I recently finished the last of the Unnkulia games, and I find myself fascinated by their history.
They are large, polished games, although they can be mean spirited and juvenile. As others have said before, they seem to be me the main games between Infocom and Inform.
But the odd thing is, I haven’t seen their shadow on many other games. Curses! and jigsaw are referenced in dozens of games, especially in the late 90s. Christminster inspired many games with tightly scripted events and wandering NPCs. Theater, beyond its own popularity, “captivated the man that captivated thousands” by influencing Michael Getty and Anchorhead.
Those four games came out right around the end of Adventions. Why weren’t the Unnkulia games referenced as much? I don’t see ACME or cheez products or fried egg jokes in any other games (besides the Magic Toyshop). What effect, if any, did they have on the development of the genre or the public consciousness of IF authors?
Speaking personally, it’s because I got tired of the cheez-and-ACME jokes well before The Legend Lives was over. And there just wasn’t that much that was distinctive about the series beyond that. They had plenty of content, but it felt like “more Infocom” plus bad spelling – and nobody really wanted to imitate the bad spelling.
(Curses had a particular influence beyond all other games of its era: the Inform standard library was basically a fork of Curses minus the rooms and objects. Every game (to this day) which says “Violence isn’t the answer to this one” is repeating a Curses default response.)