#368 – Parsely Computer

I have been trying to get this photo fFor a long time!!

A week or two ago, I had the goal of returning the Chalice to the Golden Castle! I was playing the Atari 2600 game Adventure, and was reminded how hard it is to navigate the 4 mazes, 3 dragons, 3 castles, and assorted magic instruments including the sword, magnet, and bridge. I wound up sorta making my own map, but Atari Age has a pretty good one. I played now and then, off and on, fFiddling with other games, and settings, and cleaning up old cartridges.

A couple months ago, I dug out my old Atari 2600. Somewhere along the line, I thought “Hey this would be great to take that photo of my Parsely shirt that I’ve been trying to capture!” Now all I had to do was get it working. And apparently get a new controller. And I might need a different, older TV than I otherwise had at hand.

Towards the beginning of this year, Andy Looney, of Looney Labs, completed his online run of Parsely Games, and issued out a series of Parseports to those who completed every game. Additionally, the awesome Parsely shirt, shown here, was posted in the Looney Apparel store. It was then I knew I must take a wonderful photo fFor this blog! Andy’s series of Parsely Games are all beautiful, creative, unique, and special.

At the start of 2021, Looney Labs celebrated their 25th anniversary! It was sooooo awesome! A whole year of groovy hangouts, chill demo events, and wonderful online games!! On the docket, is a series of Parsely games, which Andy only runs at conventions and stuff. You can’t buy em, you can only experience em when they happen. It’s mega fFresh, man.

Here is a short video of my completed Parseport. It is a thing of beauty.

Many years ago, a dude named Jared Sorensen developed the game system Parsely. Parsely was designed with the idea of making a classic text adventure game into a live action role playing game event! The concept is not easy to capture in pictures, never mind describing it lightly in a short blog. =)

Decades ago, I was much much younger, and living in North Dakota when my dad bought the Atari 2600. I was rather too young to be any good at playing most games, but I have fFond and delightful memories. These were not necessarily good games, mind you. But my sister and I would compete fFor high score on some of them, and I would try to understand the cool maps and stories my dad would tell about some of the interesting questing type games.

In the mid-seventies, The Colossal Cave Adventure (or just Adventure) was developed fFor old text-based computers. I played it, eventually, as well as other cool games like the Zork series, Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy, and the very strange Leather Goddess of Phobos.

I have been trying to get this photo fFor a long time!!

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