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GET LAMP: The Text Adventure Documentary

Name: GET LAMP: The Text Adventure Documentary
Description: Jason Scott discusses making his documentary GET LAMP at a Google Tech Talk and screens part of the film. It covers the history of text adventures and interactive fiction, with interviews of Infocom developers and others.

Google TechTalks Documentaries

Open on YouTube First HN thread

5 HN users recommended this documentary in 5 different months between 2014 and 2026.

2007–2026

5 recommendations 3 citations HackerTube score 5

HN recommends it to anyone interested in text adventures, Infocom, MUDs and early computer gaming history.

Jason Scott discusses making his documentary GET LAMP at a Google Tech Talk and screens part of the film. It covers the history of text adventures and interactive fiction, with interviews of Infocom developers and others.

Pull quote: “Recommend watching “Get lamp” documentary to fans of MUDs, text adventures” (HN, 2019)

Also tagged: text adventure history, get lamp, jason scott, infocom, interactive fiction, zork, retro games

What Hacker News said

8 labeled comments from the HN archive; up to 20 are kept per video, favoring different commenters. Each one links back to the original thread.

Recommends grimgrin December 2014 under First Infocom Z-machine implemented in hardware

Documentary featuring many Infocom employees.

Many Infocom employees are present in the documentary Get Lamp: [this video] Recommended if text games are of interest to you.

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Recommends cpeterso December 2018 under Great Adventure-Game Puzzles

History of text adventures with interviews of Infocom developers.

If you like text adventure games, check out Jason Scott's documentary GET LAMP about the history of text adventure games, including interviews with some Infocom developers: [this video] [link]

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Recommends freediver March 2019 under Iconoclast: a Gothic/Cyberpunk MUD RPG, Online Since 1996

Documentary for fans of MUDs and text adventures.

Oh the MUDs! Props to Forest’s edge and TempusMUD. Text is the ultimate medium because it directly connects with our imagination. I remember jumping out of my chair after reading a line of text on my screen. Recommend watching “Get lamp” documentary to fans of MUDs, text adventures and those born after: [this video]

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Recommends petercooper June 2022 under Enjoyed Jason Scott’s BBS documentary

Documentary about text adventure games that the commenter enjoyed.

He also did a documentary about text adventure games called "GET LAMP" which I enjoyed a lot: [this video]

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Recommends anonymousiam January 2026 under Adventure 751 (1980)

Great documentary by Jason Scott about Adventure.

Jason Scott (of textfiles.com) made a great documentary video about the Adeventure game. I picked up a copy at DEFCON about 15 years ago. [link] [this video]

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Citations, criticism and jokes

Cites it jamesk_au November 2015 under Get Lamp

Non-interactive version of the documentary with maker commentary.

You can watch the non-interactive version of the documentary with some commentary by its maker in this Google Tech Talk: [this video]

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Cites it mgkimsal April 2017 under A History of Interactive Fiction (2006)

Screening of the Get Lamp documentary at a Google event.

Related: there's a few versions of "get lamp" documentary online ( [this video] ) or you can get the movie directly from getlamp.com. These histories (the maher link above, the getlamp doc, etc) bring back a lot of great memories. EDIT: the youtube link above looks like it's actually the getlamp movie being shown at a google event, with an audience (audience sounds in there now and then).

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Cites it Eremotherium April 2020 under textfiles.com

Listed among Jason Scott's works.

He also gave us the brilliant BBS: The Documentary [link] GET LAMP: The Text Adventure Documentary (shot in 1080p) [this video] and (apart from his many talks) his podcast "Jason Scott talks his way out of it" which is just gem after gem of documented tech ephemera. [link] It's baffingly hard to quantify how many people he (and all the other great people at the Internet Archive) has affected with his bullheaded conservation efforts.

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