Portal
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Portal is a computer novel.

Where are all the humans? 
Upon returning from your 100 year voyage in the milky way, you find earth empty and abandoned. Between the decaying remnants of civilization, you discover a terminal for Worldnet, the global network that recorded all human activities. The answer must lie deep in its database. Anxious, you log on.

Portal is a unique attempt of creating and adapting a novel specifically for the computer. The story of the boy Peter Devore, his incredible discovery and the mysterious portal are told by an AI named Homer, who reconstructs it piece by piece out of database fragments. As the plot develops, you acquire accompanying information by accessing eleven additional databases - for example a historical archive, military files or social backgrounds. As you switch between the databases to uncover new details, an extensive sci-fi story unfolds.

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Trivia

Rob Swigart has kindly informed me that his book is now available through the Authors Guild Backprint program. You can now buy a paperback copy of the book. It was republished in October 2001, with ISBN 0595197841.

Portal was written by science fiction author Rob Swiggart. Shortly after the release of the game, the entire text was re-published in book form as "Portal: A Dataspace Retrieval". 

It's ISBN number is 0595197841. The book has been out of print since 1999, however the book often shows up on Amazon Bibliofind.

If you don't have the patience to read the story of Portal within the game interface, Portal was also published as a novel by Rob Swigart. There was a U.S. hardcover edition from St. Martin's in 1988 (ISBN 0-312-01494-5) and a U.K. paperback edition from Grafton in 1989 (ISBN 0-586-20649-3).

The novel uses the game's format of presenting the story as short fragments "written" by Homer, supplemented by information from other databases. I haven't compared in great detail, but the text appears to be mostly unchanged from the game.

The box contained three low density 5 1/4 inch discs -- a large amount of data for its time.

Also included was a booklet of loading instructions, a five page Prologue, the Worldnet Emergency Operating Instructions, a registration card, an order card for the hint guide, a product catalogue and, lastly, a poster-size (and totally useless...) map of the World Administrative Regions in 2077.

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Description from the packaging:

Homer, a biological computer. The final link to the past and the only conduit to the future. But Homer is dying and access grows weaker moment by moment. Will you discover where everyone has gone or will the doorway to humanity close forever, leaving you totally alone?
It is the distant future. The 21st Century has long since come and gone. Returning from a failed 100 year voyage to 61 Cygni, you re-enter the Earth's atmosphere to find that the world is not as you once knew it.

Where once there was teeming humanity, now there is quiet. The empty shells of mile-high skyscrapers stand at rest in the awesome silence. The Vista, nothing but forests and meadows, rivers and lakes, is beautiful but eerie, for there are no people...
Finally, you discover an on-line computer terminal that you can operate. Through it you contact Homer, the ultimate achievement of man's technology- a living computer. Together you and Homer must unravel the mystery of the vanished civilization before it's too late. If not, you face an eternity of total solitude.
Written by Rob Swigart, Produced by Brad Fregger, Programmed by Nexa Corporation.


http://www.mobygames.com/game/c64/portal
