retrogaming & faked information/memories

[Ashpool]

Well, this may not be a topic of major interest - but I want to present it here, as I just stumbled upon it and am really flabbergasted by it!

Prelude: Inspired by some articles about The Hobbit from Melbourne House and curious about citations about the capabilities of its parser (I've played its sequel Lord of the Rings and remember that it was a PITA compared to Imfocom):

The parser was very advanced for the time and used a subset of English called Inglish.When it was released, most adventure games used simple verb-noun parsers (allowing for simple phrases like "get lamp"), but Inglish allowed the player to type advanced sentences such as "ask Gandalf about the curious map then take sword and kill troll with it". The parser was complex and intuitive, introducing pronouns, adverbs ("viciously attack the goblin"), punctuation and prepositions and allowing the player to interact with the game world in ways not previously possible.

Story:
So I tried it out (well, yes because I thought it a worthwhile trip down memory lane and because I ever wanted to play it back then) -> well in 1st room/1st scene I experienced this:

Then I veriefied the "word list" given by the manual of the game on world of spectrum and yes... ask is not a word known by the Inglish Parser!
I've checked (after consulting an acquaintance/friend of mine who had published an article about Why dates in retrogaming are problematic) the history of the wikipedia article ... and guess what, around 2011, it was corrected but soon again replaced with the false information about the parser.

puzzlement of mine/question:
WHY? I understand (better to say: i see why they happen - not that I really understand why) why there are fake news in politics/comercials/etc. but why is such a false information about, in this case a parser from back then, and from it onward in retro games dates/howabouts/in-general widely spread (verify/check on a retro-gaming wiki of your choice) and even discussed in some places (e.g: Inglish parser on the Hobbit (1982 video game)) as if this information is true without even trying it out (the wikipedia article offers a link to play the game within a browser, so no excuses here)?

Am I growing too old? I really don't understand why such missinformation is beeing spread, and now that I encountered one example on my own, i am wondering how much false information about retro games i had missed/passed on myself/etc. I simply don't get it!

[abj]

I don't know why but i never trusted Wikipedia.

[thelostsoul]

@Ashpool I can confirm "Gandalf" don't know the word "ASK". Tested it on ZXSpectrum and the DOS version of the game as well. My theory was, it might be different versions of the game had changes, where the words were added. But looks like the official versions of the game on these two platforms do not know "ASK".

---

Little nerd joke: Maybe don't ask, just use "sudo". (This joke has nothing to do with the game, it's just a sudo joke.).

[hawkes_84]

@Ashpool said in retrogaming & faked information/memories:

Well, this may not be a topic of major interest - but I want to present it here, as I just stumbled upon it and am really flabbergasted by it!

Prelude: Inspired by some articles about The Hobbit from Melbourne House and curious about citations about the capabilities of its parser (I've played its sequel Lord of the Rings and remember that it was a PITA compared to Imfocom):

The parser was very advanced for the time and used a subset of English called Inglish.When it was released, most adventure games used simple verb-noun parsers (allowing for simple phrases like "get lamp"), but Inglish allowed the player to type advanced sentences such as "ask Gandalf about the curious map then take sword and kill troll with it". The parser was complex and intuitive, introducing pronouns, adverbs ("viciously attack the goblin"), punctuation and prepositions and allowing the player to interact with the game world in ways not previously possible.

Story:
So I tried it out (well, yes because I thought it a worthwhile trip down memory lane and because I ever wanted to play it back then) -> well in 1st room/1st scene I experienced this:

Then I veriefied the "word list" given by the manual of the game on world of spectrum and yes... ask is not a word known by the Inglish Parser!
I've checked (after consulting an acquaintance/friend of mine who had published an article about Why dates in retrogaming are problematic) the history of the wikipedia article ... and guess what, around 2011, it was corrected but soon again replaced with the false information about the parser.

puzzlement of mine/question:
WHY? I understand (better to say: i see why they happen - not that I really understand why) why there are fake news in politics/comercials/etc. but why is such a false information about, in this case a parser from back then, and from it onward in retro games dates/howabouts/in-general widely spread (verify/check on a retro-gaming wiki of your choice) and even discussed in some places (e.g: Inglish parser on the Hobbit (1982 video game)) as if this information is true without even trying it out (the wikipedia article offers a link to play the game within a browser, so no excuses here)?

Am I growing too old? I really don't understand why such missinformation is beeing spread, and now that I encountered one example on my own, i am wondering how much false information about retro games i had missed/passed on myself/etc. I simply don't get it!

Yeah it's baffling. Those text adventures were among the firsts of my foray in gaming and I loved trying out certain word combos to see if it was sophisticated enough to understand it (and occasionally throwing in an expletive just to see what they said)
I'd say they do it to make the game seem more capable etc but can't imagine what benefit it would have to the writer etc