Text adventures, or interactive fiction, are old, really old. Some of the first computer games in existence are text adventures and when done correctly they can be as engrossing, inspiring and as horrifying as any novel.
Some wise people even see graphics based computer games as a step backwards, the equivalent of drawing pictures on cave walls in comparison to the Illiad. Text adventures can be great in much the same way the novel is almost always better than the film: if only out of virtue of being able to create Harry Potter in your own mind, rather than watching some bespectacled oik grow hair in embarrassing places year after year.
A well oiled imagination can be relied on to provide vivid imagery, not surprising considering that it is the filter the real world must pass through before reaching your conscious experience. Sometimes, an in depth and well crafted interactive fiction can be just as satisfying as using a spectacularly modeled, surreal weapon to convert a beautifully animated alien killing machine into something liposuction surgeons throw out at the end of a day.
The first text adventure was called simply Adventure owing to the well documented shortage of catchy names in the seventies. It was created by Will Crowther and kick started an entire genre. Adventure eventually gave inspiration to the behemoth Infocom, arguably the greatest text adventure publisher ever to exist.
