The visual effects in Star Trek Into Darkness leave very little to the imagination. And that's the whole point of special effects, right? Through the use of elaborate sets, stunts and computer-generated imagery, director J. J. Abrams transports us from the surface of alien worlds to the inky void of space to the bridge of the USS Enterprise herself.

The same can be said for video games. As the ever-increasing power of gaming devices leads to greater visual fidelity in games themselves, we become more and more immersed in dazzling pictures that leave nothing to the imagination.

But that's not always a good thing. And it wasn't always this way.

Old-school gamers like myself recall with great fondness the Massachusetts-based game development company Infocom, which produced an acclaimed series of text adventure games in the 1980s. No pictures. No sound. Just words on a screen and some clever props in the game box. The rest was up to the player's imagination.

Abrams remembers. And he wants to bring back the Infocom text adventure.

"I was such a huge fan of their games. Notably Planetfall, which for whatever reason was the most glorious gaming experience that I've had," Abrams told me in a recent chat.

"Their marketing and packaging was so gorgeous. Just all the details that they would throw in, it really did help create a universe each and every time. I just could not have been a bigger fan."

My own infatuation with Infocom began with 1982's Deadline, a text-based murder mystery that remains one of my favourite games of all time. From there I backtracked to the earlier Zork games, then moved on to Planetfall, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Leather Goddesses of Phobos, A Mind Forever Voyaging... worlds that still feel more vivid and real than any high-definition environment from an Xbox 360 game.

Several years ago Abrams decided to see if he could buy the Infocom brand, only to discover the rights had been acquired just weeks earlier by someone else. (The trademark currently rests with a company that makes real-world versions of fictional film and TV products. Don't ask.)

"I don't know quite what I would have done," Abrams said of Infocom. "I'm guessing I would have held onto it and figured out a way to use it in some fun, new way, maybe even creating additional text adventures."

The dream is not entirely dead, though.

"I actually talked to some of the original (Infocom) guys who were at MIT and started this thing," Abrams said. "I want to pursue it and see if there's any way to try and get the gang back together, or figure out some way to bring some of that back. It was too much fun."