots, drive cars, walk, talk, and probably wash windows and you want a text computer game that requires less than 640K RAM and a black and white monitor to run?” Indeed that was what he wanted, and off we went to the computer store. We returned with Zork. —Lorelle VanFossen —Computer Game — She’s Got a Thing for Spring (Taking Your Camera on the Road)

My wife is not a geek. Today she mentioned, out of the blue, that one of the things she admires about me is that I’m clever enough to find things on the internet. She says she’s not the slightest bit interested in doing anything like that herself, she says, but it was still a nice ego boost to hear the mother of your children say she’s impressed by something you can do.

Lorelle VanFossen is here writing about the nature-themed IF game, “She’s Got a Thing for Spring.” While her history of the text adventure genre conflates Zork with Adventure, her description of a personal connection to text adventure games is precious. When my wife was pregnant with our daughter, I started writing a text-adventure game in which the PC is in the delivery room about to give birth, but for some reason my wife wasn’t very thrilled with the demo I showed her. (She tactfully encouraged the other games I had in the works, rather than coming right out and saying she didn’t like the game I’d written, but I still got the message.)