but it always annoyed me that the graphical ones required you to click on everything to find what it was.

I always typed "look pitchfork" "get pitchfork" and "use pitchfork." The clicky stuff didn't come along until later, and as I said, I despise that crap as much as you do. Also, as for the pitchfork automatically doing what it's supposed to, that was very rare. Yeah, there were certain times that if you wore a certain thing it protected you, or if you had a certain item on you it was automatically used. But more often than not (until they switched to the 100% mouse-driven interface) you had to actually type in the action and the item.

What I am saying is that that influence may not have been positive

Okay, but with the evolution of any science/art, you need intermediate steps. If not for the innovations found in King's Quest, Space Quest (released two years later) would be a well written game, but would be text-based, or have crappy graphics that didn't tie into the gameplay.

Incidentally, did Roberta Williams back over your puppy or something? This seems to be less about the games and more about the author.