ifiction.org offers 264 text adventure games online and playable for free, using only html, no java or special software...
as great as that sounds, dreamcast browser users have never been able to do much with the site because no dreamcast browser can save the games there... you could play, but not save your game...
but, it turns out there is a way, after all...
here is how the site's FAQ says to save a game...
"All the game state is embedded in the HTML of each page. All you need to do is save the current page to a file on your local computer. When you are ready to continue your game, simply open that file in your browser and continue where you left off."
no dreamcast browser can do that, BUT, you could do the same by viewing source and then saving it... BUT, if you try it, you will see that it does not work... it shows the source from the first couple moves in the game and that is it...
well, here is how to make it work...
first of all, you must have a dc browser that has a source viewer...
that means planetwebs and u.s. in-game dreamkeys will NOT work...
i know for certain that dreampassport premier, dreampassport 3.x, and dreamkey 3 all have a built-in source viewer... older versions of dreampassport and dreamkey may as well...
(any questions about dreamcast browsers can be answered at The Dreamcast Browsers Group...)
at any point while playing, when you want to save, open your history and then hit back
(you can go to any page and then come back, but history is quickest and easiest)
view source and you will see it is your current progress in the game
after you do this, you could just put the source in your webspace as a webpage, but saving it to vmu is much easier...
paste in the html, then, if you want to be sure which one it is, put the title of the game or something else short in the first two boxes of the html creator...
(if you are using dreamkey, be sure to rename the file to "DREAMKEY.H**"...)
now you have the page saved and can just load it up in the browser file manager when you are ready to continue playing...
NOTES
as is often said, "save early, save often"...
so, best thing to do is to grab the source once in awhile and just hold onto it... especially before doing anything risky... then, when you are done playing, that is when you save it to vmu... as long as you do not reset the browser or the hardware or do anything else to make it clear the copy/paste memory, it is safe there...
if you want to leave yourself a note for next time you play, simply type in your text at the top, above the html coding... when you load it up, it will be there...
if you do not want each page to jump right to the text box at the bottom of the page every time, simply turn javascript off...
it should all be pretty self-explanatory, but, if you have any questions or comments, you could email me or ch@b me or something... i also welcome reports of anything that does not work right with the process...
feel free to post this info anywhere you think it will be useful to someone...
and remember, if you have the means, you could skip all this and just go with FrotzDC...
