IF50 Floppy Disk

A floppy disk created as a bonus item in the “50 Years of Text Games” Kickstarter. It contains the text of the book in plain text ASCII format, along with a bonus game created by the author.

Floppy drives were ubiquitous through the 80s, slowly giving way to CD-ROMs and downloads in the 90s. A 3.5″ floppy held 1.44 MB of data, which seemed like a lot when they first came out.

This floppy disk has a label designed in vintage program The Print Shop. The disk itself is a real floppy containing the full text of each of the main game chapters from the “50 Years of Text Games” book in plain text ASCII. (Note that for space reasons certain material such as the introduction, decade overviews, and game listings are omitted.)

Also on the disk you’ll find a bonus text game created specifically for this feelie, “You Are Standing,” written by author Aaron A. Reed using Inform 6 (by Graham Nelson) and the PunyInform library (by Johan Berntsson and Fredrik Ramsberg). The game explores different styles of text game over the years and tells a story about legacies and love. See the readme file on the disk for info on running the game.