I actually started with the first one: Crowther and Woods' Adventure (aka Colossal Cave or Advent) http://www.rickadams.org/adventure/a_history.html. I played it on my dad's hand-assembled Heathkit H-89 (the first home computer we had - http://www.geocities.com/compcloset/HeathH89.htm http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=135 - wow, seeing pics of it again brings back memories of learning how to program by typing in BASIC programs from Creative Computing magazines!)

I later played most any I could get my hands on:

• the Zork trilogy (plus Beyond Zork, which I played mostly on a local BBS as a door game) http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/download.html,
• The Golden Wombat of Destiny http://members.cox.net/dns361/wombat.html,
• Skullduggery http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=3402,
• Castle Adventure http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=3953
• Lots of others, many created with adventure creation toolkits like AGT, TADS, etc.

I was never really good at them though. Of the few that I managed to finish, almost all were with the use of a walkthrough. They were lots of fun though - partially because of the amount of depth your imagination adds to the game and partially because IF games are at the very roots of my geek upbringing.

Anyways, there was this one trilogy of DOS text adventure games that I've had for almost 15 years called "Daemon Quest". All three games stumped me pretty good. I posted to Usenet a few years ago http://groups-beta.google.com/group/rec.games … 612f3b1e936583c to see if anyone knew anything about them and got a reply from the author. Unfortunately even he had all but forgotten of them 🙁 Just this last week I decided to scape them together and submit them to their new home on the Interactive Fiction Archive http://www.ifarchive.org/ (direct link: http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/pc/dquest.zip).

I sat down and mapped out as much as I could of the first game, but I'm stuck once again. The biggest limiting factor is that I can only find one copper coin (by digging it up on the beach), and this is what I can do with it:

• I can get the Windstone from the Elves - I can't remember) by buying cinnamon and putting it in the cook's food to get the king to leave his throne room. Once I have the stone, I can of course put it in the Door, but that doesn't get me anything unless I get the other three stones.
• I can bet with the man under the tavern in the first town (PULL CASK to reveal the stairs to the cellar), but his dice are rigged so that I always lose (I never seem to roll higher than a 7)
• I can buy a knife from the armorer, but what can I do with that?
• I can buy a mirror from the apothecary, but don't know what to do with it. I thought maybe I could show the Lord guy how weird his eyes look, but I couldn't figure out a way to make that happen
• There are probably a few more things I might be able to buy from the various shops for a single coin, (deck of cards, poison potion, bag of flour to name a few) but none have any obvious use, so I haven't tried

Items I've been able to acquire:

• Windstone
• cinnamon
• dice
• rubber mallet
• garlic (cook gives it to you after you put cinnamon in his pot
• knife
• coin
• note (hidden in the tree near your house
• bag of sugar (you start with it)

Other leads:

• I think I need to get the nugget of mithril from the cliff to trade with the Dwarf king for the Earthstone, but I don't know how to extract it (need a pickaxe or something)
• There's something weird about that Lord guy's eyes that probably has to do with getting the Firestone from him
• Someone stole the Waterstone from the humans, and none of them are at their castle, so something weird is going on there. All I found was a cot that I can't figure out what to do with. The citizens of North Town may have some clues, but I have no idea what to ask them (nothing I've tried triggers anything)
• The swordsman and barbarian in Riverside are looking for something called the Tree of Life, which I've found no evidence of

Hints:

• Drop items on the ground in the forest maze to make a map of it. There are 4 rooms in the maze that all look the same
• All the other places I've found that look like mazes are actually traps that you can't get out of (hills, deserts, etc.) without loading a saved game or restarting
• Tie up the raft on the red dock to keep it from floating away while you're exploring the humans' area; there's no way to get it back that I know of without loading a saved game or restarting
• Ask the man in the Forestown tavern about WAY to get one way through the forest, but there are a total of 3 places besides Forestown that the forest leads to

Spoilers:

• Hit gong with rubber mallet to make a bridge across the lake to get to the Dwarf mountain
• Dig on the beach to get a coin
• Push the rock in the mallet cave to open a hole leading down (didn't find anything but death down there though)
• Say PORTSTRAN on the sandy shore to teleport the raft to the grassy shore to bypass the rapids on the river (to get back, just ride the raft east on the river, through the rapids)

I'm really curious to see if anyone can get farther than I did. I don't know if anyone around here is into this type of old games though (and I'd be really surprised if anyone has heard of the Daemon Quest series) - maybe if I get desperate I'll post to the IF groups on Usenet again.