A little discussion with my little bro the other day sparked me on a trip back to reminisce about feelies?those extra physical goodies that used to come with video games. They still do, on rare occasion, but back in the day, when piracy wasn't so widespread and packaging was taken far more care with [remember when Painter (italicized as a work of art) was a Fractal Design property and?actually came in a paint can?].

There's a great writeup composite of Feelies here at Wikipedia (where else?) and what I didn't know before, that my bro mentioned, was that at least?one of the Lunar games on PSX he was acquainted with came with feelies.

The history of Infocom is a grand one. I used to play text adventures extensively, and even programmed my own on occasion, although my mind kept a-voyagin' (I wonder why) and I never could finish one work of interactive fiction. In hindsight, if I had combined them all into one melange, one ginormous mixing bowl of what would be later known as ADHD-intense amusement, that mighta worked. But I didn't, so there. Zork is a particular classic, and so was my 5 1/4" copy of Robots of Dawn by Epyx, based on the Asimov text. I didn't get feelies with these though, because they were bootlegs.

I did receive feelies with a particular detective game, I can't remember what it was called. I guess since memory was limited at the time, not only was it a primarily text-based adventure, but it also came with a whopping book. What was the book for? Well, in the game, along with what'd you have to read, there'd be additional clues with numbers. You had to look the numbers up in the book and they'd correspond to some active relevancy on the case.

Back to Robots of Dawn, while I understand it wasn't a very deep game overall, it was a favorite of mine because the text was so colorful. Each paragraph was rendered in a different block, and typing "go north" and more through all the locations?would make my C64 screen puke rainbow. Tragically, I knew my beloved Commodore was coming to the end of her life when the screen started to burn out and color lasted less and less upon each turn-on session. (I'd keep having to turn the monitor off for awhile and switch back up to "recharge whatever was going on so I could get my sweet 16!)

There's another title I can't quite name, but it was also on C64 and was essentially a dinosaur encyclopedia.?It came with some sort of template to overlay atop the keyboard so that it was… dinosaurized.?I pined over it and never did get it?although I'm still looking to this day. I fondly recall listening to my parents in the kitchen, talking about getting me a new computer before I actually did get it. This was in the late 80s. And it was so exciting?now all the memories come rushing back, from breaking down bots in Robot Rascals, which came in a flatpack and whose prime feelie was a deck of cards; to "hacking" the mechanics of the Indiana?Jones copy?Aztec (lurved the dynamite drops); to all my flustered attempts at coding in BASIC.

There's something to be said for extras and creative packaging. Whether it's a computer game that comes with a sachel of coins or a CD that looks like a chocolate chip cookie, it adds to the whole atmosphere of what you're about to experience and it's fun. Sure adds a lot to the good memories too.