Film Review: Get Lamp – A Documentary About Adventures in Text
RATING
Let’s begin the review with a bit of back story…
You see, there was a period of time wedged in between the end of the Atari 2600′s reign and the revolution that would become the Nintendo system where video games were either played in an arcade or on the nascent personal computers of the day… which were basically the Commodore 64 or the Apple IIe.
These were not the PCs or Macs of today, lemme tell you… their memory capacity at most was that of a large Word file, so as charming as they were, the graphics left a little something to be desired. So if you wanted to be blown away by graphics you had to go to the local Aladdin’s Castle and start pumping the machines with your tokens…
Enter what was to be called the interactive text adventure.
Text adventures had NO graphics whatsoever… the pictures came from your imagination. You typed in where you wanted to go, what you wanted to inspect and who you wanted to speak to, and were rewarded with more gloriously well-written text….
There was no greater purveyor of these fantastic games than the mighty INFOCOM. With titles like the fantastic detective mystery, “Deadline”, the “Zork” fantasy trilogy and the legendary adaptation of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, they set the bar in the genre with ingenious puzzles, sublime writing and gorgeously elaborate packaging that really immersed the gamer in the experience.
For just a few short years, these games ruled the school selling hundreds of thousands of copies and then they were gone in a blink of an eye… never to be heard from again.
Until now.
At long last, a documentary has been made that explores in detail that brief shining moment in time where the mind forever voyaged…
The lovingly put together 2-DVD set “Get Lamp: A Documentary About Adventures in Text”, produced, directed and designed by filmmaker/documentarian Jason Scott, in a Herculean effort, actually includes two full documentaries…
The first is a history of the genre beginning from the first game ever written, entitled simply “Adventure” through to its demise and subsequent rise in cult status among a small but passionate group of gamers, while the second doc focuses on the game maker INFOCOM, detailing its rise and fall. Both are told through a set of interviews with the writers, programmers and f
ans.
In between are hours of bonus footage, which includes a ton of extra interviews, a music video, interactive goodies and much more.
The beautiful packaging (which includes an individually numbered collectible coin) totally evokes the spirit of the INFOCOM classics.
With this fantastic effort, Scott, who’s previous documentary on the history of the dial-up Bulletin Board System; BBS: THE DOCUMENTARY, has officially assigned himself the role as keeper of the flame for a small but appreciative group to whom text adventures and early personal computing will always be a fond memory.
Get Lamp is not out in the theaters and is only available on DVD so far, so do yourself a favor and order yourself a copy, whether it’s to reminisce or to learn more about this lost era, you will not be disappointed.
[...] The Zeitgeisty Report: GET LAMP [...]