Author: professor6153

The Tomb of Drewan originates from the United Kingdom and was developed and published by Audiogenic. It was released in 1982 for the Commodore VIC-20 and then later ported in 1983 for the Commodore 64.

There was once an ancient evil empire known as the Kartos Empire. The source of this empire’s power was a magical amulet. It came to be known as the Amulet of Kartos and it contained four powerful runestones of Air, Earth, Fire, and Water giving the possessor power over the four elements. As time passed, this evil empire eventually crumbled. The last survivor of the empire, Drewan, lived for many years after it’s collapse. He started to repent for the many evils committed by the empire but knew that eventually he too would die and so he constructed a repository for the powerful amulet and runestones. He populated this grand 400 room tomb with a variety of guardians to protect these objects of power. He also provided spells and a means to retrieve these artifacts in case one day a hero arose and needed the power of the artifacts for good. All of this can be learned in the manual which came shipped with the game.

At first blush The Tomb of Drewan is a bit reminiscent of The Sword of Fargoal but as you experience the gameplay and all of the various tools at your disposal you’ll realize it is a highly original offering.

There is a lot to unpack here. Firstly, The Tomb of Drewan is a very large game. The tomb itself consists of 400 randomly generated rooms. They are arranged in a 20 x 20 configuration. Each room is divided into four quadrants and each quadrant contains a treasure and a guardian. There are different kinds of treasures to obtain and there are both mortal guardians and magical guardians. There is a bit of an arcade or reflex factor in the game and only the most patient and driven of players are likely to complete this game.

The ultimate goal of the game is to enter the tomb, find the amulet and the four runestones, and then return to the top left corner of the tomb in the 20 x 20 configuration that is present. This is not an easy task. The guardians are no mere pushovers. An irritating feature of the game is that you cannot attack or cast spells at your adversaries from a top, bottom, or diagonal direction. You can only defeat them from an unobstructed left or right direction.

The guardians are identified by their different shapes and different colors. There are mortal guards and magical guards and there are three different types of each. Black represents the strongest of each type and blue is the weakest.

Mortal Guards

Death Master – Black

Soul Stealer – Yellow

Tomb Guard – Blue

Magical Guards

Dark Lord – Black

Sorcerer – Yellow

Spell Maker – Blue

Your health is measured as a percentage and is labelled WND which is short for wounds. Each time one of the tomb adversaries hits you this number decreases. When it reaches 0 you die. There is another component measured in percentage and that is called STR for strength. It represents how much weight you can carry and your fatigue. The more gold you have the more this percentage drops when you move. If this number reaches 0 you also die. If you stand still and do nothing this number will slowly tick back up and increase for you. The only way to improve your WND % once you have taken damage is to find a magical ELIXIR. This acts like a healing potion and it will restore both your Strength and Wounds to 100% Unfortunately you cannot stockpile these ELIXIRs. You are only allowed to carry 1 of each different item or spell.

Where the game’s further originality can be found is in the myriad number of options you have as a character. Each of these options can be accessed by pressing the corresponding letter on the keyboard. I played the game entirely on a keyboard and the keyboard controls did take some getting used. The movement cluster is @ = UP and \ = DOWN and then L = Left and R = Right. You have to be facing enemies in order to attack them so getting used to the movement cluster as well as all of the keyboard options was a bit of a learning curve.

If you’re facing your opponent you can choose to fire an (A)rrow if you have one and it will streak towards your opponent. It is nice in a pinch if range is an issue. The (C)haos spell can be used against all guard types and it obliterates them and then leaves an area of Chaos that the other guards cannot cross. (D)rop merely will allow you to select an item to drop; in most instances this is some gold because it is taxing your strength too much. The (E)lixer will heal your strength and wounds 100%. The (F)ire spell can be used against all guards and it inflicts 7 points of damage. The (H)elp key is a nice touch as it will list all of the inventory items for you and explain what they do and how much damage they cause if applicable. The (J)ump spell will teleport you from the chamber you’re in to a random chamber somewhere within the tomb. I never used this spell because I was concentrating on systematically mapping out the complex and I didn’t want to become lost or disorganized in the process. The (M)irror spell only works on magical enemies and only while they are casting a spell at you. It will reverse the spell and send it back to them. (O)verjump allows you to jump over guards or treasure and (P)etrify turns any guard white with terror and rooted to the spot as long as you are in that particular chamber. (Q)uit leaves the game AND probably the coolest spell in the entire game is (R)emove. Casting REMOVE will quite literally allow you to remove a section of the wall to avoid guards or to get to an unreachable treasure. Sometimes the randomization of chambers seals a treasure chest into an area that can only be reached by a REMOVE spell. When you find these spells as treasure they are to be coveted. (S)word represents the only item you never lose or that depletes itself. The sword will always do 3 points of damage to an opponent. I waited to talk about the (I)nventory choice because I wanted to talk about it together with the (T)ake option. When you find yourself next to a treasure chest you want to turn and face the chest much like you would the opponent and then press (I)nventory and that will let you know the treasure that is in the chest. It may be gold, it may be a spell, or it may be the Amulet itself or one of the four runestones. Once you know what is in the chest you then can pick (T)ake to place it in your inventory.

Gold can slow you down but it is in fact useful because if you should perish, a Tomb Lord will appear and attempt to resurrect you if you have enough gold. If you do not have enough gold then it is game over for you. The spells are extremely important because they help you to survive. You need their offensive capabilities to deal with the mortal and magical guardians in each room. Remember there are 400 different rooms and 4 guardians per room! You can only carry 1 of each spell type at a time which creates a lot of tension.

Where the game can change for you and become a bit easier is when you begin to find the amulet and runestones because they each bestow special powers upon you. If you find the amulet then when you enter each new chamber the different kinds of guardians that are in the chamber will quickly flash and reveal themselves and their location. If you find the fire stone it gives you a permanent Fire Spell; you never run out. If you find the Water Stone, this is the one I found first, it gives you a permanent Water Spell. The Earth Stone gives you permanent use of the Remove spell. I got extremely lucky and this is the second stone that I found and I found it early on. I had the Water Stone and the Earth Stone rather early and didn’t find the others until I had almost all of the rooms mapped out. The Air Stone gives you permanent Strength and your score doesn’t then decrease as you move.

In my foray into the tombs I ended up finding the Water runestone first and then shortly thereafter I found the Earth runestone AND the Amulet of Kartos. All within probably the first 80 chambers that I explored. Getting ahold of the Earth Runestone early was a game changer for me because it allowed me to get to treasure chests that were surrounded by stone walls. If you did not have the Earth runestone you would have to make a notation on your hand drawn map which chambers have treasure chests you could not access. If you find after having moved through all 400 chambers that you did not get all of the pieces that you need you would then have to backtrack to the rooms with notations.

I was hoping that perhaps having found three of the pieces early on that I may not have to explore all of the 400 rooms. This couldn’t have been further from the truth. I did not find the last piece that I needed until the very last room that I explored. I was beginning to become fearful that something was wrong because I had so much time invested in the game up to this point. Once I had the Amulet and all four runestones I then made my way back to the chamber in the upper left corner of my map. Once I arrived in the chamber I was greeted with the following screen:

It took me almost 17 hours to explore the tomb and to find all of the magical items that I needed. This game sports a lot of originality. It has small similarities to Dunjonquest and Sword of Fargoal but clearly stands on it’s own and is quite unique. Removing parts of the wall with the Earth runestone as you move about the map is reminiscent of Lode Runner too which wouldn’t come out until years later. I felt I went above and beyond to persist in finishing this one and my thought process is that not many can make this distinction. If you finished Tomb of Drewan yourself or have fond memories of it I’d love to hear from you.

Next up I’ll be tackling the AD&D Cloudy Mountain Adventure published for Intellivision consoles. Until next time…

I may find myself journeying back in time to play a stray game that I’ve missed from the year but I am now officially closing the books on 1980. I played over 85 games that were published this year for home computers. It was an exciting time in an industry that was much like the wild west. You had individuals quitting their regular jobs to become programmers and game developers and you had individuals and companies working out of their garage. Many games in 1980 were still sold in a Ziploc bag with typewritten instructions.

It was a period where games like Ultima and Wizardry had not yet set industry standards and so it was an age of experimentation. Developers were groping around in the dark as they presented odd iterations in the quest to simulate the Dungeons & Dragons tabletop role-playing experience that was taking the world by storm.

It is this very reason that made it such a pleasure and a treat to play each of these games first hand. Loading each of these games for the very first time was like opening up a mystery box – you just didn’t know what to expect or what you were going to get. It was a year of undiscovered gems and in many of these games what worked really well would be emulated by other companies going forward. One encountered some extremely unique games in this era that were some real treats to experience.

So who walks away with the coveted Retrogamestrove.com Game of the Year for 1980?

In the computer role-playing category I am giving the 1980 Game of the Year award to Rogue. You can read my original review of Rogue that was published December 24th, 2020. Though Beneath Apple Manor predates it (1978 Retrogamestrove.com Game of the Year winner), Rogue, which is ASCII based, is considered the forerunner and the namesake of what would become a new subgenre. Roguelike would go on to become a term that characterizes a dungeon crawl through procedurally generated levels.

These games were immensely popular with college students in the 1980s and 1990s and remain so even today. I found Rogue to be extremely addictive even by today’s standards and was constantly muttering; “Just one more try”. It’s influence is still felt today by the several variants that exist and are still being created today. It is for these reasons that I am awarding Rogue with the 1980 Game of the Year in it’s category. Thank you Michael Toy and Glen Wichman for creating such a fun and addicting game whose influences are still felt today.

In the interactive fiction category the Game of the Year award has to go to Zork I. You can read about my initial experience with Zork I here that I published February 18th, 2021. The sophisticated word parser of Zork I was able to understand adjectives, compound verbs, conjunctions, and prepositions. It is a marvel that in an Infocom game that you’re able to type in most anything and get a qualified response.

The intricate descriptions and puzzles compared to other text adventures was mind blowing at the time. The description lengths of each location made the world of Zork I seemingly come to life. I likened my experience with the game and it’s comparison to others that have come before it to the scene in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy leaves the cottage and steps into Oz for the very first time; a world suddenly depicted with vibrant colors. Playing Zork I was the same type of experience for me. Zork I would be the game that launched Infocom into what would become super stardom. The company ended up producing high quality interactive fiction throughout the roll of years. Blockbuster after blockbuster. Zork I was the shot across the bow to announce that “we have arrived”. Awarding Zork I the 1980 Game of the Year for the interactive fiction category was an easy and obvious decision.

Here is the Retrogamestrove.com Awards Page I will also place this link that can be accessed at anytime from our Home Page.

I wanted to take the time to make a few honorable mentions of other very interesting games that were published this same year. There are some individuals and company’s that created and published some extremely interesting and entertaining games that remain a bit underrated even today.

Med Systems would publish three different games in 1980 and I found all three of the games to be extremely entertaining and a “must play” for game historians. Reality Ends by William F. Denman Jr. presented a unique game format which I found to be highly enjoyable. Deathmaze 5000 written by Frank Corr Jr & William F. Denman Jr. may be the very first dungeon crawler that predates both Ultima I and Wizardry I that no one talks about. I found the objects and puzzles and mapping out of the maze to be highly enjoyable and difficult as well. This pair would also write and produce Labyrinth that would prove to be a challenge for those who love the old school chore of having to successfully map their dungeon levels. I was surprised to discover that I found all three of these games to be hidden gems for myself in 1980 and that all three originated from the same company as well.

Highlands Computer Services published Oldorf’s Revenge, The Tarturian, and Creature Venture in 1980. Oldorf’s Revenge and The Tarturian would introduce a very unique system in which you switch back and forth between character classes each possessing a very unique set of skills or spells. Each of these characters would be integral in solving a myriad variety of puzzles throughout the two games. It was an odd RPG hybrid that was eccentric enough to win me over. Both of the games were very challenging as well and worth the time that I put into them. Creature Venture is a wire-frame graphic adventure that is better than the few that have come before it in my humble opinion. It was well done and of higher quality than all of the Sierra games that have come before it.

We were also introduced to the extremely difficult Savage Island Part 1 in 1980 which would be the pinnacle of Adams’ illustrious career. He set out to make an extremely difficult text adventure and was certainly successful. The introduction of a randomization factor coordinated between the weather & the bear on the island completely turned the text adventure trope upside down. It was the first time in a game where it became a matter of attempting the same thing several times and expecting a different outcome; which in real life is the very definition of insanity.

All of the games that were given to us in 1980 provided for a very memorable year. The fact that industry standards for genres had not been set caused the creation of a lot of different hybrid games which created a unique experience. There was a sense of awe and mystery as I began each and every game from this era and what it did for me was really reinforce the enjoyment I’ve been getting from playing these games in the order in which they were published.

Creature Venture is a graphic adventure using wire frame graphics like those seen in Sierra’s Mystery House. The game was written by Butch Greathouse and Garry Rheinhardt and published by Highlands Computer Services for the Apple II. This is the pair that brought us the very unique Oldorf’s Revenge and it’s sequel The Tarturian. When Creature Venture was released it was distributed in a clear Ziploc bag with the above insert as many games were during this early era.

The premise of the story is that you’ve just inherited your Uncle Stashbucks mansion. Your uncle was known to be very eccentric and to have a fascination with the occult. He unfortunately learned the ways of black magic and called forth creatures from hades and dealt with Lucifer himself. He ended up relinquishing his soul to their demands and it was rumored that in the end he attempted to fight back with the help of a magic lamp but by then it was too late. Lucifer also hid your uncle’s treasure deep in the mansion. The only way you’re going to enjoy your inheritance is somehow ridding the mansion of these creatures and recovering your treasure.

You begin the game outside of the mansion and next to a mailbox and tree. There are a number of things to do here. If you climb the tree you’ll discover that there is a key hidden up in the branches.

Notice too, in the picture above, how there appears to be something on the roof of the adjacent building. This was a characteristic we would see experimented with in early graphic adventures. Instead of a picture accompanying an otherwise straightforward text adventure, the picture itself would show an object visually without describing it. It was then up to the player to take the cue from the depiction and act upon it accordingly. We see this used a few times in this game. If you open the mailbox you’ll find a postcard inside the mailbox. Reading the postcard reveals one word: SESAME. The adjacent building next door turns out to be a shed. Inside the shed there are batteries (which will be useful for a flashlight you find) and if you say SESAME in the shed a panel slides open revealing stairs up to the roof of the shed. There is indeed a KNIFE sitting upon the roof of the shed. This KNIFE will be very important later in the game.

Once you’re finished with the grounds outside of the house it’s time to explore the manor. One curiosity that I passed making my way through a crack in the manor’s wall was an elf throwing objects over the wall. I ventured back out and went to the area outside of the wall to see if I could pick up whatever the elf was throwing over the wall but had no success with that idea. The elf and his throwing arm would come in handy later in the game.

The house has a few rooms to explore but one has the sense that there are a lot of locations missing and a lot more game left. This certainly turns out to be the case but the house contains some interesting items to find and all of them are useful. The items are a diary, a pair of glasses, a flashlight, and a message which reads; “If you can’t killem then scareem”

If you examine both the diary and the key and put the letters from both together it will form Beelzebub which will cause the bookcase in the manor to slide open revealing a hidden passage and much larger portion of the game.

In a review found in Computer Gaming World Creature Venture was labeled as an adventure for beginners but I’m going to respectfully disagree with that reviewer. I found Creature Venture to be very challenging. There are a number of extremely interesting things that transpire in this game that place it a step up over the recent Sierra graphic adventures that we’ve reviewed. The game has a number of original elements that are under appreciated in my humble opinion. One such element involves the pair of glasses that you found. In the living room there is a painting and when you view the painting it appears to be a snapshot of the outside wall surrounding the manor. However if you put the glasses on that you found and then look at the painting the picture suddenly looks like this:

There are two hidden locations in the game and once you find them they will unlock many more locations for you to explore. One such area is a mirror hanging over the fireplace. You can actually enter the mirror and explore several locations beyond and the second area is the bookcase which leads to the deepest areas of the mansion. It is in one of these areas that you’ll find a shovel. The shovel is being guarded by a strange creature but the note you found in the oven contains the hint as to how to deal with the creature. If you then take the shovel to the area outside the manor where the arrow is pointing to and dig; you’ll find the magic lamp.

The magic lamp is an integral piece to completing the game. It will not only vanquish two creatures for you that you can’t deal with on your own; but in a very tricky and twisty way it helps you to defeat Lucifer as well.

I was very impressed with so many different aspects of this game. I thought it to be quite clever. The elf that you see throwing things over the wall in the beginning of the game? You’ll find that the shovel you’re carrying won’t fit through the crack in the wall. So what do you do? You give the shovel to the elf who then throws it over the wall for you. I was then able to go through the crack, retrieve the shovel, and dig for the magic lamp.

Underneath the mansion in the catacombs there are a number of puzzles and items to obtain. In a room with pillars you find the following riddle:

I thought it quite clever and cute. You find a door that you are unable to open in a different location of the complex. The riddle was a clue and if you type in SAY TONTO the door will open for you revealing a bottle of water in the room. The bottle of water proves useful later.

You’ll encounter a chest that turns out to be a mimic – yes – I perished – and you’ll find the only way to deal with this creature is by rubbing the magic lamp. A genie will appear and defeats the mimic for you. Once the mimic is defeated a magic wand is discovered.

In a box canyon you had encountered a tiny tree and when you attempt to climb it the game responds with “it’s too small”. So once I had the bottle of water I went back to that box canyon and watered the tree and watched as the tree grew.

You can then climb the tree and you discover a mean and nasty Kybor prevents you from going any further. It is necessary to rub the magic lamp a second time and watch as the genie vanquishes the Kybor.

Once you progress beyond the Kybor you’ll find an empty bird’s cage. The cage is important because it will allow you to capture a bat at another location. The cage is protected by the BOOGEYMAN but if you PUNCH BOOGEYMAN you can then procure the cage. I only thought to do this; because if you choose to read the game instructions which are on the disk (the game comes with no manual) one of the examples it gives for actions is to PUNCH BOOGEYMAN which I thought was an odd example. When I encountered this BOOGEYMAN much later in the game I recalled the example I read and merely followed suit; and it worked!

Once you have the cage in your possession you can go back to retrieve the bat; which requires a bit of inventory juggling as you’ll discover if you play the game on your own. Caged bat in hand you move ahead and find yourself in a room filled with fireflies. You can trap the fireflies in the bottle that used to have the water in it and these will act as your new light sources because the batteries you place in your flashlight will wear out and you only have a limited number of moves with the flashlight. Unfortunately when you are trapping the fireflies there is a cave in which occurs in this room. This is where the wand you took from the mimic comes in handy. You wave the wand and it will clear the rubble away for you so that you can exit. I soft-locked myself in this location and that is how I came to discover that I would have to have the genie defeat the mimic because I knew I needed to find another inventory item.

We’re now almost to the endgame. There is an old stump that when examined appears to have been worn smooth. This is a hint. If you RUB STUMP nothing happens however if you drop the FLASHLIGHT and BATTERIES ( you now have a bottle of fireflies as a light source) and then RUB STUMP it works and the stump will teleport you to a bridge over a ravine. A snake guards the bridge but if you now let the bat out of the cage it will attack the snake for you.

If you cross the bridge and move north this is where your final confrontation with Lucifer takes place.

Let’s pause to talk about the magic lamp once again. If at any point you examine the lamp this is what you’re shown:

So from this picture one could easily discern that you’re going to be granted three wishes or get to use the power of the lamp three times. Now remember during the course of the game we’ve already invoked the power of the genie twice. I can report to you too that through trial and error while playing the game I had to deduce when to use the lamp or not use the lamp. Could I move past obstacles using other items in my inventory? I can further report that during these experiments I ended up rubbing the lamp MORE than three times. On the fourth attempt the magic lamp exploded and thus so did I. Back to the drawing board.

Now back to our final confrontation with Lucifer.

Remember that Lucifer wants the lamp to prevent you from using the lamp against him in some way. In what I consider to be an absolutely creative and ingenious endgame, what I did was RUB LAMP (which amounted to the third time I did so). Special Note: When you rub the lamp in different locations of the game where the genie isn’t necessary than nothing happens. So once I rubbed the lamp and nothing happened; I dropped the lamp. Lucifer gleefully picks the lamp up and then quickly rubs the lamp. The lamp magically explodes and so does Lucifer. What a brilliant ending.

If you then move north from that location you encounter the hidden Stashbuck fortune.

I tell you I really enjoyed this one. I found it to be very creative and very challenging as well and very rewarding to play and complete. Butch Greathouse and Garry Rheinhardt wrote three very distinctive, original, and entertaining games in 1980. If you’re a text adventure or graphic adventure fan I highly recommend you try this little gem.

In my last blog post I mistakenly though I had 1980 wrapped up but then I realized I still needed to complete Creature Venture. I now have all of the games published in 1980 under my belt and in my next blog post we will have the awards ceremony for the Retrogamestrove.com games of the year for 1980.

Until next time…

Roger Olsen returns with Pyramid; another interactive text adventure published by Aardvark. Roger Olsen & the Aardvark crew were quite prolific in 1980 having published six different text adventures. Pyramid author Roger Olsen also wrote Deathship and Escape From Mars in that same year. Aardvark published four other text adventures in 1980 as well; all originally for the Ohio Scientific: Trek Adventure, Vampire Castle, Nuclear Sub and now Pyramid. I’ve been lucky enough to have gotten to experience all six.

Pyramid was first published for the OSI and then later ported to the Commodore 64/128, Timex Sinclair, TRS-80 Coco, Vic-20 and IBM PC. I played the Commodore 64/128 version. Interestingly enough, even though Pyramid was text only for most platforms, the later TRS-80 Color Computer version added pictures but didn’t change anything else.

I was really looking forward to Pyramid having enjoyed the other five offerings from the Aardvark crew. Alas it appears that I set myself up for disappointment. It appears that Roger Olsen set out this time to make a much more difficult game. In doing so, a couple of the puzzles are exceedingly difficult and the result spoils the flow of the game compared to earlier efforts.

In Pyramid you take on the role of an archaeologist. The game starts in a tent on the site of the excavation. The object of the game is to get into the Pyramid, explore the site, and recover four treasures and bring them back to the tent.

One distinct feature in this game is your knapsack. You can pick up and manage many more items in your inventory thanks to the knapsack. When you pick something up it automatically goes into your knapsack and if you want a list of your inventory items you have to type: LOOK KNAPSACK.

The advertisement on the back of the Pyramid box rings true. Pyramid is very hard. I am a little aghast at the mention of 50-70 hours of playing time but still compared to other entries from Aardvark I felt that this one was the most difficult.

There are what I would call three very difficult puzzles that exist in this game. One puzzle is actually ingenious and very fair – albeit still quite difficult. The other puzzle which we’re going to talk about in a moment borders on what I like to call “unfair play” rules.

This aforementioned puzzle involves actually getting INSIDE the pyramid itself. As an aside, why is that all of the games that we’ve reviewed that involve a pyramid, make it so bloody hard to get into the pyramid? The absolutely terrific Scott Adams adventure Pyramid of Doom comes to mind.

In the beginning of the game while in the desert I am able to find VINES, an AARDVARK (no really – and he’ll actually go into the knapsack as well), a BANANA, and a MONKEY.

There is a heavy locked door in the front of the pyramid that I cannot get into. However, using a shovel, if I dig in a certain location on the map the ground caves in and deposits me into a cave. In this cave there is a stream, a boat in the sand, and some rocks. This is where I was stuck for the longest time. How do you proceed forward you ask? I am ashamed to admit that I had to resort to finding a solution to this dilemma. The solution is to TAKE ROCKS followed by PUT ROCKS. The game will ask WHERE? You then type in STREAM.

Once you do this the water level begins to rise freeing your boat from the sand. Once you hop into the boat you can follow the underground river. Now I’m as familiar with the concept of dam building as the next guy but the game doesn’t describe the rocks as a pile of rocks or a lot of rocks; merely rocks. So TAKE ROCKS and PUT ROCKS as a solution I found to be rather frustrating as a player however I understand the paradigm.

The stream takes you to an ancient cave complex where you find a sword. When you examine the sword you find that it reads property of “ALI BABA” which it turns out is a hint to help you proceed further. There is a bit of parser navigation concerning the altar in the room and magical words that you’ll have to utter but eventually you’ll find yourself teleported to some twisting passages.

There is a bit of a maze here to contend with but you also find a message on one of the walls. If you shift all of the letters back by one, the message reads WALLS HIDE SECRETS. Eventually you’ll find a secret door which will help you to escape the maze that you’re in. It took some time to find it but I finally discovered that by typing in PUSH WALL it revealed the secret passage.

Pushing on a wall to reveal a secret door reveals then the second difficult puzzle in this game. A hole with a locked grate over the top of it. This is another part of the game that I had to look up the solution for. Once I discovered the answer to getting by the locked grate I was a little upset with myself. I wonder if I had given myself a lot of time to ruminate on it if I would have arrived at a solution. It is unclear but what is clear is how ingenious the solution is. One of your inventory items is a pistol. If you open up the pistol and look inside you’ll discover bullets. If you open the bullets you’ll discover gunpowder. One of the other inventory items in your handy knapsack is a book of matches. I am sure you can now deduce how to get by the locked grate. I’ve never seen a solution like this yet in any of the games that we’ve covered. Genius and diabolical all rolled into one.

Once you’re by this obstacle you’ll find yourself at a chasm. If you LOOK CHASM you’ll find a jeweled dagger down on a ledge. This was another difficult puzzle that finally involved using the vine, a banana, and the monkey’s help in order to retrieve the dagger. Once again I had to resort to using a hint here. Roger Olsen was not playing around in his attempt to make this a much more difficult game than his predecessors.

The jeweled dagger is one of the four treasures you’re meant to find. You’ll next find yourself in the throne room and attacked by swarms of ants and this is where pulling the Aardvark out of the knapsack comes in handy.

The four treasures you’re meant to find are: Ali Baba’s sword, an amulet, a deathmask, and the jeweled dagger. You’ll have to contend with a mummy in order to obtain the amulet. Having already played Pyramid of Doom helped me to deal with the mummy as the solutions were the same.

Once you have the four treasures in hand you’ll find that you can make your way out the front of the pyramid via the heavy door that you could not open before. Once you make your way back to the tent and deposit the four treasures you’ll find yourself victorious.

I did not feel very victorious because I had to resort to “cheating” not once but three different times to get myself through the game which has been very uncharacteristic of me to this point. I didn’t even have this kind of problem playing the venerable Zork I the very first time. There were three very difficult puzzles to overcome in Pyramid. They were not the only puzzles but they represent three monumental hurdles. This brings up the question of game design and implementation. Was this game truly so hard compared to anything else I’ve played to this point or is the implementation and execution of the puzzle design flawed? Where the locked grate puzzle is concerned I would venture to say that the puzzle is ingenious and more than fair. Very difficult but makes a lot of logical sense and you had all of the items in your possession to solve it. I think it is asking a lot for a player to think of opening up the pistol, emptying it of it’s bullets, then opening the bullets to obtain the gunpowder but what an ingenious and devious puzzle, and, if we’re being honest, fair and logical. Great stuff. However the GET ROCKS and PUT ROCKS solution to create a dam to free the boat and tying a banana to a vine to get a monkey to crawl down it to get the jeweled dagger both seem like a bit much. I could probably spend an entire blog post talking about adventure game puzzle design vs. real world logic with several examples, and while I may very well do that in a future post, I won’t do so here.

Pyramid does not have many map locations however it replaces size with several devious puzzles which are likely to befuddle and frustrate the average player. Despite my frustrations with Pyramid I can’t help but be impressed with the offerings presented by Roger Olsen, Bob Retelle, and the rest of the Aardvark crew. It is with the completion of Pyramid that we finally close the door on 1980 and in my next blog post it is time for the Retrogamestrove.com Awards as I present the awards for the 1980 Game of the Year for CRPG and Text Adventure categories. Until next time….

Nuclear Sub is an interactive text adventure written by Bob Retelle who also wrote Trek Adventure. Nuclear Sub was published by Aardvark originally for the OSI/Compukit but was later ported to the C64/128, Timex Sinclair, TI-99/4a, TRS-80, TRS-80 CoCo, and the VIC20. I played the C64/128 version.

One of the very first puzzles which you have to solve is finding a circuit board and installing it so that you can get the computer operational. Once you have the computer up and running you realize the ship is in serious trouble.

The game seems reminiscent of Retelle’s previous Trek Adventure in that it seems you need to repair the ship. This was a false assumption on my part and in reality what you want to do is escape the ship. Once I discarded one paradigm for another the game began to make much more sense to me.

There are two different hatches in the game that will not open for you. The first hatch is jammed and will not open all the way. In order to open this hatch and reveal new locations you’re going to have to throw a heavy chair at it. The second hatch has a broken latch that will not open. The solution to open this hatch is a little bit trickier. You’ll need to find and don a pair of gloves and pick up a leaky battery. Pouring the leaking battery acid on the broken latch will get the hatch to open. Opening this hatch however leads to a flooded compartment and my untimely death due to drowning. I had to start the game over a few times, and I finally remembered to channel the spirit of Scott Adams and I typed in HOLD BREATH and this works long enough for you to dive down and open a locker where you’ll find a set of scuba gear and a lantern. Once you put the scuba gear on you won’t have to worry about losing oxygen again.

In another area of the ship you’ll find the reactor room and the smashed reactor control rods. You keep getting an intermittent warning throughout the game that the core temperature of the reactor is rising. If you do not do something about this the ship will explode before you can escape. In the reactor room there is a large puddle on the floor. If you look up you see leaking pipes. In the tool room if you picked up the sledgehammer you can use it here to BREAK PIPES which causes the Reactor Room to flood and thus the reactor to cool off.

Cooling off the reactor and allowing water to flood the compartment also somehow allowed a moray eel and an electric eel to enter the ship. If you’re wearing the rubber gloves that you picked up in the ship’s galley you can pick up the electric eel without harming yourself. If you then type in SHOCK EEL you’re somehow able to use the electric eel to deliver an electric jolt to the moray eel and it goes away.

All that remains now is heading to the torpedo room, climbing into the torpedo tube, and swimming through it to escape. There is a slight problem however. At some point in the game, before the ship loses power, you needed to clear the torpedo tube by typing in FIRE TORPEDO. A torpedo will indeed fire, clearing the torpedo tube so that late in the game you can escape through it. If you do not fire the torpedo in an earlier part of the game then your escape route will be blocked by the said torpedo.

There were a few difficult puzzles in the game but overall I was very impressed. I though the map locations made a lot of sense and I certainly appreciated how your actions in the game could change the game environment. I must say I have really enjoyed Aardvark’s offerings and we have one more game to play from them that they published in 1981 which happens to be the next game on my list. Aardvark’s last game offering in 1980 is Pyramid and I’m looking forward to it. Until next time…

Quest I is a role-playing game that was published by Softside Magazine in August 1981. It was written by a young 13 year-old Brian Reynolds who would go on to design Alpha Centauri, Civilization II, Colonization and several others.

Reynolds originally wrote Quest I for the TRS-80 but the magazine offers versions for the Apple II and Atari 8-bit.

When the game begins character creation is done for you and it is completely random. The game chooses your race which will be either an Elf, a Dwarf, or a human. You are given ratings in strength and dexterity from 3 to 20 and you’re also given a random number of arrows, magic arrows, holy water, and healing potions. You are also given a trusty sword and asked to choose a name.

I chose the character name of Fost based on the character, Fost Longstrider, from Robert E. Vardeman’s excellent War of Powers Series.

If you’ve been paying attention to the screenshots from many of the previous games I’ve covered you’ll find that Fost is a favorite choice of mine for character names.

When you are finished naming your character you are taken to a market place where you have the opportunity to add to your supplies. You type 0 when you are ready to enter the dungeon.

The dungeon itself is comprised of 58 rooms. While the title of the game is Quest I there really is no quest. The goal of the game is to enter the dungeon and acquire as much treasure as you can and get out. Your character is represented by an at sign @ and the assorted creatures are represented by letters of the alphabet. I encountered wraiths, giants, mummies, and orcs.

It is necessary to map the dungeon as you’ll need to remember the way out. Wandering monsters appear throughout the dungeon and can be very deadly. Frequent trips back for supplies are not wise, since more monsters are added each time you re-enter the maze.

One interesting aspect of the game involves your dexterity. The higher your dexterity the more SLOWLY the game moves. This is meant to reflect your higher dexterity which should give you more time to think and react compared to a character with a low dexterity score. Players should be aware however that while this may seem a noteworthy tactic, the more experience you acquire the faster the pace of the game becomes.

When you perish this is what your exit screen looks like:

When you find your way out of the dungeon the computer will give you a list of all of the treasures that you have collected, give you an opportunity to save the game or let you quit if you want to. If you do elect to continue the game will let you go back to the marketplace to replenish supplies but remember if you go back into the dungeon to continue your quest the game repopulates the dungeon with even MORE monsters.

I always struggle a bit with these early CRPGSs that do not have a specific quest or a goal for you to perform. Unless the game is extremely addictive, I find myself struggling to maintain interest. I found that after a couple of hours with the game there really was no reason to continue. I DO want to emphatically point out that the game is extremely well made. The simple and informative graphic representation and the performance of the game are both top notch. The movement and controls, one might argue, perform better than the various Apshai installments. The animation and the speed of the animation is impressive. When you fire an arrow you literally see it streaking towards the enemy. The line of fire is represented by ++++++++++++. The code and the game development are impressive given that Brian Reynolds was only 13 years old when he wrote this.

If there had been some kind of overarching quest to complete, rather than just trying to net a high score, I believe I would have been much more engaged and I certainly would have kept playing until I’d completed the quest.

Still I can’t help but be impressed by the code and the crisp play and speed of this little game. The rooms do not respawn so if you wanted to try and map out all 58 rooms I suppose that you could try but the pace of the game makes that task terribly difficult in a single dungeon foray. Each time you leave and go to the marketplace to replenish supplies and come back the wandering monsters are more numerous. The more experience you accrue the faster the game becomes despite whether or not you have a high dexterity. I spent enough time with the game that I felt that I was able to get a full and satisfying experience from it.

In an interview with his elementary school Reynolds indicates that he wrote Quest 1 during the week of spring break in 1981 and received $100 from SoftSide for his effort. I would have liked to have seen Reynolds work on another role-playing game in his later years but sadly he did not.

The next game on my list, Nuclear Sub, involves me returning to the text adventure format for a harrowing adventure. Until next time….

Explorer is an interactive text adventure written by Philip Ahrens. It was published as a type-in adventure from the AUSBUG magazine, Vol. 1, no. 4 in 1983. AUSBUG was a short lived magazine dedicated to users of the MicroBee which were a series of home computers by Applied Technology. Ahrens would also write Goldmine which was a type-in featured in the same magazine the following year.

The computer was released as a kit, with assembly instructions included in Your Computer magazine, in February 1982. The program was also converted for the Commodore 64/128 by Dean Hodgson and published by Pyramid Software. The title of the game was changed to Cave Explorer.

I mistakenly had Explorer Adventure in my list of games to play for 1980 however after doing more careful research I realized the game was not written until 1983. The fact that this adventure was published in 1983 has us going off the beaten path but I am choosing to document my experience with the game rather than shelf the time and effort that I’ve already put into it.

The game may have been published in 1983 but it centers around a treasure hunt which is a trope that the medium found itself constantly trying to move away from even in 1980. We had just finished both Kidnapped and City Adventure from 1980 which were two very unique text adventures so it came as a bit of a surprise to discover another simple treasure hunt theme but in 1983.

The computer only recognizes one word commands such as directions and a couple of special verbs. North, South, East, West, Up, and Down are your choices as well as the verbs TAKE or LIFT. There is also a magic word that you see written in one area and when you say the word you are transported back ot that area. The treasures that you need to find are a gold nugget, an emerald, a large diamond, a rare stamp collection, a bag of coins, a jeweled crown, and a nest of golden eggs.

The map is surprisingly large with 47 different locations to uncover. Mapping can be a bit tricky and is essential without becoming lost or confused.

This experience with Explorer Adventure was surprising for a couple of reasons. The first is that I mistakenly had it in my 1980 games que and played it when it really was published in 1983. The second surprise or irony is that it played and seemed like a game that was published in 1980 rather than 1983. There were a number of text adventures from 1980, even type-ins, that were much better examples of the art.

Once you find all of the treasures the game informs you that you need to make your way back to where you started.

This was a relatively short game compared to many of the previous games and it only took me about 45 minutes to an hour to beat the game.

I am continually amazed by many of these type-in games that we’ve run across however this was not one of them. It looked and behaved exactly like what you might expect from a type-in game out of a magazine.

Up next is a return to the CRPG genre with Quest I. Until next time…

I was confused when I first read this ad for City Adventure because I wasn’t real clear on what the “Interludes” program was and was fearful that my lack of knowledge may prevent me from playing the game.

Then I discovered that Interludes was an adult computer program in 1980. It is a series of sexual role-playing suggestions and sometimes involves actual physical suggestions to use in the bedroom.

It then became clear to me what the main goal of the game is: Meet Suzy downtown and then bring her back home so that you can get laid.

City Adventure is an interactive text adventure written and published by Software Innovations in 1980 for the TRS-80. I found City Adventure to be different and unique from many of the other text adventures I’d previously played. I just had a similar (and enjoyable) experience with Kidnapped so I was pleasantly surprised to discover another unique text adventure so soon.

Map of City Adventure

You begin the game in your bed and ironically you want to end the game in your bed; however hopefully not alone. There are a number of items that you’re going to want to take with you from the bedroom. You’re going to want to grab a five dollar bill from inside of your wallet as well as a note and then you’re going to want to pick up and read the book that is in the nightstand. The book is a manual on how to train dogs; specifically to fetch.

You have trouble reading the note because you can’t find your glasses. You’ll find you will have trouble reading most anything without the pesky glasses; somehow you were able to read the dog training book though.

There are a couple of puzzles you’ll have to solve in the house before you leave. The first puzzle involves training the dog in the basement to fetch your glasses for you. The box of cookies from the kitchen pantry will help with this task.

Once you have your glasses you’re then able to read the note and discover that you have to meet Suzy downtown at 45th and 6th. This leads to the second and much tougher puzzle in the house and that is getting OUT of the house. There is a security system enabled and you have to disable the alarm system so that the front door will click open and allow you to leave.

While searching the house you discover a cassette tape labeled “security codes” and you also discover a cassette player in an office in the house.

Bypassing the security system

Seems simple enough right? The solution is right in front of you correct? Wrong! I wrestled with the parser for quite some time and I could not figure out how to get the cassette tape to play. I could load it into the player but just couldn’t get it to play no matter what I typed. So I had to solve the security issue the old fashioned way. There are buttons on the security panel labeled A through E and when you press the correct digit you get a green light. If you guess correctly again you’ll get 2 green dots on the panel and so on. You need five green dots in order to successfully leave the house. When you guess incorrectly you get a red dot and you have to begin the process all over again. So in this fashion I had to go through all of the mathematical possibilities until I had the correct alarm code. It wasn’t the route the game would have liked me to take but it got the job done and I was finally able to leave the house.

Once you’re outside of the house the game really opens up and there are a number of locations to explore. You’re going to want to catch the bus downtown, however the bus driver only takes exact change and cannot break your five dollar bill. So this next section of the game involves a drug store and a soda machine so that you can purchase items in order to give you exact change for the bus. In an alleyway you also find some graffiti that reads: “for some real magic go to 39th and eleventh!!” This is an important clue which will come in handy later.

Once you’re on the bus it takes you downtown and drops you off. The game does a brilliant job of creating the illusion of a huge city. Rather than map out all of the streets which seem endless I included relevant street intersections on the map.

There is one “wrinkle” to the game that caused me to have to begin all over again TWICE! Once you train your Doberman in the basement he usually stays with you. Sometimes however if you’re interacting with the parser quite a bit and experimenting with the surrounding environment your Doberman will leave you. You want the Doberman to stay with you. When you are walking around downtown there is every chance that you’re likely to get mugged. If you have the Doberman with you the dog will scare the mugger off. If the Doberman wanders away from you then the mugger will steal from you and likely take something that will then “soft lock” the game for you.

There are four major areas of interest while walking downtown. I found Suzy exactly where she was supposed to be. You really don’t have to worry about interacting with her; once you find her she just tags along with you much like the Doberman. At 42nd and 10th I find a piece of scrap metal and when I wash the piece of scrap metal at a fire hydrant on 42nd and 11th I find that I have a SHINING MAGIC RING. There is an inscription in the ring that you can read as depicted above. This is where the graffiti hint from the alley comes in handy. If you head to 39th and 11th you’ll find a Magic Shop there.

If you then type in SAY ONE you and Suzy are suddenly teleported back to your bedroom and in your bed.

If you then try to kiss Suzy or try any number of sexually aggressive things you get the message: “M-M-M. THIS IS FUN. BUT YOU STILL HAVEN’T COMPLETED YOUR ADVENTURE”

Remember the advertisement for the game? It stated that knowledge of the Interludes program would be helpful. So I went back to the office in the house and sat in front of the TRS-80 located on the desk. I typed LOAD INTERLUDES and it answered LOADED. I then literally grabbed the TRS-80 and took it back to the bed with me.

Once in bed if you type in: TYPE RUN then you’ll find you have successfully completed the adventure. I am then assuming you and Suzy are following directions from the Interludes program and having a great time. The TRS-80 computer in the bed with us seems like an issue but this is just a computer game after all.

I thoroughly enjoyed this game. Everything about it was extremely unique from the locations to the puzzles and even the ultimate end goal. I’m used to treasure hunts or trying to vanquish a dragon or a vampire not trying to get a girl into bed with me.

The next game on my list is a text adventure entitled Explorer. Until next time….

Kidnapped was written by Peter Kirsch and published as a type-in for Softside magazine in December of 1980.

We have played and experienced some great games that were featured in this same magazine. In Search of Dr. Livingston, Mad Scientist, Catacombs of the Phantoms, Volcano Adventure, and Dante’s Inferno were all type-in adventures featured in the same title. Softside Magazine would later feature an Adventure of the Month series and we will soon be playing and reviewing those games as well.

I really enjoyed Kidnapped and the game took me quite by surprise. I am amazed at how good these type-in adventures have been and Kidnapped does not disappoint. It has an original premise that we have not seen before. You’ve been kidnapped and you find yourself at the top of a 9 story building. You need to make your way down level by level in order to escape. Each level of the building has it’s own set of puzzles and unique problems that you need to solve. Some levels are fairly routine while other levels are much more difficult. I did map out each of the levels of the building but each level is so small that you may find mapping by hand unnecessary.

Items that you find on each of the levels are only used to solve the particular set of problems on THAT level. All items vanish from your inventory as you make your way down the building from one level to the next. The ninth level of the building, depicted above, was one of the more difficult levels to move off of. Items that prove useful on this level are a chair, flashlight, and electrical tape. You’re going to need to get the elevator operating again so that you can make your way down to the next floor. However the exposed wires providing power to the elevator are “hot” so you’re going to need to coordinate your repairs with a building blackout that occurs at midnight. It’s really some very ingenious and original puzzle creation.

The next level is a relatively short one which involves an aquarium filled with piranhas, a guard dog, and some rope. You will find that once you’ve solved the puzzle on the particular level that you’re on that getting down to the next level is done in a number of original ways.

The seventh level of the building might be the most difficult level of them all. It involves trying to wrest a dollar from a burglar that happens to be robbing a vault on this floor. Useful items on this floor include a string vending machine, a tank of helium gas, a gun, a large deflated balloon, some wood glue, and an old wooden step. The objects lend themselves to a very plausible idea of what you need to do but wrestling with the parser until you make your way off of the floor is another issue. Once again however the games originality shines through here.

Level six involves some sexy young office girls and having to fashion yourself a new suit. Knitting needles as well as a ball of yarn come into play here. You must find a way to wrest the small key from the sexy young office girls.

One of the sheer joys of this game are the nine diverse levels that you have to make your way though. I can’t remember the last time I had this much fun with a text adventure because once you successfully complete one floor and make your way to the next one you just never know what it is that you’re going to find. The puzzles and levels are borderline absurd but they work quite well logically and as stand-alone mini-adventures.

There is no greater example of this than finding Mary Poppin’s Umbrella on level five. The only floor that was perhaps more absurd was the eighth floor housing the aquarium of piranhas or the very challenging second floor.

On the next floor you quite literally have to experiment and turn yourself into Mr. Hyde in order to deal with the steel door. Does it make a lot of sense? No but it was very cool anyway.

The next level involved a small plant, a trap door, a water cooler, paper cup, flute, and rope. The originality here from one floor to the next once again really stands out.

The last level involves a small book, some quicksand, rope, and a piano. It was another challenging level. The ninth, seventh, and second floors were the three hardest for me in particular compared to the other floors.

If you’re a text adventure fan, and you have not yet played Kidnapped by Peter Kirsch, I highly recommend you do so. I had a lot of fun with this one, it’s premise, originality, absurd puzzles from one floor to the next, all served to provide a lot of entertainment. A gem in the rough for me in a year of a lot of text adventures. I was able to finish this one on my own and I had a lot of fun doing so.

The next game on my list is another text adventure from 1980 entitled City Adventure. Until next time….

Drac Is Back is a computer role-playing game which was written by Ted Clawges and published by Syncro, Inc. for the Atari 800 in 1981.

The cover art for the game is actually pretty cool and in the early days of home computer games it was the box cover art that fired imaginations and enticed people to buy.

Drac Is Back is a text based game that has you set out to explore Dracula’s Castle. In all honesty the format and amount of involvement is a bit of a let down after getting fired up over the cover art from the box.

There really are not a lot of choices that you make in this particular game. There is a store in which you buy equipment and then inside the castle you choose which direction you want to go in but then your choices end there. The food you purchase in the store is automatically consumed as you play, the game uses the correct weapon for each foe as long as you have it in your inventory, combat is automatic and requires no input, and gold is automatically picked up.

When you start at the store you want to buy as much of everything as you can. There are three different kinds of monsters that you encounter in the game. Monsters, Vampires, and Werewolves. Armor is your protection against damage while a sword is necessary in order to slay the Monsters. A cross will keep vampires away from you so that they cannot cause damage and stakes are necessary for killing the Vampires. The bullets are silver and needed for killing Werewolves.

So the above picture is what a typical room depiction in Dracula’s Castle looks like. You may encounter any one of the three creature types or all of them at the same time as shown here. You are given a room number, the amount of gold in the room, and creatures present. You are then asked for ” your decision?”

The only real choice is to Attack and once you hit A the combat is resolved quickly for you as long as you have the appropriate inventory. Each time you slay a vampire a stake is removed from your inventory and each time you slay a werewolf it costs you a bullet as well. Your sword and armor will only last so long as well and both will eventually have to be replenished. If you do not attack but try to leave the room without killing the creatures within they get a parting shot at you and you will see your life counter decrease with a successful attack. Once you kill all of your enemies if you leave the room you pick up a percentage of the gold that was listed in the description. You rarely get it all and in some cases your percentage might actually end up being 0 and you get none of it. It is imperative that you get as much gold as possible because each visit to the store you will need to replenish all of your supplies.

The food that you purchase is quite literally your hit points so you definitely do not want to run out of food. A Magic Ring has the power to teleport you to the nearest store and once you use that ability the ring disappears from your inventory and you’ll have to purchase another if you want that perk again. The Magic Ring is 500 gold pieces which is very costly.

The above screen is what a typical map in progress of the castle looks like. You have the option of going N, S, W, or E and it shows where you are on the map and how far away you are from a particular store.

There are other special events which may occur as you visit different rooms within the castle. Sometimes a demon appears to steal all of your money which is extremely irritating. It is best that if you do not spend all of your money at the store that you store it in the bank. Do not take extra money with you for this very reason. Igor will sometimes randomly appear as well and steal your cross which then makes you very vulnerable to the vampires which you encounter. You may encounter Dracula as well who cannot be killed and he will take everything you have and also cut your hit points in half!

Drac Is Back is particularly easy to play. There just isn’t much to it. It does get progressively hard to “last” in the game because of the mechanics. The problem that I have with Drac Is Back is that there is no overarching purpose or plot. Your only goal is to move through the castle to acquire gold. It is hard to amass much gold however because you need to constantly reinvest your winnings into purchasing more equipment. There isn’t a score that is kept to try and beat; there is no quest to perform; there is no real endgame. When one of these games that I encounter has a particular quest to perform I find I am obsessed with trying to complete that particular quest. For example, even Catacombs of the Phantoms had a particular quest to perform and I stuck with that game until I emerged victorious. In Drac Is Back there is no purpose other than to see how long you can last and even then there is no prior score to compare to or try to beat. I played Drac Is Back for about four hours until I felt quite saturated with the experience and that I had enough information to do an informed write up for you.

For my next game challenge I am facing a 1980 text adventure entitled Kidnapped in which I’ve been abducted and have to escape from a multi-story building. Until next time…