Advertising Blurbs
From PASSPORT To The United Products of Infocom 1986:
THE WITNESS
You're the Chief Detective of a normally quiet burgh outside L.A. It's February, 1938. And you've got trouble. A gilt-edged society dame is dead. Someone is putting the screws to her millionaire old man. Then you step in and the shakedown turns ugly. You're left with a stiff and a race against the clock to nail your suspect... or get nailed first.
"If you have ever longed to work with Philip Marlowe, Miss Marple, or Lord Peter Wimsey, The WITNESS is the next best thing."
-Creative Computing
Contributed by Belboz  (6609) on Oct 09, 2001.
From the 1983 Infocom catalog "OUR CIRCUITS, OURSELVES!":
The WITNESS, as a CBS MORNING NEWS feature recently revealed, brings the Great Detective Era of the Thirties to life with you as detective. It's a case of blackmail that turns into murder before your eyes, and anyone from the knockout heiress to the poker-faced Oriental butler could be the killer. As in DEADLINE, your suspects act with minds of their own, and you have just 12 hours to solve the crime. Armed with a police file packed with crucial physical evidence, you face a tangled web of clues, motives, and alibis, and the only testimony you can trust is that of your own eyes - because you are The WITNESS.
Contributed by Belboz (6609) on Oct 09, 2001.
From the first Infocom fold-out catalog, 198?:
You
are about to see
the fantastic worlds of Infocom
unfold before your very eyes.
The WITNESS In this hard-boiled 1930's whodunit, a case of blackmail turns to murder before your very eyes. Anyone from the knockout heiress to poker-faced Oriental butler could be the killer. And the only two things you can believe are your own eyes - because you are The WITNESS.
Contributed by Belboz (6609) on Oct 05, 2001.
From The New Zork Times, Vol.II no.infinity Summer 83:
Witness
They're writing as fast as they can!
Infocom's long-awaited second mystery game is finally announced, and it was worth waiting for. The advance word is that it tops the highly acclaimed and tremendously popular Deadline.
"Witness is really wonderful." Marc Blank, author of Deadline and Zork
Topping Deadline will be quite an achievement. Deadline has received rave reviews (even The New Zork Times called it "a milestone").
Electronic Games magazine (primarily a video game magazine) awarded it the "Best Computer Adventure - 1983." Deadline was voted the #2 adventure in Softalk magazine's poll of its readers. After a year on the market, it is still at the top of the sales charts - very rare in this fast-moving market.
But Witness is up to the challenge. Once again, you are the detective who must solve the crime, but this time you are in a classic 1930's setting and the murder takes place before your very eyes.
"There is a great deal of mood setting - the atmosphere is great!" says Marc Blank. "Although there are fewer characters in Witness, they are much better developed and more interesting. There is significantly more conversation, and the game is richer in detail."
The author of Witness is Stu Galley. One of Infocom's founders, he worked in the same group at the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science as Marc Blank, Dave Lebling, Joel Berez (Infocom's president), and Mike (the founder of the Zork Users Group). Stu's background is physics (B.S. Caltech, M.S. MIT), which may seem odd training for writing mysteries, but Stu is an excellent writer, and is very well-read. In short, he is a true renaissance man.
"Stu is really great at the subtle things." Steve Meretzky, author of Planetfall
As usual, Witness introduces improvements in Infocom's parser (the program which understands the sentences you type in). No one else has come close to Infocom's language-handling abilities, which are continually improving.
Contributed by Belboz (6609) on Aug 26, 2001.
"The Incomplete Works of Infocom, Inc." Catalog:
The WITNESS, according to DISCOVER magazine, is "a murder mystery in the classic hard-boiled detective tradition." According to ELECTRONIC GAMES, it's the "Best Adventure of 1984."
This spine-tingler is a case of blackmail that turns into murder before your eyes, and anyone from the knockout heiress to the poker-faced Oriental butler could be the killer. Your suspects act with minds of their own, and you have just 12 hours to solve the crime. Armed with a packet of crucial physical evidence, you face a tangled web of clues, motives and alibis. And the only two things you can believe are your own eyes - because you are The WITNESS. STANDARD LEVEL
Contributed by Adam Baratz (1362) on Mar 30, 2001.
Unknown Source:
Dead: one gilt-edged society dame. And now it looks like some two-bit grifter is putting the screws to her multi-millionaire old man. All in all, a pretty typical Angeleno clan for these days. But then the shakedown turns ugly, and you're left with a stiff and a race against the clock to nail your suspect ... if, that is, you don't cash in your chips ahead of time!
February, 1938. FDR's New Deal is finally rolling. Hitler's rolling too; this time, through Austria. But as Chief Police Detective for a quiet burgh on the outskirts of L. A., you've got other fish to fry. Working from a clue-laden police file and battling a 12-hour time limit, you're up against your toughest case to date: a sordid family affair that may land everyone from the knockout heiress to the pokerfaced Oriental butler in the slammer before it's over. Ahead of you is a Gordian knot of motives and alibis to untangle, and the only testimony you can trust is that of your own eyes - because you are The WITNESS.
Contributed by Brian Hirt (9983) on Feb 28, 1999.
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