• High speed, lush 3D graphics are great, but sometimes a gamer just has the urge to go back to the way it used to be. Here are some ways to get your game on in a really, really old school way on your hip new iPod Touch. Best of all, the games listed here are free, and all of them except "Rogue" can be run in one app, the Frotz Z-Machine interpreter available for free in the iTunes App Store.
  
  

"Rogue"

• The classic text-based RPG of the same name is available as a free application in the iTunes App Store. You lead a character, represented by the @ symbol, through the Dungeon of Doom on a quest to retrieve the magical Amulet of Yendor at the bottom and return to the surface to tell the tale. On the way, the player encounters monsters and treasures, including new and more powerful equipment. However, unlike most RPGs in this vein, RPGs in the tradition of the classic "Rogue" include permanent death, requiring players to begin the game anew each time their character dies.
  
  

"Slouching Towards Bedlam"

• This steam-punk interactive fiction game places you in the role of an alienist, also known as a psychologist, and you must discover what strange disease is afflicting the latest patient admitted to the insane asylum, Bedlam Hospital, and, upon finding the truth, make the hard decision whether to stop it or let it spread. "Slouching Towards Bedlam" took first place in the 2003 Interactive Fiction Competition and, like the rest of the interactive fiction games that follow, requires the free Frotz Z-Machine interpreter, available in the iTunes App Store, to play.
  
  

"Anchorhead"

• A horror game in the tradition of H.P. Lovecraft, you play a newlywed bride who has moved into her husband's hometown. However, there are unseen and unimaginable horrors lurking about and a dark secret in your new spouse's ancestry, a secret that threatens to consume not just him, but the whole town and you with it. It was the winner of the Xyzzy Award for Best Setting in 1998 and was a finalist in nearly every other Xyzzy Awards category that year.
  
  

"Shade"

• A strange game by Andrew Plotkin in which you are a backpacker preparing for a hiking trip in the desert. The goal of the game is simple: assemble your camping gear in time to leave for the expedition. But things go awry very quickly and are not what they seem. "Shade" won the Xyzzy Award for Best Setting in 2000 and was a finalist in nearly every other Xyzzy Awards category.