December 22nd, 2002 : i have fed tonight, freinds, oh how the content beaver feeds. paul kostock wrote a DELICIOUS REVIEW OF THE PK GIRL I DEVOURED IT SO. after a recent diet of vitamens and cheep vodka it is soooo tasty ach feed yourself right here...!
September 20th, 2002 : 9/20/02! The day RFTK updated again! OMG! Never forget!! Today's... er, this month's... ah, this quarter's update is a review of Full Throttle from Zack Bishop. This is Zack's first review, so let's welcome him in true Trotting Krip fashion. Additionally, I would like to say that the bunch of you who have been submitting your comments as of late have officially gotten me to the point where I fear opening up that mailbox. I'm not sure if that was a concerted effort or the work of several unrelated madmen, but I am willing to concede victory to you all.
June 18th, 2002: I put some comments up for the last text
adventure reviewed on the site. Since people seem to like posting comments -- in fact,
some comments are simply comments on how people enjoy posting comments-- we'll continue to
do that for the IF games reviewed on the site. The non-IF, though, I'll just link up to
the BBS (like how the GTA3 and Freedom Force reviews are organized).
(Also, as noted a while back, only the reviews that are dated past April 12th have working
comments code. So I apologize if you tried to add a comment to a game review posted
earlier than that.)
June 17th, 2002: Grand Theft Auto III reviewed today.
June 12th, 2002: There's an announcement regarding the site that you may wish to read to understand what will be happening to this place in the near future.
June 12th, 2002: And on that note, a review of the game Freedom Force.
April 14th, 2002: Time for another update week! We kick things off with an in-depth and wholly comprehensive review of Amissville!
April 11th, 2002: Eric Mayer posted reviews of Neil de Mause's Intro-Comp and we're happy to be able to host them!
April 10th, 2002: A programming note -- if you had the Dreamhost URL bookmarked, please change your URL to http://www.joltcountry.com/trottingkrips/ . I changed webhosts, and the other URL will not work by the end of the month any longer. Sorry for any confusion.
March 18th, 2002: The second installment of the Hugo Newsletter is
up, and you can access it right
here.
March 10th, 2002: We here at Trotting Krips will be
archiving the Hugo Newsletter, written by Ashley Price. Click right here to
take a look at the first installment.May 31st, 2001: Trotting Krip coverage of the
Interactive Fiction Competition 2000 is not over yet! Today's update has Greg D'Avis's
takes on the comp.
January 22nd, 2001: "Whoa, are you kidding??!" OK, I'll fess up, Ben only wrote the part in quotes. I just felt silly with all these updates saying, "Robb" on them. Ben has written a review of All Roads by Jon Ingold. As the lead singer of the New Radicals said in one of those songs that was not released and virtually nobody head, "You better start making the love!!"
January 21st, 2001: The man himself, Quentin D. Thompson, is back! After a bit of hard drive trouble Quentin has checked in and delivered his take on the 2001 Interactive Fiction Competition!
January 12th, 2001: There's one more chapter to the saga that is Crypt, the 1990 release by Steve Herring -- a review on this very website. Check it out right here.
January 2nd, 2002: Hope everyone celebrated the New Year to their satisfaction. Supposing that is something you celebrate, natch. Personally, I spent it reflecting on what to call the new BBQ Restaurant I hope to break ground on soon (thank God there are guides floating around out there with Do's and Don'ts), Ben spent it with Safeway Brand "Safeway" Vodka, and Bryan was again fighting crime as a local masked vigilante -- the bubbling nectar of justice is his New Year's treat. There's more of the same in store for the site this year: far too few reviews actually posted, and far too many inane, incomprehensible threads filled with utter babbling and baby-talk on the forum. Excelsior, etc.
December 20th, 2001: There was a questionnaire conducted by Mr. Starkov for the IF Comp 2K1 authors, and you can check out the results right here.
November 23rd, 2001 : We've got a reader-submitted essay from Stas Starkov right here concerning the Sierra effect and how it relates to Interactive Fiction.
November 18th, 2001 : Perhaps you know him as Roody Yogurt, author of the comp classic Death To My Enemies, perhaps as the characters "mallrat" and "Trotskie" from Fallacy of Dawn or maybe just as solid citizen Jonathan Blask, but nevertheless it's all come together with his take on the 2001 Interactive Fiction Comp right here!
November 16th, 2001 : The first long review up is
one for Stiffy Makane: The
Undiscovered Country. Also!! Eric Mayer has also
sent in his reviews for public consumption and managed to hit just about every game in the
comp. You can read it here.
November 15th, 2001 : The IF Comp Deadline is at 10:00pm MST tonight, and we'll have a
little bit of fresh content for you at that point. Until then, we had a submission from
Michael Sherwin, who had done a bit of investigating on just what happened to those boxers
we loved from Mike Tyson's Punch-Out.
November 14th, 2001: We're now located at the new site -- http://joltcountry.dreamhost.com/trottingkrips. If there are any leftover pop-under ads, it's most likely due to the redirect: every attempt has been made to filter them from the pages currently on the site.
October 4th, 2001: "Update Week" continues with Chico and I Ran -- a review four months in the making! (Not for any cool effect like time lapse HTML coding or anything. Just sloth.)
October 3rd, 2001: It's time for "Update Week!" And it begins with Ben's review of Fallacy of Dawn!
July 17th, 2001: We're back! Bryan celebrates the new by reviewing the old -- it's Balances by Graham Nelson.
May 31st, 2001: Trotting Krip coverage of the Interactive Fiction Competition 2000 is not over yet! Today's update has Greg D'Avis's takes on the comp.
May 29th, 2001: You would have thought that I would have learned from the failed Smug.com re-launch and not announced "new content this week" unless I had already had it whipped up and ready. Or actually, maybe you wouldn't have thought that at all. It doesn't really matter, as Roody Yogurt has pulled through with a review of Jason White's House of the Stalker. Indeed!
May 14th, 2001: OK. Douglas Adams died on Saturday. When the great members of this hobby start dying off within the Triassic-like gaps of time between our updates, then you start to realize that you best be updating at a somewhat faster pace. You don't need me to state what a great man Mr. Adams was, but feel free to relate your own opinion in the matter in the RFTK Forums. Actual content in the form of reviews are coming this week.
March 27th, 2001: Robb delivers a review of Eric Mayer's Lost. <begin traditional sarcastic quipping here>
March 3rd, 2001: Jonathan Blask brings the noise hardcore and cleverly avoids the whole East v West thing with his take on Arthur Yahtzee: The Curse of Hell's Cheesecake.
February 18th, 2001: Added some new reader remarks to Zork I, Failsafe, Tass Times in Tonetown and others that question our reviewing integrity. Such as it is.
February 17th, 2001: Anne and the Terrordrome of Evil is reviewed tonight by Robb. Discussion of the game itself starts three or four paragraphs in, so... Beware!
January 29th, 2001: What is that sad, sad music I hear? Is it the sign of the coming of a new mailbag, or is it something else? The melancholy melody fills the air...I cannot escape it. My knees weaken, tears form in my eyes...I feel my heart ripping in two. I run into the cold and lonely night, in search of sanctuary. Will I ever find it? Will I ever escape the sad, sad music...or will it haunt me forever more?
January 26th, 2001: Robb actually reviewed Failsafe on this day, but didn't update this page about it. So... bonus review!
January 17th, 2001: Eric Mayer expands your mind and vocabulary with his new review of the best game Ben Parrish has released thus far in 2001. ANNOYTRON 2 WE LUV U!!!!!!!!!!!!
January 13th, 2001: In an attempt to revive the once-thriving mailbag, we're actively soliciting mail from our reader(s). If you feel the constraints of our forum to be overbearing, feel free to send us some mail at trottingkrips@zombieworld.com. Otherwise I may have to invent reader mail (though that could be a lot of 'fun', too).
January 10th, 2001: Robb is back from his laughably uneventful vacation in order to wax poetically about Alex Weldon's The Pickpocket.
December 15th, 2000: Eric's final review this week tackles Shade, by Andrew Plotkin.
December 13th, 2000: Desert Heat, that extremely hot (in more ways than one, even!) game from IFC2K is discussed today in a review by Eric. Sizzlin'!
December 11th, 2000: Eric Mayer begins his domination of this website on Monday the 11th with a review of Ad Verbum!
November 29th, 2000: TV's Robb reviews IF Competition 2000's And The Waves Choke The Wind.
November 28th, 2000: The Competition Index is back up, and slightly improved. It can be reached here.
(OK, replace "improved" with "harmful to your retinas due to the arsey-butch color scheme.")November 18th, 2000: Brendan Barnwell -- er ah ooh Austin Torvalds' Comp00ter Game gets the RFTK treatment today from Robb.
November 17th, 2000: Robb here. Because I love every one of you glorious, entertaining bastards, the TXD infodump of my head is now available regarding my personal involvement in the 2000 Interactive Fiction Competition via our Essays Page. Seeing how I unknowingly distributed a CD with that illegal-to-even-wank-to DVD source code due to the aforementioned Competition, the remaining updates this year will probably include corporate sponsorship from
Pound-Me-In-The-Ass (c) brand State Penitentiaries. One of you guys get the Mitnick people to register http://www.freesherwin.com/ for me, please. I hate every one of you sneaky, deceptive bastards.November 16th, 2000: Ben brings the noise with a review of A Crimson Spring.
November 5th, 2000: Once there was a guy who wrote a comic strip for the Syracuse Daily Orange called 'Evil Twin.' He did a comic strip about a hipster slacker who bought a kitten from a little girl selling them by the side of the road for a quarter. He puts the kitten down on the ground and squashes its head into a messy blurr with his steel-toed boots. "Fantastic!" he says, as he hands the girl a dollar, "I'll buy four more!" Was that the pinnacle of dark-kitten humor? Ben investigates with his review of Stupid Kittens.
November 3d, 2000: Being Ben Parrish inevitably involves writing a review of Being Andrew Plotkin. The e-savings are passed onto you, sir!
October 26th, 2000: Robb wrote a review of Mr. Remote Mom, an entry in the 2000 "Toaster Comp."
October 23d, 2000: There's a new link to the new forums which are hosted by Groucho.org. Please feel free to jump in and give us your takes!
October 15th, 2000: We here at RFTK have been asking for an annual XYZZY award for "Single Worst Interactive Fiction Review of Year." While we're unlikely to get it, Robb has his piece ready to in mid-October. It's a review for Darknite and is, without question, the worst piece of content ever placed on this site. It is 'Atlanta Thrashers' bad. It is "Last Ten Minutes Of Baseketball' bad. It is 'Carrot Top Banging Your Mother' bad. You have been warned.
October 13th, 2000: Collosal Cave, the game that started it all, gets its fair shake in a review by Robb.
October 12th, 2000: Nothing says "I'm over my writer's block" like writing about I-0, that wacky Jailbait on the Interstate game and then shamelessly lifting the life's story of one of your friends and placing it in the middle of your review. This is the kind of balls-close, up-against-the-wall humanity you don't get at, uh, Gamers.com!
September 20th, 2000:Today, Robb's brother Mike brought the punishment with a scathing review of Triple Play 2001. Yes, this is still an interactive fiction site. Barely.
September 19th, 2000: That order from shipping finally arrived -- new keyboard for Robb! He was kind of in a bind for a bit there. To celebrate he downloaded Slacker X and was finally able to play it by typing real words instead of, as he had to do previously, just keep changing font size and background color through Winfrotz with his trackball.