How thousands of players explored a shared virtual world a quarter of a million rooms big, using nothing but pencils, paper, and postage stamps

The latest issue of Aaron A. Reed's excellent 50 Years of Text Games newsletter looks at Monster Island, a play-by-mail game from 1989.

The mailbox squeaks open, and the teenager's eyes light up: amid the junk mail for parents is a bulky envelope from a company called Adventures By Mail.

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