Yesterday, I started playing Planetfall. Of the more than 20 Infocom games I have in my collection, I’ve only completed one of them (Wishbringer) and played two others (Zork and Suspended). Planetfall was the next Infocom game that I wanted to play and I’ve put it off for way too long.

I first read the documentation and looked at the feelies. That didn’t pull me in as much as Wishbringer did. I don’t think there is as much to learn from the manual and feelies about the game as was the case with Wishbringer. But that’s okay.

As the folio release of Planetfall that I have is for the Commodore 64, I first tried the floppy on that system. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the 41 year old floppy from 1983 still worked perfectly. Because the loading times were not funny and I don’t fancy playing the cartridge release, because of little troubles with automatic saving the cart format on the Turbo Chameleon 64, I next tried the Amiga version through WHDLoad. That worked perfectly, but I wasn’t happy about how the text window looked in Workbench.
Furthermore, I wanted to look at playing the game with modern conveniences. I turned to Windows Frotz and Trizbort for auto-mapping. Apart from occasional hick-ups that works great.

I wonder how much the game has in common with Space Quest 1. Not that it matters much, because I deliberately haven’t played SQ for more than ten minutes, so as not to spoil Planetfall. I played enough to notice that the start of both games are quite similar. But maybe the rest of the games are very different.

Like with most of the longer games I play, I would like to keep a journal here of the most important experiences with the game. So here it goes after about 1 to 2 hours of playtime. Spoilers ahead!

• I found a manual override in the Comm Room that requires coolant liquid. That can be poured from the machine in the Machine Shop into a flask. I just need the right mixture.
• In the Comm Room I read a message about a plague that wiped out everyone. And I am starting to feel sick…
• Floyd has a magnetic-striped card. Maybe I can use that.