Howard Sherman: Malinche Entertainment's Big KahunaAs many of you are well aware, I've always been a big fan of Infocom and interactive fiction. Although text adventures aren't nearly as ubiquitous as they were back in Infocom's heyday, they are still being developed and published today--and, thanks to the chutzpah of one man, Howard Sherman, they are becoming commercially viable once again. Sherman's company, Malinche Entertainment, is, to quote Sherman, "Infocom 2.0." I think you're going to really enjoy reading the following interview, in which Sherman talks about his ideas and goals to promote and support the interactive fiction community. Howard is a great guy, and I really appreciate what he's doing for an often underrated (and unappreciated!) genre. Big thanks to Howard and Malinche Entertainment for taking time out to answer my questions!

You can slog it! Slog it good!Don't forget it: You heard it hear first, folks. First, there was weblogging. Then there was blogging, vblogging, podcasting, twittering; the list goes on. Now I'm pleased to introduce a new buzzword into the mix: Slogging!

Want to make a good single player CRPG?Probably the hardest part of my new book to write was the conclusion, where I tried to think about the future of our favorite genre: the standalone, single-player CRPG. That genre includes all the classic Ultimas, Bard's Tale, Gold Box games, and so on. It's all the genre that has suffered the most attrition from game developers and publishers, though the better ones still attract mainstream attention (Oblivion, Mass Effect). What I want to do here is focus on a few subgenres, if you will, that to my mind have the best chance of thriving in the current market. I will naturally focus on PC games, though where possible these concepts could be applied to any of the new consoles.

I don't have time to do a thorough analysis (i.e., plugging it in) just now as I need to take care of some pressing Intellivision stuff (since last night I did our taxes), but I seem to have stumbled upon a bit of good luck x2. Even though that luck doesn't involve finding a mass of riches, in the world of retrocomputing, it's still kind of neat. I recently acquired what was purported to be a Dick Smith VZ200, which is the Australian version of the Video Technology (Laser) VZ200. To my surprise, this is an actually an NTSC version, which from all that I've seen, has been pretty much an unknown quantity to this point, at least on the Web. When I get a chance, I'll be doing a thorough analysis of this budget system, but I took a few quick snapshots in the meantime. (read towards the bottom for the bonus bit of good luck)