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	Title: (They're writing as fast as they can!) Witness
	Author: Infocom staff
	Source: The New Zork Times
	Date: Summer 1983
	Transcription by Steve Derby
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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*.

<p class="center tight"><strong>"Witness is really wonderful."</strong></p>
<p class="tight" style="text-align: right;"><em>Marc Blank, author of</em> Deadline <em>and</em> Zork</p>

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.

<p class="center tight"><strong>"Stu is really great at the subtle things."</strong></p>
<p class="tight" style="text-align: right;"><em>Steve Meretzky, author of</em> Planetfall</p>

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.
