In other ScummVM news (but not The Space Bar news), yesterday, I noticed that someone has gone to the trouble of adding entries for all of our Hugo games to the ScummVM wiki:

https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=Category:Hugo_Interactive_Fiction_Games

I imagine they must have used some kind of script that drew from ifwiki, the IFDB, or the IF Archive, but it's still kind of great. Of course, they also did this for everything else supported by the Glk IF interpreter, but they decided to not make a page for every z-code game because there are so many of them... making our games seem FAR MORE IMPORTANT!

As far as The Space Bar goes, I have installed it but have not yet opened it. I'm kind of nervous about what I'll find when I do. Based on what I've recently read about the game, it's both a game that has some kind of time limit to complete and one that has sections that can take 5 hours to play through.

The Space Bar! Wow, I haven’t thought about that game in years. Never played it, only saw pictures. I think I’ll have to try it

I think someone is working on a modern remake and they released their progress.

Back to The Space Bar!

I don't remember seeing Rocket Jockey back in the day, but I admit that looks like fun. I'm confused why there isn't a Half-Life 2 mod remake of it, though, since I would have imagined this would be one of the first things Rocket Jockey fans would do once ragdoll physics was handed on a platter to the masses.

Glad to be of help!

Wait!

So I looked it up on the Zoom site. And I saw that Rocket Jockey was there! On the Zoom site! What the heck! Did someone fix it to work on modern computers? It was probably the greatest non-playable game, depending on how ya feel about P.T.

They did! Someone did! Wait, is it on STEAM? It was! It is! And I checked this morning, knowing that a sale was coming. But wait! The Space Bar is on Zoom and Steam too!

(I have both of these games in the attic in my garage.)

Well, neither one of them got discounted for the Steam sale, but they were cheap enough that I bought them anyway. Rocket Jockey says it has gamepad support but it does not work. Disappointing! Still good with the keyboard. I have not tried The Space Bar yet. I remember enjoying my time with it when I bought it new. I think I actually got The Space Bar and Rocket Jockey together, Roody! Back years ago!

And I got them again!

Today!

ScummVM recently announced that daily builds will now play 1997's The Space Bar, the last text game that Steve Meretzky ever wrote. This announcement also pointed out that The Space Bar is available for purchase at https://www.zoom-platform.com/ (and more recently on Steam). I checked out https://www.zoom-platform.com/ to see if it had any other previously-unavailable games that were of any interest to me, but I didn't find any.

Anyhow, I don't especially expect The Space Bar to be great, but it's a game I've wanted to check out for a long time and now I can!