More poking around in the wonderful world of interactive fiction has revealed some amazing results. Whilst acknowledging the host of award winners that really elevate the genre to an art form, we have, in contrast, the seminally bad 'Detective', closely followed by 'Mystery Science Theater 3000 Presents 'Detective', with 'adaptive heckling'. Hah! Oh, and how about text adventure versions of famous arcade games? There's 'Donkey Kong', 'Asteroids', and to cap it all, a text adventure version of 'Metroid' inspired by this Penny Arcade cartoon?
[Btw, for those wanting to meddle in some recent and older text adventures without downloading, there's Java versions of a bunch, including 'Being Andrew Plotkin', on this site.]