It may surprise Infocom fans [up to 10,000 of you] to learn that the word “planetfall” was coined/defined for space flight, even before the adventure game was written.
Hint: it’s a logical derivative of the seafaring term “landfall”.
"Following its 1980 release, Zork I became a bestseller from 1983 through 1985. By 1986, the game had sold 380,000 copies, with 680,000 sales for the trilogy overall, comprising one-third of Infocom's two million game sales"
The map is from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, a game from 25 years ago, a spinoff of the Civilization series, where a colony ship from Earth lands on a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri. In the game's narrative, the colonists use "planetfall" to refer to the landing event and date.
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What does this have to do with Planetfall? I expected to land on an online version of the game, but nope.
It may surprise Infocom fans [up to 10,000 of you] to learn that the word “planetfall” was coined/defined for space flight, even before the adventure game was written.
Hint: it’s a logical derivative of the seafaring term “landfall”.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/planetfall
"Following its 1980 release, Zork I became a bestseller from 1983 through 1985. By 1986, the game had sold 380,000 copies, with 680,000 sales for the trilogy overall, comprising one-third of Infocom's two million game sales"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infocom
The map is from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, a game from 25 years ago, a spinoff of the Civilization series, where a colony ship from Earth lands on a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri. In the game's narrative, the colonists use "planetfall" to refer to the landing event and date.
It was, sort of, the sequel to Civ2 where one could launch a space ship to the Centauri system.