Get Lamp - Limited Coin - Text-Based Adventure Documentary

Back in the days when I owned a Commodore VIC-20, text-based adventure games were amongst my favourite titles to waste the hours away.

With limited sound, simple graphics, and tiny amounts of computing power, the first games on home computers would hardly raise an eyebrow in the modern era of photorealism and surround sound. But with superb story-telling, the solving of intricate puzzles and the art of writing, these games described fantastic worlds to their readers, and then invited them to live within them.

Rising from side projects at universities and engineering companies, text-adventure games would describe a place, and then ask what to do next. They presented puzzles, tricks and traps to be overcome - they were filled with suspense, humor and sadness - and they offered a unique type of joy as players discovered how to negotiate the obstacles and think their way to victory.

Get Lamp is a documentary, conducted by director Jason Scott, that interviewed around 80 people over a two year period. These were then compiled into one epic documentary that tells the story of the creation of these incredible games.

The 2-DVD set is available to pre-order now, which comes with a numbered, limited edition collector's coin (pictured).