XANADU

XANADU, as seen from inside XANADU

XANADU is a supercomputer designed by Donald, Lula, and Joseph. It was created using tapes from Lula (previously heard in Limits & Demonstrations.) The black mold that grows on the computer has changed its functioning beyond that of a normal computer program.

It resides in the Bedquilt Caverns and is maintained by Donald and his research assistants. Amy (who studies human-computer interaction), Roberta (who studies fairy tales), Rick (who studies library sciences), Greg (who studies architecture), Andrew (who studies statistics), Mary Ann (who studies fine art), and Weaver (who studies mathematics) have all worked as Donald's research assistants at some point. Debugging, transcription, and speculation are the main tasks performed by the assistants.

Gameplay

When the player first encounters XANADU, it is not working properly and only produces garbled sounds. Donald believes this is because of the Hard Times boys tampering with the machine. When the player properly interacts with XANADU, they can play through a simulation similar to a text-based adventure game that involves typing in actions and directions to walk. The plot involves the creation of XANADU. Once this section is over, the player is presented with a workplace management simulation that involves hiring and assigning interns to tasks.

Design and inspiration

XANADU is heavily inspired by Ted Nelson's real-life hypertext Project Xanadu, along with ELIZA (itself named after the play Pygmalion's Eliza Doolittle), an early natural language processing program created by Joseph Weizenbaum which had a large influence on the development of text adventure videogames.

The physical computer as seen in the game is a reference to the early PDP-1 computer.