Ok, once again two months have passed since my last post, so as I indicated, I’ll translate another of my old short articles into English for a wider audience.
I originally posted the German version of this on 11 December 2020, which was Bob Bates’s 67th birthday (according to Wikipedia). Here, then, is the translation.
Happy 67th Birthday, Bob Bates!
Long before his name was associated with “Legend”, Bob Bates was legendary: for Infocom, using the name “Challenge, Inc.”, he first wrote the last text adventure without graphics (but with sound on some systems) in 1987, Sherlock: The Riddle of the Crown Jewels, and then the very last Infocom text adventure in 1989, Arthur: The Quest for Excalibur.
Directly afterwards, he founded Legend Entertainment with Mike Verdu and also wrote the two text adventures TimeQuest and Eric the Unready, before the company said good-bye to text games and switched to graphical adventures. Even then, he was still getting involved as a writer and producer for games like Companions of Xanth, Shannara and Unreal II.
Following the end of Legend, after he had worked on his career as a novelist for some years Bob returned to his gaming roots in 2017, publishing Thaumisty: In Charm’s Way, a classic text adventure with a modern user interface.
You can find everything about his current activities (both as a writer and a game developer) on his homepage.
Photo of Bob Bates: Marc Tetreault, CC BY-SA 3.0. All other images come from the respective publishers.
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