[6charlong]

There are many interactive fiction titles like the Zork series, many of which are in the public domain. The Infocom games in particular were originally marketed as “games” for MS-DOS machines but they are, in fact, interactive fiction. These stores read like books where the reader controls the story at decision points all through the story. Many decisions only require one or two keystrokes.

“Games” like the Zork series make a perfect fit for the nook. The latest versions of Windows have always required changes to the rendering engine (Windows doesn’t typically support them out of the box). The programs to render these books have been created by fans of interactive fiction. They created Frotz, a free iPad app which renders the Infocom files and a plethora of old and new interactive fiction stories. The nook’s touch keyboard will work much better to interact with the stories than the tiny keys on the iPhone or Kindle.

This seems to me to be a fertile, untapped opportunity for someone to write the code to display these wonderful “games” on the new generations of eBook readers like the Second Edition nook and Kobo Reader. I know I’d be happy to pay for such a service.