I stayed up until 2:30 last night reading this book.
Staying up until 2:30 isn’t that unusual for me, but there was (almost) no booze involved, no poorly filmed amateur video of the unspeakable involved, and really no other reason to be up.
In short: Loved it. Another of Pete's top 10 of 2011.
Okay, the first fifty pages or so left me unsure. There’s a fine line between referencing geek culture in an effort to trick geeks into reading your book and paying genuine tribute to all things geek. And geeks are sensitive to this. There’s nothing a geek hates more than having their stuff co-opted by people who don’t know what they’re doing. Seeing the wrong kind of person in a Mario t-shirt boils my blood so hard. If only I could harness my rage enough to rip a giant radish out of the ground and take those bastards out…
But before long, I was convinced. Sold. It was total loving tribute, and it was handled in such a way that I couldn’t stop reading.
If you’re a geek, especially a gaming or 80’s culture geek, this is a MUST-read. If you’re not, read the damn thing anyway. It’s very accessible, and below I’ve made a list of some of the stuff mentioned in the book specifically, so bomb on over if you’re having trouble picking up on what’s going on.
Get Adventure aka Colossal Cave Adventure:
http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/18/you-must-remember-this-colossal-cave-adventure/
Play Zork online:
http://pot.home.xs4all.nl/infocom/zork1.html
Play Joust online:
http://www.thepcmanwebsite.com/media/joust/joust.shtml
Not the original, but here’s a pretty awesome take on Pac-Man:
http://worldsbiggestpacman.com
D&D Tomb of Horrors Module:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/oa/20051031a
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Draper
Tempest on Chrome:
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/chrome_web_app_week_tempest
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