Furthermore, Infocomm games used basically 100% precanned responses. It would do the rudimentary things like check if a window was open so if you looked at a wall it might say the window on that wall was open or closed, but that's it. I don't understand how that can make it a natural language interface.

> This is a puzzling comment. The UI for Zork has nothing at all to do with Dragon's Lair.

In both games there's a set path you follow. You follow those commands you win, if not, you lose. There's no semantically equivalent way to complete the game.

I remember spending most of my time with Infocomm games doing things like "look around the field" and it telling me "I don't know the word field" -- and I'm screaming because it just told me I'm in an open field! The door is blocked... blocked with what?! You can't answer me that?!

There were a set of commands and objects it wanted you to interact with. That's it. That's not natural language, any more than SQL is. It's a structured language with commands that look like English verbs.