 Chapter One: The Land Before Time Zone! Before World of Warcraft revolutionized the point-and-click adventure game, the genre was dominated by text-adventure. For those of you new to video games, the text-adventure game is like Microsoft Customer Support, in that they will only respond to specific noun-verb combinations. Then in 1982, Time Zone arrived. Spanning six floppy disks and a 100-dollar price tag, it doesn't take much to understand why the game was lost to history.
T-T-T-T-T-T-T-TIME ZONE begins outside your McMansion, Picasso's lone foray into residential construction. There are no roads leading to and from the house, presumably because where we're going, we won't need roads. And as would be expected from a 1982 graphic-adventure game, the command prompt is as useful as Estonian foreign policy. Jesus, who needs copy-protection when you can front-load your blockbuster with a text adventure game? When you discover how to make your character move in a direction, the game will reward you by blowing your fucking mind.
You heard the chat box! Time for a walk--oh, hello. You must be new to the neighborhood.
Time to embark on a great adventure! And looking at those child-bearing hips, why wouldn't I? Quick question: Before traveling back in time and stopping the production of this game, shouldn't I tell my loved ones that I'm off to fight the evil ruler of planet Neburon? "Honey, time machine outside the house! No matter how long I'm gone, I'll be back before six!"
Behold: The time machine where one can't return to the present! Remember Chrono Trigger? Sure, the destinations were limited, but they had context. If the Apple II could render more pixels than colors, I'd expect the dates to be written on the dashboard in crayon. But who cares about context when one has a time machine? That's what we're out to destroy! 400 million B.C., activate!
My clothes? My pride? Want to tell me what I lost? If I'm off to sex a giant mosquito and begin the family tree, this is kinda importaOHMYGODWHATISTHAT!?!
In fairness, Wikipedia didn't exist in 1982. Prior to the highly-reliable encyclopedia anyone can edit, people used books to verify the correct spelling of Tyrannosaurus, the era it lived in, and the number of digits on its hands. Unfortunately for Time Zone's creators, books were not invented for another decade. Unfortunately for us, there's little time to debate semantics. Dragonite is about to use its Hyper Beam attack!
Son of a bitch! Can't a man time travel without being eaten by a dinosaur!? Enough of this crap. Commander Palmface, set the dial to "Cubs' last World Series victory"!
The contintents didn't exist in 10,000 B.C.? But I thought English separatists crossed the land bridge...? But how would historians know that? They weren't there! When will you liberals learn that facts and evidence are bullshit!?
Pounce? Are you sure he isn't charging his eye beams? To this point in the game, I've collected a rock and a stick. Obviously, Neon Terror Kitty needs to go extinct. Eat rock!
To my delight, "Throw Rock" is completely impractical in this situation, whereas "Throw Stick"...
Any wonder that the first genre to witness a beta test was the adventure genre? Come on, Time Zone! Do your worst!
"Braid Cornrows"?
By nature, the adventure game is a haven for sadists, letting them walk Ruby Sue into the gas chamber and pulling the trigger. You know, to see what happens. Why? Because we're assholes. At least in modern adventure games, the player needs effort and ingenuity to down the protagonist. In Time Zone, walking in a certain direction dooms you to suffer a stroke or get mauled by a pack of dingoes. Fortunately, you only have to read about Time Zone, and I have to endure it. I'll do more of that when I want to find out who won World War II. |
