Hello everyone, In this email I'm first asking for advice, then I'd like you guy's feedback on a suggestion. First, I'd like to tell you guys my background with text adventures. When I was at school, the teacher had a disk with text adventure games like Zork, Gymad, Under the Ice, etc. The screen reader that was used was Window Bridge, which could also be used as a dos screen reader. You would go to Windows Explorer, press enter on the .exe file of the game, and Window Bridge would start reading it to you. Now, however, new windows systems don't even have any form of DOS, and this makes me worried, because, for me, text based games are a very important part of the history and culture of games for the blind. My worry is that with the non-existance of dos, these games will disappear, be hard to find, etc. I want to do two things, but I please need answers: 1. For my own enjoyment, I want to somehow be able to play the dos-based text adventure games. These games are of course stand-alone games, not games that used windows interpreters, but games that will iether run under old Windows versions through the ms-dos prompt, or through raw ms dos. What me and a sighted guy thought of, is if I make a partition on my hard drive, install plain dos, and use a screen reader like Jaws for Dos or Hal Lite, which are free. I want to know though, is their anywhere I can get DOS from? Also, since I've mainly used the windows environment, is their some kind of DOS tutorial available, sort of a beginners for DOS guide? I'm familiar with some dos commands, like how to move through directories and run programs, but don't know it too well. You might be wondering why I'm not installing an older version of Windows and running the games under the dos box? We were thinking about it, but we don't have a copy of Windows 95 or 98, and I don't think their is anyone who could sell us a copy. The next thing I want to ask is can you guys send me lists of sites which have text-based games on them for download. The idea is, with large hard drives, I will download, keep, and play as many of these hard-to-find games as I can, I will then, when I can have my own site one day, upload them to the site as a sort of huge library. My suggestion is about a text-based games club (like a book club!) What I'm suggesting is, it's fun, I remember from school, to solve a game with other people. What I suggest is a sort of club that would work like this: Once, say every two months, a person will suggest a game, which is freely downloadable. That person must tell all of us who want to take part, the link to the game. Everyone who wants to can play the game, and, without using the solution, we who struggle with problems in the game try and put our heads together and try and finish the game. We can do it by email on this list, or in a chat room while playing the game, but I think email will be best, since people first of all don't play the game at the same time, and time zones are also a problem. Talking about dos games, are the PCS games that were made for dos still available? If I can get a dos system set up, I'd really love to try them. You may wonder where this enthusiasm has come from, it came from me re-reading the first three issues of audyssey! I read about games like Fallthru, which I've never played, but would love to try! I've played Zork, it's cool! Ari
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