Pale Luna

In the last decade and a half it's become infinitely easier to obtain exactly what you're looking for, by way of a couple of keystrokes.

The Internet has made it all too simple to use a computer to change reality.

An abundance of information is merely a search engine away, to the point where it's hard to imagine life as any different.

Yet, a generation ago, when the words 'streaming' and 'torrent' were meaningless save for conversations about water,

people met face-to-face to conduct software swap parties, trading games and applications on Sharpie-labeled five-and-a-quarter inch floppies.

Of course, most of the time the meets were a way for frugal, community-minded individuals to trade popular games like King's Quest and Maniac Mansion amongst themselves.

However, a few early programming talents designed their own computer games to share amongst their circle of acquaintances,

who in turn would pass it on, until, if fun and well-designed enough, an independently-developed game could be interested.

These games, there were rare and considered as real artefacts.

Looked for by the collectors through all the country

Pale Luna, on the other hand, was never circulated outside of the San Francisco Bay Area.

All known copies have been long disposed of, all computers that have ever run the game now detritus buried under layers of filth and polystyrene.

This fact is attributed to a number of rather abstruse design choices made by its programmer.

Me, Michael Nevins, I finally got back this treasure and I would finish him at all costs!

Pale Luna was a text adventure in the vein of Zork and The Lurking Horror, at a time when said genre was swiftly going out of fashion.

Upon booting the program, the player was presented with a screen almost completely blank, except for the text:

You are in a dark room. Moonlight shines through the window. - There is GOLD in the corner, along with a SHOVEL and a ROPE.

There is a DOOR to the EAST. - Command?

So began the game that one writer for a long-out-of-print fanzine decried as "enigmatic, nonsensical, and completely unplayable".

As the only commands that the game would accept were

PICK UP GOLD, PICK UP SHOVEL, PICK UP ROPE, OPEN DOOR, and GO EAST,

the player was soon presented with the following:

Reap your reward. - PALE LUNA SMILES AT YOU.

You are in a forest. There are paths to the NORTH, WEST, and EAST. - Command?

What quickly infuriated the few who've played the game was the confusing and buggy nature of the second screen onward

only one of the directional decisions would be the correct one.

For example, on this occasion, a command to go in a direction other than NORTH would lead to the system freezing,

requiring the operator to hard reboot the entire computer

Further, any subsequent screens seemed to merely repeat the above text, with the difference being only the directions available.

Worse still, the standard text adventure commands appeared to be useless:

The only accepted non-movement-related prompts were USE GOLD, which caused the game to display the message: - Not here

USE SHOVEL, which brought up: - Not now.

And USE ROPE, which prompted the text: - You've already used this.

Most who played the game progressed a couple of screens into it before becoming fed-up by having to constantly reboot and tossing the disk in disgust

writing off the experience as a shoddily programmed farce.

However, there is one thing about the world of computers that remains true, no matter the era

some people who use them have way too much time on their hands.

Five hours and thirty-three screens worth of trial-and-error and unplugged computer cords later,

I finally managed to make the game display different text.

The text in this new area read:

PALE LUNA SMILES WIDE - There are no paths