The ''Frenetic Five'' is a series of three

text adventures '' Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, is software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives, either in the ...

about a band of

superhero A superhero or superheroine is a stock character that typically possesses ''superpowers'', abilities beyond those of ordinary people, and fits the role of the hero, typically using his or her powers to help the world become a better place, ...

es, all made with

TADS Text Adventure Development System (TADS) is a prototype-based domain-specific programming language and set of standard libraries for creating interactive fiction (IF) games. History The original TADS 1 was released by High Energy Software as ...

version 2 and distributed as

freeware Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the f ...

. The series was created by

Neil deMause Neil deMause (born November 19, 1965, in Manhattan, New York) is a Brooklyn-based freelance journalist who writes for books, magazines, and newspapers on mainly New York City's social policy issues. He has been a writer for Baseball Prospectus sin ...

for the

Interactive Fiction Competition The Interactive Fiction Competition (also known as IFComp) is one of several annual competitions for works of interactive fiction. It has been held since 1995. It is intended for fairly short games, as judges are only allowed to spend two hours pl ...

Games

*''The Frenetic Five vs. Sturm und Drang'' (1997;

2). ** IF Comp 1997: 13th place. Winner of

XYZZY Award for Best NPCs The XYZZY Awards are the annual awards given to works of interactive fiction, serving a similar role to the Academy Awards for film. The awards were inaugurated in 1997 by Eileen Mullin, the editor of ''XYZZYnews''. Any game released during the yea ...

1997. Also finalist for

XYZZY Award for Best Individual PC The XYZZY Awards are the annual awards given to works of interactive fiction, serving a similar role to the Academy Awards for film. The awards were inaugurated in 1997 by Eileen Mullin, the editor of ''XYZZYnews''. Any game released during the yea ...

XYZZY Awards The XYZZY Awards are the annual awards given to works of interactive fiction, serving a similar role to the Academy Awards for film. The awards were inaugurated in 1997 by Eileen Mullin, the editor of ''XYZZYnews''. Any game released during the year ...

1997. ** Sturm and Drang (named after the German literary movement) are a pair of supervillains who intend to use a machine called the "melodramaturge" to imbue the world with excessive excitement. *''The Frenetic Five vs. Mr. Redundancy Man'' (1999; TADS 2). **Finalist for

XYZZY Award for Best Individual Puzzle The XYZZY Awards are the annual awards given to works of interactive fiction, serving a similar role to the Academy Awards for film. The awards were inaugurated in 1997 by Eileen Mullin, the editor of ''XYZZYnews''. Any game released during the yea ...

and XYZZY Award for Best NPCs at the XYZZY Awards 1999. **Mr. Redundancy Man's evil scheme is to tie the planet Earth in

red tape Red tape is an idiom referring to regulations or conformity to formal rules or standards which are claimed to be excessive, rigid or redundant, or to bureaucracy claimed to hinder or prevent action or decision-making. It is usually applied to g ...

. *''The Frenetic Five vs. the Seven Deadly Dwarves'' (2002; TADS 2). **Finalist for XYZZY Award for Best NPCs at the XYZZY Awards 2002. **The Seven Deadly Dwarves' evil plan is to blow up the mine's power plant. This is the only Frenetic Five game with a

maze A maze is a path or collection of paths, typically from an entrance to a goal. The word is used to refer both to branching tour puzzles through which the solver must find a route, and to simpler non-branching ("unicursal") patterns that lea ...

Characters

* Brett, "Improv": The player. Improv is the leader of the group, and a dedicated

MacGyver Angus "Mac" MacGyver is the title character and the protagonist in the TV series ''MacGyver''. He is played by Richard Dean Anderson in the 1985 original series. Lucas Till portrays a younger version of MacGyver in the 2016 reboot. In both p ...

fan with a similar ability to devise improbable solutions to challenges encountered during the course of the game. * Antonia, a.k.a. "Pastiche": According to FF1, every one of Pastiche's body parts has a different superpower. Was nicknamed " Swiss Army" in

high school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...

. She can: move (or "phase") her hand through solid objects; sing

humor Humour (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English) or humor (American English) is the tendency of experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement. The term derives from the humorism, humoral medicine of the ancient Gre ...

ous variations of many songs; break

plywood Plywood is a material manufactured from thin layers or "plies" of wood veneer that are glued together with adjacent layers having their wood grain rotated up to 90 degrees to one another. It is an engineered wood from the family of manufactured ...

doors up to 1 centimeter in thickness (FF2); heat

lasagna Lasagna (, also , also known as lasagne, ) is a type of pasta, possibly one of the oldest types, made of very wide, flat sheets. Either term can also refer to an Italian dish made of stacked layers of lasagna alternating with fillings such as ...

telepathy Telepathy () is the purported vicarious transmission of information from one person's mind to another's without using any known human sensory channels or physical interaction. The term was first coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Frederic W ...

(FF2); instantaneously slice and dice

root In vascular plants, the roots are the organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often below the sur ...

vegetable Vegetables are parts of plants that are consumed by humans or other animals as food. The original meaning is still commonly used and is applied to plants collectively to refer to all edible plant matter, including the flowers, fruits, stems, ...

s, such as

potato The potato is a starchy food, a tuber of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'' and is a root vegetable native to the Americas. The plant is a perennial in the nightshade family Solanaceae. Wild potato species can be found from the southern Unit ...

es (FF3); disperse gory messes (FF3); discern compass directions underground (FF3). To offset Pastiche's many superpowers, she also has a number of weaknesses: she cannot phase through

rope A rope is a group of yarns, plies, fibres, or strands that are twisted or braided together into a larger and stronger form. Ropes have tensile strength and so can be used for dragging and lifting. Rope is thicker and stronger than similarly ...

, and all her powers are inhibited near

wheat Wheat is a grass widely cultivated for its seed, a cereal grain that is a worldwide staple food. The many species of wheat together make up the genus ''Triticum'' ; the most widely grown is common wheat (''T. aestivum''). The archaeologi ...

products, such as

pasta Pasta (, ; ) is a type of food typically made from an unleavened dough of wheat flour mixed with water or eggs, and formed into sheets or other shapes, then cooked by boiling or baking. Rice flour, or legumes such as beans or lentils, are som ...

. * Deborah, a.k.a. "The Clapper": Able to find any object by clapping her hands and naming it, making it beep if it is nearby. The least-used in the three games, she does not even appear in the third. * Mitchel, a.k.a. "Lexicon", a.k.a. "Lex": A walking

dictionary A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically (or by radical and stroke for ideographic languages), which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies ...

. Lex knows nearly all of the words of the

English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...

, and can deduce which verbs are needed for puzzles. His nemesis is Mr. Redundancy Man, whose orations are torture for Lex. * Pete, a.k.a. "Newsboy": The youngest of the pentet, Newsboy is a walking

RSS RSS ( RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. Subscribing to RSS feeds can allow a user to keep track of many di ...

feed, constantly receiving headlines from an unidentified source or sources. * Cecily: The weekend desk worker at SuperTemps. Fills in for Bob in FF3. * Medic Alert: Beeps loudly to alert the authorities. Fills in for Clapper in FF3.

References

External links

Neil deMause: Interactive Fiction
(includes the Frenetic Five games)
Frenetic Five
at the

Interactive Fiction Database The Interactive Fiction Database (IFDB) is a database of metadata and reviews of interactive fiction. In November 2023, the database contained 12,969 game listings, 12,784 member reviews, 51,762 member ratings, and 17,040 registered members. Some ...

{{wikiquote 1990s interactive fiction 2000s interactive fiction Superhero video games Video games developed in the United States