My ZZT interview

A new interview is up on autofish, which includes a link to new songs. Some of you have already heard some of these songs, but they appear here for the first time carefully sequenced and credited to a nom de plume. An "album," of sorts, though there's no cover, no liner notes, no physical media. Anyway, it's free for the taking. (I'm considering cutting ''Walk With Me'' from the rotation, since it's the most cloying and faux pastoral of the bunch. Download the thing and tell me what you think.)

Back to the interviews. Each and every one is a stimulating read. It's kind of like a nerd atlas, a map of where everyone's train went after it stopped at ZZT Station (Computer Science Street, Aspiring Novelist Park, Bring Down Capitalism Square). I look at the list of ZZT games that interviewees were working on but never finished:

• casey's medieval murder mystery
• emmzee's non-traditional adventure game
• thedexter's "invasion of the Body Snatchers [...] all in grayscale"
• wynand's six-game epic cycle
• noi5e's "four-part Rashomon-like game that would require you to play through the same scenario as a plankton, a seahorse, a person and an angel"

... and, damn, I'm inspired. I want to play those games. I want to finish my futuristic/noir-style comedy about a boy genius who runs a society for the promotion of the duodecimal system. Hell, I almost want to be a member of a "company" again. (FILTERware 4evah!)

But then I remember ZZT's austerity. I don't mind the primitive graphics (see flimsy's remarks on a "world actually CONSTRUCTED of symbols"), but a programming language where you have to pretend that integers exist? That's self-flagellation. I've long since abandoned such childish things.

(I was going to ask when someone was going to interview cly5m, but it's apparently already happened.)