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review by Green Pagan
"You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. Around you is a forest. A path leads away from the building to Day of the Tentacle, Ultima, Lands of Lore, Dark Seed and King's Quest."
The first two sentences are from William Crowther's Adventure, the first text adventure, while the last line might describe the trajectory of a new book called Entertainment in the Cyber Zone: Exploring the Interactive Universe of Multimedia.
Here, for the first time, is the history of PCs, text adventures, RPG games, video games, interactive narrative, CD-ROM and multimedia, all in one volume. There have been other books published recently that touch on one or more of these topics (such as Understanding Hypermedia, The Cyberspace Lexicon, and The Magic of Interactive Entertainment). But Cyber Zone ties it all together in one impressively comprehensive volume, with a staggering number of interviews with gaming and multimedia gurus.
This is not an overly technical book, and it does not include an accompanying CD or tips for programmers. But it should be of interest to both consumers and developers, as it has hundreds of CD-ROM reviews (of all types), many great anecdotes, and extensive quotes from people like Rand and Robyn Miller (Myst), Graeme Devine and Rob Landeros (The 7th Guest), Roberta Williams (Sierra Online), Joel Berez (Activision), Michelle Em (Return to Zork), Pepe Moreno (Hell Cab), Vince Lee (Rebel Assault), and Drew Huffman (Iron Helix), plus music-film-book celebrities such as James Cameron (the Terminator movies), Terry Gilliam (The Fisher King, Brazil), Ray Manzarek (the Doors), Bruce Sterling (cyberpunk leader), Arthur C. Clarke (2001) and Todd Rundgren. An especially entertaining part of the book is that many developers reveal their favorite CD-ROMs!
The book is well-organized, and each chapter delves into the history of a particular genre. "Action Games" takes us on a journey from Spacewar and Pong to Sonic and Rebel Assault, while "The Movie-Game Continuum" moves from interactive theater and fiction to landmark CD-ROMs such as Spaceship Warlock and Myst.
The "Mind Games" chapter is especially noteworthy, as it has a long section on the history of text adventures and RPGs. It begins with Crowther's Adventure, jumps to Donald Woods (who expanded the game, which then became known as the Crowther and Woods Adventure or The Original Adventure), travels to Infocom's Zork and Sierra's Mystery House, and leaps from computer floppy-disk quests to today's adventure CD-ROMs such as Return to Zork.
The book doesn't have exhaustive coverage of every game category, but it highlights many of the best and covers many different multimedia categories, including "The Movie-Game Continuum," "Electronic Books," "Multimedia for Children," "Expanded Movies," and "Music and Multimedia." It obviously can't include everything in any one area, but it gives a fascinating overview that sheds light on many hitherto invisible connections between people, companies, and technology.
My favorite sections were the interviews with developers, the various "historical" passages, and the "Cyber Jargon" glossary. The Cyber Zone is an enlightening look at where multimedia came from, what it means, and where it may be going.
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