Talk:A Mind Forever Voyaging

Memory requirements

This line: "...and was the first of the "Interactive Fiction Plus" line, meaning it used version 4 of the Z-machine and required at least 256 kilobytes of RAM."

is not correct. I used to play this game on my old Apple ][e, and it only had 128 Kb RAM.

--129.49.29.166 19:28, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Hmm. I know the Version 4 machine had stricter memory requirements and I thought it did need 256 KB... - Furrykef 05:40, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

According to the back of the AMFV box, "Interactive Fiction Plus is available for most computers with at least 128K of memory." The Z-Machine standards document is also a good source of info for this type of information. It was version 5 (Trinity, Beyond Zork) that allowed Z-machine files up to 256k. - Nm 19:18, 01 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I have the original box for the commodore 128 and it runs fine on an otherwise unexpanded C128 so 128k is enough. But it is pretty slow with 128k, a simple "examine room" could take up to 30 seconds. I think the engine was able to use 128, 256 and 256k memory expansions from CBM, speeding up the game dramatically. Crass Spektakel (talk) 05:00, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Please review

Greatly added to article--please review and change my overly verbose text if it doesn't look good--I wanted to make sure to include the plot, but...

--18 Feb 2005 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.171.42.78 (talk)

Plan for Renewed National Purpose

Added discussion of the Plan for Renewed National Purpose as well as the politics that Meretzky highlighted.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.171.83.172 (talk) 2005-07-28T22:00:59

Spoiler warnings

This page should really contain something warning of plot spoilers before the plot is discussed. Like a book or a movie, Infocom games can be ruined if you know the plot in advance. In fact, with this game, there is little reason to play if you know the plot already. Vulgrin 13:46, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

I disagree. The recent wars over spoiler tags were mostly won by the anti-tag partisans. But even ignoring that, this article doesn't need a warning. I would say this game contains precisely one surprise or "puzzle". Just reading the game manual makes the author's political agenda clear and the broad sweep of the plot fairly predictable, and if you're playing the game without having read the manual you're probably a pirate. Ntsimp 17:16, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

"Pirate" seems harsh, especially given that just about anyone using this game today is not going to be running it off of the original 5.25" floppy and is in just as much violation of the games license as someone who downloads it from an online abandonware repository. Assuming you're one of the extremely small minority actually paying money to buy this game today, your options are going to be quite limited. An ebay search revealed only one listing for this title. My guess is if anyone *acquires* a strictly legal copy of this game today, in 2008, it's because they found it in an older sibling's closet. And you may not be lucky enough to find the manual or other feelies there. To say the game contains precisely one "surprise" misses the point IMO also, the game is a work of sci-fi literary authorship, not to be judged like something like "7th guest" in terms of number of puzzles and surprises. To quote one website review, "Unlike other Infocom classics, A Mind Forever Voyaging is meant to be experienced rather than played. The first two parts of the game have almost no puzzles, focusing instead on exploration and discovery as you walk the streets of Rockville and observe the changes that take place over time." You play it for the ride as much as the challenge.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.224.6.50 (talk) 2008-02-01T04:40:26

Merge

I'm proposing that the articles for Plan for Renewed National Purpose and United States of North America be merged into this one. I don't see a point in having separate articles. Thoughts? Henrymrx (t·c) 16:44, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree and think this would improve the coherence of the article A Mind Forever Voyaging itself. — Tobias Bergemann (talk) 08:39, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

DISAGREE - doesn't just concern A Mind Forever Voyaging. --Degen Earthfast (talk) 00:57, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Would you care to elaborate? The Plan for Renewed National Purpose is a fictional element of A Mind Forever Voyaging. It was never used or referenced in any other work. Ntsimp (talk) 01:51, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Strongly Agree - Including a completely separate "United States of North America" article has apparently prompted the creation of a USNA disambiguation page. The acronym USNA isgenerally used to mean "United States Naval Academy". If there were other meanings of USNA then this probably wouldn't bother me in the least, but this seems a bit... strained? I don't want to insult anyone here, but really, is "United States of North America" on a similar level of notability as the US Naval Academy?

Besides, the "United States of North America" page is only a couple of paragraphs long (easily considered "stub class"). I don't see any loss at all to merging it here, and as pointed out above it could even improve the entire topic. Ohms law (talk) 19:33, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

• Support - I don't think either of these two fictional concepts has enough real-world notability to justify an article in their own right. Both could be satisfactorily covered in this one. (Ohms law makes a good point above as well.) Robofish (talk) 02:24, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
• Merge There is absolutely no significant content in either article that would merit separation. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 04:24, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

I've gone ahead with the merge from the old Plan for National Purpose Article. I'm going to leave the United States of North America for now, as it seems to also be an element in some other fictional works. Thoughts? Henrymrx (t·c) 22:28, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Remove the political speculation.

All the text involving speculation as to the reason certain elements were in the game near the end need to be removed, or citations added. Wikipedia is not a liberal soapbox for anti-Regan pontification. If the Author of the game ever wrote an article citing specific policies that inspired the game, then cite that as a source instead of using phrases like "it appears" or "perhaps because" - This is an encyclopedia, not a forum for speculation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Redwood Elf (talk • contribs) 01:42, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Rather than remove the political speculation, I have instead located reliable sources which indicate that the intent of the game was to serve, explicitly, as a means of convincing people to turn away from Reagan's political policies. (Meretzky states in an interview in the GET LAMP documentary: "So that was my mission with A Mind Forever Voyaging. I wanted to kind of to show people what a warmongering, Christian Right-pandering, environmental-trashing rights trampling asshole Reagan was." That doesn't leave much room for interpretation.) I have also rewritten the text to indicate that this isn't reader/player interpretation, but rather explicit authorial intent. Nandesuka (talk) 04:52, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Odd coincidence

Keeping in mind the talk page guidelines, I am inviting "speculation, suggestion, and personal knowledge" about the coincidence of Steve Meretzky's PRISM and the NSA's PRISM. Myanonymousaccount (talk) 10:00, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

I noticed it too. Doubt there's anything to it, though. - furrykef (Talk at me) 19:23, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

USNA v USoNA

Does the game explicitly omit the O in creation an acronym? Ranze (talk) 10:13, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Yes. Using the TXD disassembler, I find 10 instances of "USNA", and none with an o. Ntsimp (talk) 04:21, 3 November 2015 (UTC)