Thank you for another year of Retro Adventuring with us! To celebrate we've gathered together to share important news about a change in the team roster, an exciting new monthly department, and to share a first look at our new handcrafted artwork (thank you, Emily Sergent)!

Spend a little time with Jason, Nick, and Tim and watch for more game, interview, and news episodes coming soon to your feed (and YouTube, which did get sorted out!)

Our YouTube channel

Douglas Adams BBC interview (1985)

The BDB Project (Bonaventura Di Bello adventure translations)

Tim's 1987 (?) photo

Adventure Game Aptitude Test (Maniac Mansion 4-hour challenge)

Zork 78 logo pillow

Hyperspace adventure awaits as Tim Gilberts joins Jason to play two underrated science fiction games from the 1970s. For starters it's Dog Star Adventure, the first type-in text adventure in Softside Magazine. True to its 1979 roots it's steeped in Star Wars lore and vocabulary, and was ported to plenty of classic platforms in its heyday.

The feature game is Aldebaran III, one of the games created by Peter Langston in his Wander system. It, too, leans heavily on genre fiction, in this case the Retief novels by Keith Laumer, covering interstellar espionage, diplomacy, and bureaucracy in equal measure.

Aldebaran III (IFDB)

Wander source code (Github)

Wander game analysis (Renga In Blue)

Aldebaran III (CRPG Adventures)

Dog Star Adventure (IFDB)

Dog Star Adventure in Softside May 1979

Dog Star Adventure (Old School Gamer Magazine)

Ron Martinez, our guest from Episode 11, returns! This is actually a holdover from the 2025 Year-End Chatisode sessions, but it really stands alone as an exploration of Ron's recent work in narrative design involving generative AI, large language models, and other 21st century interactive storytelling techniques. Joining us on the call are regular Retro Adventurers Jason and Nick, along with This Week in Retro's Dave "Velociraptor" (Episode 29).

And it's a big day for Nabokov fans as both Pale Fire and his lecture on The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are invoked.

Hidden Agenda 2026 preview

Hidden Agenda 2026 landing page

Invention Arts

Headcanon