Explore classic text adventure games from legendary publishers and authors including Magnetic Scrolls, Level 9, Infocom, Scott Adams, and Interplay. A podcast for fans of GET LAMP, Eaten By a Grue, The Classic Adventurer, Renga In Blue, and Quest For Clues. Follow us on your favorite podcast app, and keep the conversations going on Facebook and Bluesky.
Episodes
Friday Dec 26, 2025
Friday Dec 26, 2025
Holiday merriment with many past guests and minimal editing!
Retro Adventurers Jason and Nick chat about the year that was including recent developments in classic adventure open source, plans for 2026, and more with many of our past participants:
Robin Raymond, author of Kingdom of the Seven Stones (Episode 9)
Tim Gilberts of Gilsoft (Episodes 5, 13, 17, 25)
Scott Adams of Adventure International (Episodes 3, 13)
Andrew Plotkin (Inhumane covered in Episode 27 and interviewed in Episode 28)
Dave "Velociraptor" of This Week in Retro (Episode 29)
Christian Neuhaus, co-writer of You've Ruined a Perfectly Good Mystery! (Episode 23)
Iain Lee, game show pilot host and media icon (Episode 18)
A separate chat with Ron Martinez (Episode 11) will be published in a later episode.
Saturday Dec 06, 2025
Saturday Dec 06, 2025
Nick and Jason deliver holiday cheer straight from Santa's Grotto in the form of two 1980s Christmas classics. First up is the bite-sized Quill adventure A Spell Of Christmas Ice by Mike Turner, originally published on the tape-based 16/48 Magazine for ZX Spectrum users. For the main course, enjoy Brian Howarth's very British adaptation of the very American monster mayhem classic Gremlins.
Curl up by the fire with your favorite picturebook adaptation of a Hollywood blockbuster, listen, and enjoy the season!
A Spell Of Christmas Ice, stand-alone tape image
Gremlins: The Adventure (IFDB)
Gremlins: The Adventure (MOCAGH)
Andrew Plotkin's analysis of Zork I-III becoming open source
Original cover photo by Gy21dds
Saturday Nov 15, 2025
Saturday Nov 15, 2025
No one has reviewed more text adventures and works of interactive fiction over the past decade than MathBrush. A self-described newcomer to the scene he has nonetheless posted over 3,600 reviews and counting of games old and new, along with creating or collaborating with others to create 30 games of his own.
Wednesday Aug 27, 2025
Wednesday Aug 27, 2025
Get ready to type out every letter in "dodecahedron"!
Nick, Jason, and Ben play two games steeped in math, science, and trippy physics in this episode. Beyond the Tesseract by David Lo is the appetizer course, a game originally designed in TRS-80 Level II BASIC, then ported to C and published on a variety of platforms before later being reimplemented in Inform 6 by Andrew Plotkin. A self-professed "abstract adventure", you'll have a better time with it if you paid attention in school.
The main course was published in 1984 for the BBC Micro by the Association of Teachers of Mathematics (UK) and goes by L: A Mathemagical Adventure. It's a core memory for many who were young and remember their school experiences with BBC Micros, but does the plot to rescue the fair maid Runia from the Drogos hold up today?
Beyond the Tesseract (IFDB, includes playable link)
L: A Mathemagical Adventure (IFDB)
L: A Mathemagical Adventure (playable online, BBC)
Shawn McClure's How To Design Adventure Games (IntFiction.org)
Monday Aug 04, 2025
Monday Aug 04, 2025
WE'VE GOT TEXT ADVENTURE SIGN!!
Ben, Jason, and Nick stooge their way through two comedy games. First up is the 1993 Matt Barringer "classic" Detective as put (unofficially) through the wringer of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 crew by CE Forman and a collection of subsequent riffers. One player was (and remains) completely baffled by this format in which a man and two robots are forced to watch a bad movie (slash play a bad game) for the entertainment of two mad scientists, against a backdrop of scenery bought for peanuts.
Then they take on Delta 4's treatment of Terry Pratchett's Discword in The Colour of Magic, a waiting simulator disguised as a four-part comedy adventure. Watch out for the end of the world!
Detective, author's original version (IFDB)
Discworld on Page and Screen, Part 2 (The Digital Antiquarian)
Monday Jul 21, 2025
Monday Jul 21, 2025
Ben, Jason, and Nick set sail for adventures new and old on this episode, starting with 10 CAVE ADVENTURE, so named for the number of BASIC lines making up its entire codebase. They then head to the Commodore VIC-20 for a crack at Young Arthur's Quest before journeying to the not-so-long-ago 2021 release Captain Cutter's Treasure, a neo-retro style adventure created in the PunyInform system.
Captain Cutter's Treasure (IFDB)
Young Arthur's Quest (Renga in Blue)
Young Arthur's Quest (MobyGames)
Monday Jul 07, 2025
Monday Jul 07, 2025
Ben, Jason, and special guest Dave "Velociraptor" of This Week in Retro take on a double dose of robot-themed games. First up is Souls of Darkon by Andy Walker, published by Taskset and Bug-Byte for Amstrad CPC, Spectrum, and Commodore 64. The robot "Komputa" aids the player on their quest to combat a variety of dread evil forces.
For the main course we take on Epyx's text adventure adaptation of Isaac Asimov's novel The Robots of Dawn, written by Jon Leupp. The team note the substantial departure from the book's plotlines, the surplus of empty offices, and some inconsistencies between the Apple II and Commodore 64 versions.
Ben solves a decades-long gaming mystery, plus there's a cat and a mouse and only one of them survives to the end of the episode!
The Robots of Dawn (MobyGames)
The Robots of Dawn (playable online, C64)
Saturday Jun 21, 2025
Saturday Jun 21, 2025
Creator of games including Hadean Lands, Spider and Web, and Shade, as well as a long-time maintainer of Inform and participant in Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation (IFTF) leadership, Andrew "Zarf" Plotkin was also a teenager once. And back then he wrote Inhumane, as covered in Episode 27.
Jason and Nick welcome him to the program discuss the creation of Inhumane, the evolution of his work as a participant in the modern interactive fiction community, and the prospects for another "Infobom" title in that parody vein.
Zarfhome (personal homepage and contact info)
Episode image from The Book of Adventure Games II
Welcome, keyboard warriors!
The Retro Adventurers is a podcast for everyone who has battled fading lanterns, unmappable mazes, and verb selection. Join us to celebrate text adventures from the peak years of the 1970s and 1980s as well as throwbacks from the modern age. Keep the conversations going on Facebook and Bluesky, or write contact@retroadventurers.com.