You're extremely excited because you've just signed on with your local internet provider. You've composed an e-mail letter that you plan to send to all of your friends on the 'net. In the message, you've enclosed your internet address, so they know exactly where to send you their e-mail.  

I won't spend too much time on the prose or mechanics, since obviously there isn't much of either, but there are problems even in the 10 or so moves in this game. "Read letters" when you have mail but haven't "opened" your "box" elicits "The letters are immovable. Nice try, anyway." Uh, what? And when you get an envelope, you can't "open" it, you have to "read" it. Your choices are few enough that the game will tell you in no uncertain terms when you're not doing what the author had in mind, so don't, say, try to survey the scene much or you'll get a "You're wasting your time!" message or something similar. There's nothing particularly wrong with the prose as such, it just isn't enough to make this interesting.

The problem here is not the concept--okay, maybe it is exciting the first time--so much as the audience. The players of the 1997 interactive fiction competition are, by definition, those people with the connections, software, and wherewithal to connect to an archive in Germany, download a series of games, set them up on their own computers, and play them. In that playing E-Mailbox required locating and downloading the AGiliTy interpreter, there was another degree of complication in there. Now, I don't actually think all of that is extremely complicated, but I do think that those who happen to play--meaning the IF community, which exists solely by virtue of the Internet--are not likely to be those still gasping over the wonders of e-mail. (We may recall the inane AOL commercial wherein a woman says "Every time I get e-mail, it's like opening a present." Very likely, for the first few times or so, but most IFers, I fear, are a bit hardened.) I'm not, of course, saying that Jay Goemmer is one. Very likely he isn't. But it's a bit of a stretch to ask the player for whom the Internet is simply a fact of life to exclaim loudly over its wonders.

There's another possibility that I'm neglecting, namely that Mr. Goemmer is poking a little fun at newbies and their "how do I send e-mail?" ways and inviting us to join in the humor. It's possible, and sentences like "Smack the Return key--*really* good" do bring up the image of a frustrated newbie taking out his anger on his unsuspecting keyboard. Somehow, though, this doesn't have the air of an insider chuckling at an outsider, if for no other reason than that an account that actually gets mailbombed has problems that simply reinstalling the software ain't gonna fix, no how, no way. It's possible that Mr. Goemmer is mistaking a software bug or some such thing for a mailbomb; we can't know for sure. (Though an address that's only just been created isn't likely to get bombed.) Somehow, though, the tone doesn't say "parody" to me--the whole thing is taken a bit too seriously--and while I appreciate the enthusiasm, I didn't go into vicarious paroxysms of joy.

For the record, AGT comes off fine--impressive speed, though then again it should be, running such a small game file. But there really isn't enough here to justify downloading the runtime--darn, I've given away the whole thing, pretty much--and though the enthusiasm here is considerable, I give this one a 3.