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The Witness (1983 Video Game)
''The Witness'' is an interactive fiction video game published by Infocom in 1983. Like Infocom's earlier title '' Deadline'', it is a murder mystery. ''The Witness'' was written in the ZIL language for the Z-machine, which allowed it to be released simultaneously on many systems. It is Infocom's seventh game. Plot The game takes place in Cabeza Plana, a quiet and fictional (the name is Spanish for "Flathead", from ''Zork'' mythology) suburb of Los Angeles, California in February 1938. Freeman Linder, a local millionaire, has begged the police for protection from a man named Stiles. The player's character is a detective assigned one evening to check out the wealthy man's claims: is Linder seriously in danger or just another rich eccentric? Before the player can decide, a window explodes and Linder collapses, dead. The case of possible harassment has just become a murder, with the player as the only witness. With the help of Sgt. Duffy (last seen in ''Deadline''), the playe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Infocom
Infocom, Inc., was an American software company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that produced numerous works of interactive fiction. They also produced a business application, a relational database called ''Cornerstone (software), Cornerstone''. Infocom was founded on June 22, 1979, by staff and students of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and lasted as an independent company until 1986, when it was bought by Activision. Activision shut down the Infocom division in 1989, although they released some titles in the 1990s under the Infocom ''Zork'' brand. Activision abandoned the Infocom trademark in 2002. Overview Infocom games are interactive fiction, text adventures where users direct the action by entering short strings of words to give commands when prompted. Generally the program will respond by describing the results of the action, often the contents of a room if the player has moved within the virtual world. The user reads this information, decides what to do, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Interactive Fiction
Interactive fiction (IF) is software simulating environments in which players use text Command (computing), commands to control Player character, characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives, either in the form of Interactive narratives or Interactive narrations. These works can also be understood as a form of video game, either in the form of an adventure game or role-playing video game, role-playing game. In common usage, the term refers to text adventures, a type of adventure game where the entire interface can be "Text mode, text-only", however, graphical text adventure games, where the text is accompanied by graphics (still images, animations or video) still fall under the text adventure category if the main way to interact with the game is by typing text. Some users of the term distinguish between interactive fiction, known as "Puzzle-free", that focuses on narrative, and "text adventures" that focus on puzzles. Due ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Santa Ana, California
Santa Ana (Spanish language, Spanish for ) is a city in and the county seat of Orange County, California, United States. Located in the Greater Los Angeles region of Southern California, the city's population was 310,227 at the 2020 census. As of 2023, Santa Ana is the third most populous city in Orange County (after Anaheim, California, Anaheim and Irvine, California, Irvine), the List of largest cities in California by population, 14th-most populous city in California, and the List of United States cities by population, 65th most populous city in the United States. Santa Ana is a major regional economic and cultural hub for the Orange Coast. In 1810, the Spanish governor of California granted Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana to José Antonio Yorba. Following the Mexican War of Independence, the Yorba family ranchos of California, rancho was enlarged, becoming one of the largest and most valuable in the region and home to a diverse Californio community. Following the American Conqu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Matchbook
A matchbook is a small paperboard folder (known as a matchcover) enclosing a quantity of matches and having a coarse striking surface on the exterior. The folder is opened to access the matches, which are attached in a comb-like arrangement and must be torn away before use in contrast to a matchbox where the matches are loosely packed in the interior tray. The exterior of the matchcover is usually imprinted with a producer's logo, often with artistic decorations, or serves as an advertising/promotional medium for the undertaking by which it is sold or given away. The ease of making matchcovers of different shapes also made them quite a popular cheap promotional item or anniversary souvenir. Manufacturing of matchbooks peaked during the 1940s and 1950s, then steadily declined because of the availability of disposable lighters and various anti-smoking health campaigns. Recently, matchbooks have begun to regain some of their popularity as a "retro" advertising item, particul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Telegram
Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas pigeon post is not. Ancient signalling systems, although sometimes quite extensive and sophisticated as in China, were generally not capable of transmitting arbitrary text messages. Possible messages were fixed and predetermined, so such systems are thus not true telegraphs. The earliest true telegraph put into widespread use was the Chappe telegraph, an optical telegraph invented by Claude Chappe in the late 18th century. The system was used extensively in France, and European nations occupied by France, during the Napoleonic era. The electric telegraph started to replace the optical telegraph in the mid-19th century. It was first taken up in Britain in the form of the Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph, initially used mostly as an aid to railw ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Feelies
A feelie is a physical item included to supplement a video game. Likely deriving their name from the fictional media in Aldous Huxley's 1932 novel ''Brave New World'', feelies were popularized by the American video game company Infocom in the 1980s and subsequently adopted by such companies as Origin Systems and Sierra Entertainment in the United States and Namco and ASCII in Japan. Becoming less prevalent since the rise of digital distribution, feelies are now limited primarily to deluxe editions that are sold at a premium. Feelies may take various forms, with common ones including reproductions of game objects, printed materials, cosmetics, and figurines. Historically, feelies allowed video game developers to implement copy protection and minimize the amount of digital space used for supplemental materials while simultaneously distinguishing their products from those of competitors. For players, feelies could provide assistance during gameplay, opportunities for continued pl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Santa Ana Register
''The Orange County Register'' is a paid daily newspaper published in California. The ''Register'', published in Orange County, California, is owned by the private equity firm Alden Global Capital via its Digital First Media News subsidiaries. Freedom Communications owned the newspaper from 1935 to 2016. History The ''Register'' was founded by a consortium as the ''Santa Ana Daily Register'' in 1905. It was sold to J. P. Baumgartner in 1906 and to J. Frank Burke in 1927. In 1935 it was bought by Raymond C. Hoiles, who renamed it the ''Santa Ana Register.'' After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hoiles was one of the few newspaper publishers in the country to oppose the forced relocation of Japanese and Japanese Americans to camps away from the West Coast. Hoiles reorganized his holdings as Freedom Newspapers, Inc. In 1950, the name was changed to Freedom Communications. The paper dropped "Santa Ana" from its title in 1952. In 1956, the newspaper was a prominent supporte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Feelies
A feelie is a physical item included to supplement a video game. Likely deriving their name from the fictional media in Aldous Huxley's 1932 novel ''Brave New World'', feelies were popularized by the American video game company Infocom in the 1980s and subsequently adopted by such companies as Origin Systems and Sierra Entertainment in the United States and Namco and ASCII in Japan. Becoming less prevalent since the rise of digital distribution, feelies are now limited primarily to deluxe editions that are sold at a premium. Feelies may take various forms, with common ones including reproductions of game objects, printed materials, cosmetics, and figurines. Historically, feelies allowed video game developers to implement copy protection and minimize the amount of digital space used for supplemental materials while simultaneously distinguishing their products from those of competitors. For players, feelies could provide assistance during gameplay, opportunities for continued pl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sears Catalog
Sears, Roebuck and Co., commonly known as Sears ( ), is an American chain of department stores and online retailer founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald, with what began as a mail-order catalog company migrating to opening retail locations in 1925, the first in Chicago. Through the 1980s, Sears was the largest retailer in the United States. In 2005, the company was bought by the management of the American big box discount chain Kmart, which upon completion of the merger, formed Sears Holdings. In 2018, it was the 31st-largest. After several years of declining sales, Sears' parent company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on October 15, 2018. It announced on January 16, 2019, that it had won its bankruptcy auction, and that a reduced number of 425 stores would remain open, including 223 Sears stores. Sears was based in the Sears Tower in Chicago from 1973 until moving out to Hoffman ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, cultural center of Southern California. With an estimated 3,878,704 residents within the city limits , it is the List of United States cities by population, second-most populous in the United States, behind only New York City. Los Angeles has an Ethnic groups in Los Angeles, ethnically and culturally diverse population, and is the principal city of a Metropolitan statistical areas, metropolitan area of 12.9 million people (2024). Greater Los Angeles, a combined statistical area that includes the Los Angeles and Riverside–San Bernardino metropolitan areas, is a sprawling metropolis of over 18.5 million residents. The majority of the city proper lies in Los Angeles Basin, a basin in Southern California adjacent to the Pacific Ocean in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zork
''Zork'' is a text adventure game first released in 1977 by developers Tim Anderson (programmer), Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling for the PDP-10 mainframe computer. The original developers and others, as the company Infocom, expanded and split the game into three titles''ZorkI: The Great Underground Empire'', ''ZorkII: The Wizard of Frobozz'', and ''ZorkIII: The Dungeon Master''which were released commercially for a range of personal computers beginning in 1980. In ''Zork'', the player explores the abandoned Great Underground Empire in search of treasure. The player moves between the game's hundreds of locations and interacts with objects by typing commands in natural language processing, natural language that the game interprets. The program acts as a narrator, describing the player's location and the results of the player's commands. It has been described as the most famous piece of interactive fiction. The original game, developed between 1977 and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fictional Town
This is a list of fictional settlements, including fictional towns, villages, and cities, organized by each city's medium. This list should include only well-referenced, notable examples of fictional towns, cities, settlements and villages that are integral to a work of fiction and substantively depicted therein. Fictional cities, towns and counties are arrows in the fiction writers' quivers they lend an air of authenticity to the story, and since there are so many of them, readers find them to be a plausible addition that makes the story more realistic. Comics Film Television Radio Animated Literature Video games Mythology Other See also * Fictional city * Welcome to Night Vale * List of fictional British and Irish universities References * {{DEFAULTSORT:Fictional settlements Towns A town is a type of a human settlement, generally larger than a village but smaller than a city. The criteria for distinguishing a town vary globally, often dep ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
