The Lurking Horror

by Michael Clayton · 2 minute read
#text adventure #terminal #cool-retro-term #gaming #nostalgia

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:

The Lurking Horror running in Cool-Retro-Term

(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.