Only a few screens long. This is the first game that I play where you can use glitches to pass by some obstacles. Interesting, but not really what I want to play.\n<<display "gameList">>

I see quite a few games right here at the front of the box that sound interesting. I should pick one.\n<<display "gameList">>

One whole side of my famliy is collected here for the holidays. There is lots of eating, drinking, and joking around going on up there. I would really rather play with the computer. \n[[go back down to play with the computer|FamilyRoom]]

A great little platformer. I will play this one until my hands cramp, and still never complete the last level. but not today. \n<<display "gameList">>

It's my uncles Atari 800. It is the color of autumn leaves and smells faintly of cigarette smoke. Of course everything in this house smells strongly of cigarette smoke, so it's almost impossible to detect.\nA plastic box of disks sits beside it. \n<<if $gameInDrive>>\n[[play Enchanter]]\n<<else>>\n[[look at the disks]]\n<<endif>>\n<<display 'FamilyRoomActions'>>

<<if $gameInDrive>>\nEnchanter starts up. The tiny screen is filled with fuzzy edged text. The game waits for you to type something\n[[play Enchanter]]\n[[give up and look around|FamilyRoom]]\n<<else>>\nNot much happens. Probably because there is no disk or cartrige in the machine. I turn it back off.\n[[look around some more|FamilyRoom]]\n<<endif>>

I play Enchanter. I have played Zork, so I have some idea what to do, but the depth and nuance of my effect on the world is staggering. In Enchanter, you don't just wander around picking up any item that is not affixed to a surface. Your magic spells are verbs. The game is not reading descriptions and searching for hints. You aren't a passive audience. In Enchanter, you do. Or figure out how and when to do, and then you do.\n\nI'm too young. I type to slowly. I can't figure out how to navigate the game without dying of starvation, thirst, or lack of sleep. I eventually make it past the turtle puzzle, but I never go much further. \n\nYears later I play Enchanter again. I am armed with a walkthrough, and I burn through the game in a few hours. When I finally "guncho Krill" it doesn't stick. I have no strong memories of that moment. \n\nOne time, long ago, I figured out the turtle puzzle on my own, and I thought "in this game, you can do anything"

I am in the family room. \n\nIt's a large wood panelled room in the basement of my grandparents house.\n\nThere is a computer here. \n<<display 'FamilyRoomActions'>>\n

The opening scene for this one is amazing, but one day I will figure out the trick to playing it almost indefinitely. Pass.\n<<display "gameList">>

Tilting back the brown tinted plastic lid reveals a row of 5 1/4 inch floppy disks. A few of the labels are factory printed, but most of them have labels hand written in different colors of ink. By different hands. Some disks have no labels at all. \n\nA few near the front have interesting titles.\n[[pick a game]]\n[[look around some more|FamilyRoom]]

I will never get into war gaming. not now. not ever. It's not the games fault.\n<<display "gameList">>

Best Games\n[[Enchanter|FamilyRoom]]\n<<set $gameInDrive = false>>

<<actions "Miner 2049er" "Enchanter" "Caverns of Khafka" "Eastern Front" "Astro Chase">>

[[look around]]\n[[examine the computer]]\n<<if $gameInDrive>>\n[[play Enchanter]]\n<<else>>\n[[turn on the computer]]\n<<endif>>\n[[go upstairs]]

Best Games\nEnchanter

<<set $gameInDrive = true>>\nonly one more thing to do. switch that bad boy on.\n* [[turn on the computer]]

We call it a family room, but usually it’s someones bedroom. A lot of someones have lived in this room, not all of them immediate family. I watched gobots down here the day I had my nose broken by a broomball stick. So yeah, family room. \n<<display 'FamilyRoomActions'>>\n