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 Discord, Facebook, and Bluesky.
Episodes
2 days ago
2 days ago
Your monthly classic text adventuring news update delivered this month by Jason, Nick, and Tim. The top stories are game contests still open for players votes at time of publication! Don't delay, listen and click today!
Text Adventure Literacy Jam 2026
Iron CHiF Season One Episode Two: ZIL
https://intfiction.org/t/iron-chif-season-one-episode-2-lancelot-vs-someone2-using-zil/79983
Inform 6 benchmarking
https://discord.com/channels/830344544679493644/830344548315037739/1501871149288525844
PunyInform v6.6
https://github.com/johanberntsson/PunyInform/releases/tag/v6_6
Visible Zorker update: Deadline for backers, Zork III goes public
https://blog.zarfhome.com/2026/05/visible-zork-3
https://archive.org/details/Suspended_Map_Recreation
https://archive.org/details/Infocom_Starcross_Chart_Recreation
Dialog 1b/01
https://intfiction.org/t/dialog-1b-01-library-1-2-0-a-machine-1-0-0-is-released/80151
https://github.com/Dialog-IF/dialog/releases/tag/release-1b01-1.2.0
War of the Worlds for Commodore 64
https://michel-molenaar.itch.io/war-of-the-worlds-c64
Modern PAW environment
https://www.reddit.com/r/interactivefiction/comments/1tgyyj2/show_if_a_modern_jsonbased_paws_engine/
https://carlosparamio.itch.io/paws-ai
Text Adventure Studio (formerly Apple II Adventure Studio)
https://textadventurestudio.com/
The Forgotten Nightmare release
https://intfiction.org/t/the-forgotten-nightmare-series-platform-expansion-release/80323/5
Voyage of the Beano for Spectrum Next
https://qladventures.itch.io/the-voyage-of-the-beano
Spring Thing 2026 recognizes C64 Latinorum, other neo-retro titles
https://www.springthing.net/2026/play.html
2026 IntroComp kickoff
https://mastodon.social/@Feneric/116636591715718306
Tuesday May 12, 2026
Tuesday May 12, 2026
It's an Infocom antiheroic classic and a throwback Infocom parody this time out as modern IF legend Andrew Plotkin (Zarf) joins Jason and Nick for two perilous adventures.
Lurking Horror sendup The Smirking Horror by Jason Davis leads off, a reasonably faithful re-interpretation of The Lurking Horror from Infocom. It's the first Amstrad CPC exclusive on the show and makes surprisingly minimal use of the graphics available in Graphic Adventure Creator.
For the main course we take on Infocom's Infidel, memorably parodied by Zarf himself (Episode 27's Inhumane) and created by Michael Berlyn and Patricia Fogleman. Legendary for its surly protagonist and shock ending, does it hold up to modern scrutiny?
The Smirking Horror (playable online)
Wednesday Apr 29, 2026
Wednesday Apr 29, 2026
There's news out there in classic text adventures and neo-retro interactive fiction, and it's past time The Retro Adventurers got serious about delivering it! So, welcome to the first installment of a new monthly feature, OPEN MAILBOX -- where you GET NEWS AND LISTEN TO IT.
This episode compiled and presented by Retro Adventurers Nick and Jason covers multiple new Infocom/Z-Machine interpreters, Andrew Plotkin's Visible Zorker developments, an amazingly layered Cornerstone prank-that's-also-real, and other novel developments.
Zym II and Inform 6 Optimization:
https://intfiction.org/t/zym-ii-an-8-bit-z-machine-interpreter-for-symbos/79520
https://intfiction.org/t/accelerating-inform-6-games-on-8-bit-interpreters/79531
https://github.com/fredrikr/krebf
Visible Zorker - Deadline hijinx:
https://blog.zarfhome.com/2026/03/visible-zorker-march
https://www.patreon.com/VisibleZorker
New Features for Old Hardware:
https://intfiction.org/t/statusline-options/79162
https://github.com/johanberntsson/ozmoo/releases
Retro Adventurers on Discord:
https://intfiction.org/t/zabbrev-has-been-ported-from-c-to-c/75176/24
https://jxself.org/git?p=zabbrev.git;a=summary
The Linchpin to Infocom’s Database Strategy?:
https://intfiction.org/t/cornerstones-vm-was-cornerstone-for-atari/79644
https://blog.zarfhome.com/2026/04/cornerstone-and-the-mu-machine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xgz5GIbKx3Y
Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation (IFTF) Grants:
https://blog.iftechfoundation.org/2026-04-08-announcing-the-2026-iftf-grant-recipients.html
Keep Circulating the Tapes:
https://ifdb.org
Sunday Apr 05, 2026
Sunday Apr 05, 2026
Thank you for another year of Retro Adventuring with us! To celebrate we've gathered together to share important news about a change in the team roster, an exciting new monthly department, and to share a first look at our new handcrafted artwork (thank you, Emily Sergent)!
Spend a little time with Jason, Nick, and Tim and watch for more game, interview, and news episodes coming soon to your feed (and YouTube, which did get sorted out!)
Douglas Adams BBC interview (1985)
The BDB Project (Bonaventura Di Bello adventure translations)
Adventure Game Aptitude Test (Maniac Mansion 4-hour challenge)
Sunday Mar 22, 2026
Sunday Mar 22, 2026
Hyperspace adventure awaits as Tim Gilberts joins Jason to play two underrated science fiction games from the 1970s. For starters it's Dog Star Adventure, the first type-in text adventure in Softside Magazine. True to its 1979 roots it's steeped in Star Wars lore and vocabulary, and was ported to plenty of classic platforms in its heyday.
The feature game is Aldebaran III, one of the games created by Peter Langston in his Wander system. It, too, leans heavily on genre fiction, in this case the Retief novels by Keith Laumer, covering interstellar espionage, diplomacy, and bureaucracy in equal measure.
Wander game analysis (Renga In Blue)
Aldebaran III (CRPG Adventures)
Dog Star Adventure in Softside May 1979
Dog Star Adventure (Old School Gamer Magazine)
Saturday Jan 31, 2026
Saturday Jan 31, 2026
Ron Martinez, our guest from Episode 11, returns! This is actually a holdover from the 2025 Year-End Chatisode sessions, but it really stands alone as an exploration of Ron's recent work in narrative design involving generative AI, large language models, and other 21st century interactive storytelling techniques. Joining us on the call are regular Retro Adventurers Jason and Nick, along with This Week in Retro's Dave "Velociraptor" (Episode 29).
And it's a big day for Nabokov fans as both Pale Fire and his lecture on The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are invoked.
Tuesday Jan 13, 2026
Tuesday Jan 13, 2026
It's the Infocom classic Zork, but in two unusual formats!
First Nick and Jason explore the unusual covertape edition of Mini-Zork I, a stripped-down, memory-resident version of the original Great Underground Empire created in 1987 and later provided free to readers of the November 1990 issue of ZZap 64 magazine for the Commodore 64. It's a bold undertaking, but is it art? Indeed, does it even work at all?
Then the Retro Adventurers take on Zork-285, a reconstruction "of the very first MDL version of Zork from June 14, 1977" as provided by Henrik Åsman. Only available to play by a small cadre of MIT insiders, this version has the bones of what would later become the full-fledged Dungeon game before being carved up for Infocom's commercial products Zork I, II, and III. It's full of pitfalls but notably empty of grues.
Cover image from David Ardito's 1981 Zork poster, sourced from zarfhome.com
The Newton (excerpt from The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, performed by Jason)
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.
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, Bluesky, and Discord, or write contact@retroadventurers.com.