Thunder Road is another offering from Don Boner & Freda Boner. I was so intrigued with their Deadly Dungeon offering that I had investigate their second offering from 1980.
Thunder Road is a text adventure written for the TRS-80 however it plays more like a choose your path adventure.
The extremely interesting thing about Thunder Road from the onset is the setting and premise.
So you’re running white-lightning and trying to avoid the local sheriff as well as revenuer’s. I had to look up revenuer as I’d never heard the term used quite that way and it’s apparently an officer from the department of revenue. These government agents were responsible for halting unlawful bootlegging of alcohol.
There are quite a few locations in the game; it ended up being quite large to map out. There is not much in the way of puzzles that you have to deal with. I would qualify maybe three areas of the game where you need to find objects and then manipulate them later in the game in order move on.
The reason why I stated that this is more of a choose your path kind of adventure is that there are quite a few instant death scenarios within the game. Once you make a decision to go in a particular direction you may find yourself dying or getting into a situation where you have to begin all over again. I had no save game state with this one so it was actually a little time consuming to play. I probably spent a good 90 minutes to 2 hours with the game. What the game ultimately does is herd you in a very particular direction. You’ll learn the correct route you have to drive through trial and error. I had to restart the game several times. The game will throw three or four different obstacles at you that you will have to overcome in order to reach your final destination.
The game very much reminds me of a Dukes of Hazzard episode the way it is setup.
You even get to run a road-block. The deputies and sheriff have names like something out of an episode of the above show or a Smokey & the Bandit movie. The game does a very good job creating suspense as you move deeper and deeper into the game. At every turn you find the revenuers hot on your heels so the game does a good job at creating the idea of an exhausting pursuit. You always have the feeling that there is somebody behind you or closing in on you which is hard to pull off in a text adventure.
I’ll give the game points for originality as well. We’ve dealt with fantasy themes, a pirate theme, old west themes, and haunted house themes but we’ve yet taken on the role of a bootlegger. I feel that Deadly Dungeon was a stronger offering from this pair however I have to give it points for originality.