2010-03-23

alexandra_thorn: 2009, taken by Underwatercolor (Default)
2010-03-23 10:32 am

my _Fool's Errand_

Ever since MacOS stopped having a 2-color mode, I've been on a quest to recover the aesthetic that drew me in when I was a kid. Obsolescence of classic 2-color games like Fool's Errand, Dark Castle, and Deja Vu brought me no end of frustration. Color games seemed vapid in comparison, but I suspected that folks who hadn't lived the era of classic Macintosh would never really understand. So I spent years on a lonely quest, and in college I absolutely lunged at the opportunity to purchase a 2-color Mac for $25 at a rummage sale. The thing was adored for a year or so, and then one day turned off and wouldn't turn on again. Despair.

Years later my then boyfriend Warren would help me locate a version of Fool's Errand that ran on Linux. It sort of worked, and gave me a few moments of nostalgia, though ultimately there were too many puzzles that simply didn't work.

Yesterday, for reasons that I don't quite recall, I did a Google search for "Fool's Errand", and was delighted to see autocompletion with the word "game."

The Fool walks (http://www.fools-errand.com/), and so help me, they're actually coming out with the sequel:
http://www.fools-errand.com/05-the-fool-and-his-money/index.htm

Sadly, it looks like the sequel is going to be in color, but at least they're preserving some of the B-W woodcut aesthetics.

But I might be even more pleased to learn that there are others who appreciate black and white games:
http://lookspring.co.uk/monotony
"For those of you who aren’t, as I wasn’t, up on your late ’80s Mac puzzle games, The Fool’s Errand is a tarot-inspired precursor to games like the Professor Layton series." [emphasis added]

Now when I find some time, I'll be on a new quest to get a Macintosh emulator up and running on Ubuntu. Basilisk II looks promising, but we shall see.