Pick Up the Phone Booth and Aisle

Pick Up the Phone Booth and Aisle
Game
Main links	Play onlineDownload IFDB IF Archive
Published	9 June 2001
Credits
Authors	Ola Sverre Bauge, Steve Bernard, Jon Blask, John Cater, Liza Daly, David Dyte, Stephen Granade, Iain Merrick, Rob Noyes, Dan Schmidt, Dan Shiovitz, Emily Short, J. Robinson Wheeler
Reception
Events	XYZZY Awards 2001 Finalist: Best Use of Medium
IFDB rating	3.5 out of 5 (116 ratings)
Gameplay
Interaction style	Parser
Literary genre	Comedy
Location	One-room
Language	English
Cruelty scale	Polite
IFDB play time	1 minute
Accessibility	Colour: none. Graphics: none. Sound: none.
Technical details
Authoring system	Inform 6
Format	Z-code
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How it begins

You are standing outside a shiny metal phone booth in a nondescript New England town.

Notable features

• This game was inspired by both the classic one-room joke game Pick Up The Phone Booth And Die (Rob Noyes; 1996; Z-code) and the then-unique one-turn game Aisle (Sam Barlow; 1999; Z-code). The result was this one-room, one-turn joke game where any action ends the game, usually in a wacky way.
• Many multiple endings. Although in some endings you die or win, most endings are just endings. The average player will not be searching for the "winning" ending, but instead will just play around with it to see what silly stuff the game will respond with.
• As in Aisle, the endings as a whole suggest inconsistent worldviews. Who the player character is, how he or she got here, and why the PC is here can vary wildly from one ending to another.
• Several of Inform's "meta-commands" (like save, restore, undo, verify, etc.) aren't "meta" in this game, but act like regular in-game commands.

Trivia and Comments

• This game is often refered to by the initialism PUTPBAA.
• In 2001, several people from ifMUD got together and rented a beachhouse in North Carolina for a summer "mudmeet". PUTPBAA was written on Emily's laptop computer during that mudmeet with everyone offering suggestions. Use the "credits" command in the game for slightly more detail.
• Release 2 catches some commands that didn't end the game in Release 1. For example, the response to "smell pants" was changed from the default "You smell nothing unexpected" to "Pants? What pants? *** You have attempted to use knowledge from a previous life ***".

Versions

Release 1

Date: 9 June 2001

• Pick Up the Phone Booth and Aisle (Ola Sverre Bauge, Steve Bernard, Jon Blask, John Cater, Liza Daly, David Dyte, Stephen Granade, Iain Merrick, Rob Noyes, Dan Schmidt, Dan Shiovitz, Emily Short, and J. Robinson Wheeler; 09-Jun-2001; Z-code).
  • Release 1 / Serial number 010609 / Inform v6.15 Library 6/10
  • Story file: boothaisle.z5

Release 2

Date: 18 June 2001

• Pick Up the Phone Booth and Aisle (same authors; 18-Jun-2001; Z-code).
  • Release 2 / Serial number 010618 / Inform v6.15 Library 6/10
  • XYZZY Awards 2001: Was a finalist for Best Use of Medium.
  • Download PUTPBAA.z5 from the IF Archive - the story file
  • Download putpbaa.sol from the IF Archive - solutions (about 210 different things to try).

Links

N.B. Many IF Archive games are temporarily unavailable in the UK.

General info

• Pick Up the Phone Booth and Aisle (archived) - at Baf's Guide

Reviews

• Pick Up The Phone Booth And Aisle review at SPAG by Adam Myrow.
• Pick Up the Phone Booth and Aisle (potential archive link) - at IF Ratings

Note: To refer to this game from another page, you can type {{game citation|Pick Up the Phone Booth and Aisle}}. This will display as Pick Up the Phone Booth and Aisle (Ola Sverre Bauge, Steve Bernard, Jon Blask, John Cater, Liza Daly, and others; 2001; Inform 6; Z-code).

Date: 9 June 2001

Date: 18 June 2001