It’s sometimes hard to believe that my earliest truly memorable gaming experiences revolved around mono-color text. It may surprise folks that the form, interactive fiction, is still going strong. In fact there’s an annual competition and this year’s winners have just been announced. You can download them from the IF site, and you can also review this year’s submissions. I’ll confess, I rarely play these anymore, though I usually check out the contest results each year. While I’m hardly a graphics snob (I still play super nintendo games and arcade games I played in the 80’s, for example), I find I rarely have the time you need to devote to this form. It’s unfortunate, in that they’ve evolved and become rather sophisticated in style, evolving with their audience I guess. There’s an irony lurking here, in that I suspect these would actually appeal to a lot of folks who wouldn’t be caught dead with a PS2 controller in their hands. If the notion of interacting with a novel appeals to you, check these out and give one a try. The software is available for win32 and MacOS, and for most of the offerings there are ways to get them running under Linux as well.