Name: A Mind Forever Voyaging
Developed by: Infocom
Published by: Infocom
Year: 1985
Description: A Mind Forever Voyaging is a classic Infocom text adventure that truly deserves the "interactive fiction" moniker. In the game the player plays PRISM/Perry Sim, an awakened artificial intelligence. Perry thought he was just a normal human being until he was contacted by the research team that created him. They need his help to test the effects of a radical new government plan designed to solve all social and economic problems once and for all.
Notables: A Mind Forever Voyaging is most notable for the quality of Steve Meretzky's writing - it's excellent throughout. It is also oddly prescient. Meretzky in 1985 postulated a 2031 where the threat of nuclear war is a thing of the distant past, but nuclear terrorism is a thing of the terrifying present, with terrorist groups creating nukes the size of cigarette packs. America is reduced to a paranoid police state, with immigration severely restricted and all aspects of life under the auspices of the Border Security Forces (Homeland Security, anyone?)
This was also one of the first games to reward simple exploration; in fact, the first objective given to the player is simply to walk around and look at everything.
My Opinion: A tough but thoroughly rewarding game. As mentioned, it deserves to be called interactive fiction; you will feel as if you are the central character in a heady science fiction novel as you play it.
Notes: Like most Infocom games of this time period, A Mind Forever Voyaging was written in Z-Machine bytecode, which could be played on any computer with a Z-Machine interpreter. While the game was originally released for the IBM PC and the Apple Macintosh, the open source Z-Machine interpreter Frotz allows the game to be played on just about any computer.
A Mind Forever Voyaging was released when it was fashionable to include lots of trinkets with computer games. The original package for the game included a magazine, a map of Rockvil, South Dakota (the simulated town Perry Sim resides in), a pen and a Class One Security Mode Access Decoder.
Links:
Encyclopaedia of Computer and Video Games