Gateway - Frederik Pohls

Year 1992, half past ten at night, parents in bed and me at the monitor with headphones on, because the Sound Blaster wasn't allowed to wake the house. Gateway grabbed me by the sleeve back then and didn't let go until one in the morning — and I'd spent most of that time just reading text on the screen.

The game draws from Frederik Pohl's novel universe, specifically his sci-fi series about the Gateway station. Humanity discovered abandoned ships left by an alien civilization called the Heechee, along with a massive space station from which these ships can be launched — except nobody knows where they're headed or if the crew will return. You step into the shoes of an explorer arriving at Gateway to try their luck. The setting is clever: the tension doesn't come from action, but from uncertainty and what you read between the lines.

Legend Entertainment was charting its own course in the text adventure genre back then — or rather in hybrids where a text parser complements graphic scenes. You control the game by typing commands on the keyboard, but it also offers an icon menu, so you don't get the classic frustration of "I don't understand that command." That was a step forward at the time. The story unfolds slowly, there's a lot of reading, a lot of deciding, and some choices have real consequences. No pointless inventory puzzles for their own sake — the logic of the world holds together.

What aged the worst? Pacing. Anyone without patience for text today won't have a chance. Graphics were never the draw — functional, cold, properly atmospheric, but nothing more to get excited about. And if you don't know Pohl's novels, it takes a while before the world pulls you in. On the other hand, that very slowness gave the game a depth that more action-driven titles didn't have. Dialogue with your psychiatrist — yes, therapy sessions exist in the game — ranked among the most original ideas I'd ever seen in an adventure back then.

Today, Gateway will appeal to someone who wants story, not reflexes. If you're into the golden age of sci-fi literature or ever got through Infocom without losing your nerve, this is the natural continuation of that experience, just with pictures. You can run it in a browser through DOSBox without any trouble, and those few hours it takes are worth it — if you know what you're getting into. Nobody's forcing you into space by brute force. But once that first ship launches, you'll want to know where it's headed.