I found it confounding and alarming that readers picked Planetfall as one of the 10 worst adventure games. Planetfall is considered one of the best of all of the INFOCOM adventures, usually ranking just below the Zork trilogy, and often placed with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, whose popularity was largely due to the popularity of the book series and its author, Douglas Adams. But adventurers who weren’t mere fetuses in the 1980s consider Planetfall the first game to have real meaning and a real emotional effect on the player (meaning most of your readers weren’t even out of diapers when this game was wowing us “older” people).
Not only does the game successfully employ humor, but it also introduces one of gamedom’s first “real” NPCs, the character of the companion robot, Floyd. You can ask players across the globe what the most emotional moment in a computer game was, and while many point to recent games, anyone who has been around a little longer, will almost to a person point to that moment where . . . well . . . let’s just say we loved Floyd. And he made a lot of us cry — which was an unheard-of thing in gaming before the mid-1990s.
Whenever I see “statistics” like that, I clearly understand that people were voting out of their arses, without any knowledge of what they were voting for.
Sean Huxter
Norwood, MA
Your Keaton heart
I think there is quite a difference within Gen X — those who were born in the late ’60s versus us born in the late ’70s. The older ones tend to be more Alex P. Keaton, while those my age seem to be the libertarian types. One thing is for sure, though. Sarah Palin is not what you make her out to be in this article. She will be an answer to a trivia question in 20 years.
Alex Reagan
St. Louis, MO
Keep an eye on Jeb
Faraone, thanks, this is the best unbiased report on Devious Jeb and his goals for ejukashun I have ever read. I hope you will follow up with a report on his source of funds to finance his endless speaking engagements while not running for POTUS.
Mari Anderson
Titusville, FL
