The Lurking Horror
In the midst of this beastly summer we’ve just entered, nothing seems farther away than the lung-clenching air of winter. When things are this hot, and pools and popsicles fail to cool, there’s one foolproof way to get into the spirit of winter: The Lurking Horror.
… you practically froze to death slogging over here from the dorm. Not to mention jumping at every shadow, what with all the recent disappearances.
The Lurking Horror is a classic Infocom text adventure and a sibling of Zork. For best results, couple this game with Cool-Retro-Term, a Cathode-Ray-Tube terminal monitor simulator. CRT boots you off your 2015 high-DPI display and beams you into a world of 1980s nostalgia.
First install cool-retro-term. Then install frotz (the Z-Machine engine which runs all the old Infocom text adventures).
sudo yum install frotz
Locate LURKING.DAT
in your copy of Lurking Horror, and…
frotz LURKING.DAT
And enjoy:
(2018-08-29 update: for a bonus, install bucklespring if you don’t have a mechanical keyboard, for extra ambiance!)
Crank up the AC, grab your clicky keyboard, make CRT fullscreen, turn off the lights, and bathe in the cool cathode rays.