Author: professor6153

The House of Thirty Gables is an interactive text adventure written by Bill Miller and published by Instant Software. It appears that this is the only adventure game written by Miller who also wrote the Eliza-like “Dr. Chips” for Adventure International. It was the only adventure game published by Instant Software as well although an ex-employee, Bob Liddil, would go on to start the Programmer’s Guild.

House of Thirty Gables ended up being somewhat of a unique game. The game has a number of red herrings and sports a rather unusual and original hint system. The game’s goal is to collect a number of gold coins and other treasures while dealing with various puzzles and creatures.

The sign on the wall reads; “Please Don’t Feed The Troll” When you take the dimly lit stairs down you do indeed encounter a troll. This seems like an intentional nod to Zork however the troll is one of the game’s red herrings. You find both an ax and an apple in the house before heading down the stairs. The ax is also a red herring. If you use the ax on the troll the game responds with; ONE MIGHTY BLOW FROM YOUR AX HAS KILLED THE POOR INNOCENT TROLL.

If you then LOOK you’ll see: A POOR MURDERED TROLL LIES IN THE CORNER.

If you feed the apple to the troll it will eat the apple however you will “softlock” the game for yourself as you will need the apple later in the game. The point is that you never even need to deal with the troll at any point in the game. Both the troll and ax are a bit of misdirection.

The game uses a point system and rewards you points for finding coins and treasures. This is nothing unique and was a popular text adventure trope during this time period however what WAS unique is the way in which the points were rewarded. You ultimately want to try and achieve 80 points in order to win the game. You receive 5 points for 8 different gold coins that you extract from the legendary house for a total of 40 points. You receive 10 points for a green emerald and another 10 points for a brilliant ruby for a total of 60 points. You’ll receive a final 20 points for returning these treasures to the surface where you initially started the game.

The game has a rather unique built in hint system. You can spend your gold coins in your possession for hints. The original Colossal Caves offered hints and we’ve played other games that will sometimes give you a hint however this is the first time we’ve encountered a game that lets you use your treasure items to purchase a hint. As the game progressed it felt a little bit like “cheating” because I would spend my gold coin for a hint with a puzzle I was having difficulty with and if I perished I would not spend my treasure currency in a later game. Obviously if you spend your gold coins on hints then you’re not going to be able to achieve a top score of 80.

One of the more difficult puzzles involves you trying to obtain an emerald from a giant snake. You are ultimately bitten and then have only 10 moves in which to find an antidote. Luckily the antidote that you need is close by.

How is this for unique? One of the gold coins that you find is actually another red herring. If you attempt to pick the coin up a heavy steel grate crashes down trapping you in the room. You then hear a rumbling sound as the ceiling begins to lower.

The game continues with; THE CEILING LOWERS ANOTHER FOOT. CEILING HEIGHT IS NOW 3 FEET !

YOU SEEM TO BE HAVING A BIT OF TROUBLE. I WILL GIVE YOU A HINT BUT IT WILL COST YOU A GOLD COIN. DO YOU WANT THE HINT?

If you answer YES at this point you get the following:

THE HINT IS: PMPH IS THE WORD

If you say PMPH at the prompt you’re rewarded with the following response:

CHUCKLE, CHUCKLE. MAN ARE YOU GULLIBLE

THE CEILING DROPS TO WITHIN 1 FOOT OF THE FLOOR! YOU ARE FLAT ON YOUR STOMACH.

You then are offered the following prompt from the game:

YOU SEEM TO BE HAVING A BIT OF TROUBLE. I WILL GIVE YOU A HINT BUT IT WILL COST YOU A GOLD COIN. DO YOU WANT THE HINT?

If you answer YES you receive the following:

I APPRECIATE YOUR TRUST and the game then opens the gate so that you can escape. This entire sequence however cost you two gold coins to escape with one gold coin; resulting in a net loss of a coin. If you avoid this room completely you’ll finally achieve a score of 80. You must know that it took me a couple of playthroughs and some experimentation to reach this conclusion.

A large serpent, not to be confused with the green snake guarding the emerald, guards a gold coin and this is where your apple will finally come in handy. The timing and posting sequence took me more than a few tries as you’ll discover if you play the game yourself.

I did end up reaching the high score of 80 points but not without spending some of my treasure currency in earlier game attempts. House of Thirty Gables ended up being a rather unique experience and it is the first game for home computers in 1980 whereby you can spend treasure for hints. The number of red herrings, unique puzzles, and sarcastic humor was enough to keep my interest and appreciate the game despite it being another treasure hunt.

My next gaming experience involves a CRPG from 1981 entitled Drac Is Back! Until next time…

Escape From Mars is an interactive text adventure written by Rodger Olsen and published by Aardvark. They published six games in 1980 and I’ve played four of them thus far including this one. Trek Adventure, Vampire Castle, and Deathship were the previous three. Escape From Mars was originally written for the Ohio Scientific (OSI) and then later ported to the Commodore 64/128, Sega SC-3000, TI 99/4a, Timex Sinclair, TRS-80 Coco, VIC20 and even the PC.

Escape From Mars, as the title suggests, is a game which finds you stranded on the titular planet. You have to repair your ship in order to escape. It is a rather tight game with a limited number of locations which serves the game quite well. You begin the game in the engine room of your ship and a textbook found in that location reveals that you need alcohol for fuel. A bill found in the locker describes what is needed to make a still. This information embarks you on a quest for equipment and ingredients so that you can escape.

It is imperative that you obtain what is called an oxybottle from the ship. This allows you to survive in the atmosphere of the planet as you move from location to location. You have a limited number of moves with this piece of equipment which seems to function much like an oxygen tank and each time you return to the engine room the oxybottle automatically recharges. If you do not get back in time before your oxygen runs out you perish and have to begin the game all over again. I speak from experience.

The first puzzle in the game which caused me some consternation was trying to discern how to remove the injector and tubing which I found in a cellar and maze below a Martian home. While exploring the inside of a Martian home I pulled aside a rug to reveal a trapdoor. You can only open the trapdoor by smashing it with the jeweled club that you find inside of a sandsled. A ramp below the trapdoor reveals a maze which contains an injector that you need and also a cellar which contains some tubing which is also essential. The problem is that when you pick these items up the game will not let you carry them back up the ramp because of their weight. I could also find no other exits out of the maze. This particular conundrum turned into a considerable time suck for me until I broke a large stand up mirror also found in the Martian home. Breaking the mirror revealed a secret passageway that leads to an observatory and a ledge where I find a coil of rope. Once I had the coil of rope in hand I took said rope to a well and tied it to a statue near the well. This allowed me to climb down the well which also leads to that same maze found beneath the Martian Home. In this way I was able to finally remove the injector and tubing. I questioned why climbing up a rope with these items was easier than walking up a ramp with them but remember it is an adventure game puzzle not real life.

The rest of the game involves you collecting the ingredients to make alcohol. You’ll have to grow some wheat, obtain water, light a fire and voila! you have alcohol.

The Aardvark writers and publisher seem to have a fascination with pockets. Once again I encountered an issue where the suit I was wearing contains a pocket. If you do not open the pocket and look inside; the harmonica and lighter contained therein will not be added to your inventory or accessible. Once you DO look inside the pocket however you can obtain or use both items. You’ll need the lighter to light the fire to make your alcohol and you’ll need the harmonica to lure a Martian to you. Yes that’s right. Whichever location you’re in, if you play the harmonica, over and over, a Martian will eventually appear (you hear a rustling sound coming closer and closer each time you type PLAY HARMONICA – which makes me wonder what a Martian looks like) which you can then capture with your NETS. Once you have captured the Martian you can then take his helmet which you’ll use to collect some water from a swamp.

Once you’ve made your alcohol it is a simple matter of getting back to the ship and then taking off. I liked this game and thought it was another fine offering from Aardvark. All of the text adventures I’ve played from the company so far have had an interesting plot, tight map locations, and a goal to accomplish. They have avoided the treasure hunt trope which was famous during this period. I still have two more text adventures from them to experience yet.

My next challenge involves another text adventure entitled the House of Thirty Gables – that’s a whole lot of gables! Until then…

Catacomb of the Phantoms was written by Tom Plassman and was featured in the June 1981 issue of SoftSide. SoftSide is a defunct computer magazine, begun in October 1978 by Roger Robitaille. Dedicated to personal computer programming, SoftSide was a unique publication with articles and line-by-line program listings that users manually keyed in. Catacombs of the Phantoms was one such program. Softside ended with it’s March 1984 issue.

A young man looking for adventure opportunities in Pettieville is pointed in the direction of a doddering old wizard. The old man mentions the Catacombs of Phantoms and that deep within these catacombs lies the Golden Goddess of Power that the Sorcerer Agalinta was rumored to have hidden. So you strike out in the hopes of finding this Golden Goddess.

Catacombs of the Phantoms is a text based game. Your player character moves deeper and deeper through numbered chambers in order to find the final prize. Each player character has two ability scores: Strength and Agility. The Strength score is a measure of health or hit points while the Agility score affects combat ability. In combat, the player’s Agility is compared with that of the monster’s which determines how much Strength is lost in the fight.

The game is made to play in a single sitting however it is quite hard to beat. Part of the strategy for beating the game involves you finding and wresting control of a fountain from the creature guarding it. If you drink from the fountain it increases your Strength score based on the number of experience points you have (which you get by defeating monsters) and increases your Agility score based on the amount of gold that you’ve acquired. The Golden Goddess of Power is guarded in the deepest level of the Catacombs by a Giant with 300 Strength. In order to even have a chance of defeating this guardian, you’re going to have to stay alive long enough to accrue many more points than that. This involves carefully mapping out the entire complex because it is imperative to know where the fountains are located so that you can backtrack and visit them several times. The fountains have a random limited usage so it is important that you have control of more than one fountain.

Each time you play Catacombs of the Phantoms the rooms and their contents are randomly generated so that each game is different. Above is an example of how I mapped out the four dungeon levels in what ended up being a winning run. The game is surprisingly addictive and while it is meant to be played in one sitting it is surprisingly very difficult. I died many, many times before finally winning the game.

Each room that you find may have a monster, a treasure chest, and a fountain. The fountains are rare and you may find that there are only 2 to 3 of these throughout the four dungeon levels. It is important that each time you encounter a dungeon denizen you look closely at your opponent’s Strength and Agility and compare them to yours. I found that if the scores were equal you could prove victorious but at the cost of many Strength points. If your Strength score isn’t almost double that of your adversary’s it may be best to choose to Flee; which is an option. If you do Flee, the monsters get a free attack upon you.

The game derives it’s name because quite often a sexy phantom will appear to offering you aid or assistance. You get the choice of accepting that aid with a simple Yes or No. If the phantom does indeed aid you it can provide you with clues or special codes that do special things. Sometimes however the phantom, once you answer Yes to accept her help, pulls a knife and stabs you in the stomach doing quite a bit of damage. Late in what ended up being a winning run for me, I kept choosing No to avoid aid because I couldn’t take the chance of being wounded.

The only input allowed by you as the player character is typing in which room number you want to travel to next. The other special instruction codes are as follows:

• 77 – to fight a monster
• 88 – to search a chest for gold or items
• 99 – to drink from a fountain
• 102 – to use a worm
• 200 – to leave from the natural exit

The player begins each new game with three “worms”. What a “worm” allows you to do is drill or burrow a tunnel to the next level below from wherever you are on the current map. You get to do this three times and then lose the ability. Sometimes a “worm” is necessary because there is no exit or way to continue lower based on the random generation of the Catacombs. Other times you may choose to use it strategically to help win the game.

The final battle is extremely difficult and I barely pulled it off. It was actually a nail-biter and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this game. It reminded me a little bit of Devil’s Dungeon the way it is setup however I enjoyed Catacombs of the Phantoms MUCH MORE.

Once you defeat the Giant and obtain the Golden Goddess of Power you are granted a wish which will send you home. Some of these line-by-line type in programs are fairly amazing and quite enjoyable. If you feel comfortable using an emulator and can find a copy of the game I suggest that you give it a try.

The next game on the docket in my journey through time involves me moving from these catacombs to the depths of space. I will be tackling an interactive text adventure entitled Escape from Mars. Until then…

Deathship was written by Rodger Olsen in 1980 and published by Aardvark. It was originally written for the Ohio Scientific Computer but later ported to the C16/Plus4, the Commodore 64/128, PC, TI-99/4a, Timex Sinclair, TRS-80, TRS-80 Coco, and the VIC20. I played the Commodore 64 version of Deathship.

Deathship is an interactive text adventure and it was the first of six adventures that were written for the Ohio Scientific in 1980.

We had already covered both Trek Adventure and Vampire Castle and so I was curious to see how Deathship would rate compared to the previous two games.

I had a few parser issues with Deathship but despite those issues I thought the game was well done. I found the map to be very tightly put together and the game was challenging. It reminded me a bit of Secret Mission by Scott Adams.

When the game begins you discover that there is a bomb on board the ship and that you need to find and disarm the bomb before 9:00.

The map itself is very much a large part of the game.

You can go into a lifeboat from the Aft Deck and retrieve a flashlight. You find from exploring the ship that you’ll have to scramble down an anchor chain in order to get access to a porthole. Once you’re in the room you’re going to have to turn on the flashlight and that’s when you discover that the map itself is the puzzle. The map can be tedious because you need to discover ways to get from point A to point B and because you’re trying to find and disarm a bomb you’re on a time limit.

One of the harder puzzles reminded me of Vampire Castle by a different author but released by the same company and so I wonder if there wasn’t some “bullpen banter” involved as the “crate puzzle” was the first of it’s kind that I had encountered in Vampire Castle and lo and behold the same kind of puzzle is here in Deathship.

If you break the crate up to see what is inside you’ll “softlock” yourself from being able to finish the game. You first need to take the crate to the bow of the ship and use it to stand on so that you can reach the rope found on the top of the flag pole. Once you have the rope in your possession you then tie the rope off to a railing and use the rope to access yet another porthole.

The game is diabolical this way in that you need to economize your movements because you are on a timer to find and defuse the bomb and you also have to be careful with your flashlight as well and remember to turn it on and off when entering and leaving darkened areas.

There is an odd puzzle in the game involving the radio being nailed down and once you remove the nails and lift the radio you’ll find a cutter underneath which you absolutely need to defuse the bomb. This falls into the unfair play category just a bit because there is no rational reason for a cutter to be located under a radio that is nailed down.

The hardest part of the game is reminiscent of the Scott Adams game. You not only need to cut the wire on the bomb with the cutter you’ve found but then you need to submerge the bomb in water to deactivate it. Every time you try to carry the bomb to the swimming pool on the ship the bomb blows up as you run out of time. The solution is to take some water from the swimming pool with a bucket you find in a janitor’s closet and carry the bucket from the Aft Deck to the hallway off the Midship’s Deck. You drop the buck of water there and you’ll find you can then carry the bomb with the wire that you’ve cut to that point and you drop the bomb in the bucket for the win. Very devious.

I thought the plotting and map to be very tight and the puzzles to be fairly tough. There were some parser issues because I knew I had to climb down the anchor chain as an example and finally found after many tries that GO ANCHOR is what I needed to type to climb down the anchor chain. I also found that after I manipulated my environment like OPEN LOCKER or BREAK CRATE as examples that my description wouldn’t refresh. I would have to type LOOK AROUND to see what my actions had uncovered. All in all I enjoyed my experience with the game and if you want to play a challenging text adventure you’ll find one right here.

For my next game I’m going back to a CRPG from 1981 called Catacombs of the Phantoms. Until next time…

Catacombs was developed and published by J.K. Greye Software and published by Melbourne House in the United States. It was released in 1981 for the ZX81 and Timex TS1000.

Catacombs involves the exploration of randomly generated dungeon levels. You are represented by an asterisk as shown above and as you move about; the current dungeon level layout is slowly revealed to you. I have always been a sucker for this overhead Fog of War view in dungeon crawl games. Though Fog of War is used in the context of the military it is also a gaming term. It simply refers to areas of the map that you have not yet discovered or explored. Areas of the map marked in black or gray are areas that the player has not yet explored. Once you explore these areas, the black parts of the map will become revealed. In recent gaming years this term is not used as much as it used to be. It became a staple for many of the early computer role-playing games.

There is not a specific quest that needs to be completed in Catacombs. The only goal is to simply stay alive. Much like Rogue which was released in 1980, Catacombs uses letters and ascii to represent creatures and treasure. Your mission on each randomly generated level is to find food represented with a capital F and food acts as literal hit points as they increase your strength as you gobble them up. A problem with this game is that your strength decreases constantly throughout the game at a speed of 1 point per second whereas in Rogue you lost strength or hit points when you moved. So you’ll find you can’t find food fast enough in these randomly generated dungeons. You are always on the clock and on the run.

When you slay a monster your strength can increase as well so this is yet another way to improve your hit points. So you increase your strength rating by finding food and by slaying adversaries. The monsters are represented by letters and they are assigned starting positions in the dungeon when the level is randomly generated. When you get close to a creature and it steps on your square combat is then initiated. Catacombs is an auto-battler, meaning the combat is automatically calculated as the character and monster trade blows each round. Damage done to each other is determined by strength values and the difference between strength values. In my play throughs I ran across Orcs, Dragons, Trolls, Minotaurs, and a Phoenix.

You also want to accumulate the treasures that you find along the way and you can see my character next to a treasure icon up above.

In each dungeon level there is an EXIT which takes you to the next dungeon level. The screen will fade to black and there will be a pause as the next dungeon level is generated.

I did encounter a trap on one of the randomly generated levels and the game had me guess a number between 1 and 5 to escape the trap. I guessed incorrectly on the first attempt, was still caught in the trap, and had to guess a second time. I died in that trap after three consecutive incorrect guesses (that is some bad luck). I did not encounter another trap in any of my other play sessions so random traps must be quite rare.

There was no way to “win” in Catacombs as there was no specific quest to complete. The “win” was getting the opportunity to play and experience this early game.

For my next gaming experience I am going back to 1980 and to the interactive text adventure format to play Deathship. “It’s a cruise ship – but not the Love Boat and survival is far from certain” said COMPUTE! magazine in the November/December 1980 issue.

The Poseidon Adventure is the eighth adventure game that Roger M. Wilcox wrote for the TRS-80 in 1980. And I’ve had the pleasure of playing them all. The seven previous games that I’ve covered already are: Misadventure, Star Cruiser, Jailbreak, Space Traveller, Nuclear Submarine, India Palace, and lastly the Vial of Doom.

Wilcox at one point renamed the game The Upside Down Adventure out of fear that 20th Century Fox might sue for trademark infringement.

Greg Hasset released Devil’s Palace in 1980 as well and it was the eighth game that Hasset had made. He had set out to make a game that was much harder than any of his previous adventures and he certainly accomplished that. I believe that Roger M. Wilcox set out to emulate that experience because The Poseidon Adventure is frustratingly hard.

It’s not that puzzles were obtuse or undecipherable; or that the map itself was difficult to discern or create; it’s that there are hidden expectations regarding the parser that the player is somehow supposed to be aware of. I had to resort to getting a hint not once but two different times with this game. Let me give you a couple of examples:

In this first example I actually solved what might have been an inventory dilemma quite by accident. In a medical closet you find a bottle of liquid and in an ex-stoner’s cabin you find glycerin. At any point in the game if you type in MAKE and have these two items on your person than you suddenly have a bottle of nitroglycerin in your inventory. I arrived at this solution quite by accident admittedly.

This next example is much more devious. In the cargo hold you find a metal rod and in an underwater pocket you find a metal claw. You must type CONNECT and hit enter and then you’ll suddenly have a crowbar which you’ll need later in the game.

I had to resort to a hint in this last example as well. In a tool room on the ship you discover a drill and a screwdriver. I tried using the the tools in different rooms and in that room but what the parser was looking for in the tool room was for me to type: DRILL

followed by: SCREW

which would then disassemble a wall revealing a hidden room which contains an axe you’ll need for later in the game. In these examples there are no what I would call unfair puzzles or anything that hasn’t been done in other games but it was the execution of the solution or the expectation by the parser that threw me off. You encountered situations like this in Hasset’s Devil’s Palace in a purposeful attempt to make the game harder and I believe you have the same situation here. I don’t mind cerebral puzzles or riddles but playing “guess the surprise verb” makes for a frustrating experience.

Hundreds of games have been created that revolve around licensed properties, with or without permission, and I thought the idea to create a game based on Irwin Allen’s hit movie was a novel idea. The locations in the game and the map itself makes sense and there is a sense of urgency in the game as well but a couple of the odd “parser puzzles” overshadowed the experience for me with this particular game. Overall it has been an absolute pleasure to be able to experience the eight games created by Roger M. Wilcox in 1980. While these games were not commercial games; players will discover that he was just as prolific as a Greg Hasset or Joel Mick.

For my next game I’m taking a break from the interactive text adventures from 1980 and going back into the dungeons with a role-playing game called Catacombs.

Vial of Doom is an interactive text adventure written by Roger M. Wilcox for the TRS-80. The story is based on a 25 page typewritten short story that Wilcox had written a year earlier. Wilcox admitted that his story was influenced a bit by Michael Moorcock’s multiverse.

Wilcox originally thought that the story he had written was way too complicated to turn into a computer game until he read an article about Greg Hassett’s World’s Edge adventure and then became determined to make a game out of the story.

Vial of Doom is the 7th adventure game that Roger M. Wilcox wrote for the TRS-80 in 1980. He considers Vial of Doom to be his first good adventure game, a watershed moment, and 15 more games would inevitably follow.

The interesting thing about all of the games written my Mr. Wilcox is that none of them were released commercially. He finally got around to rewriting his games as WPF .NET applications in 2012 as part of his “remember my past” endeavor. He then made the games available to the public to play whereas before they had only been available for friends and family. I have played his previous six games in the order in which they were written and some of them are better than some of the commercial fare I’ve played. I am thankful that these games are now available to the public.

This game would have been impossible for me to play or finish if I had not taken the time first to read the short story that it is based on. The events which transpire in the game are taken almost verbatim from the story. It would have also been contextually more difficult to operate and understand the “vial of doom” which you’re character is carrying around.

There are not many locations in the game however there are several puzzles to overcome. Getting into the pyramid in the beginning of the game and discovering the “treasure” within is standard adventure game fare and I am sure you can figure things out on your own. Overcoming the puzzles in the other parts of the game are going to involve you using the “vial of doom” in a myriad number of ways. The “vial of doom” is an agent of chaos and you find yourself a pawn now in a much bigger game. Many of the puzzles you’ll easily figure out if you bother to read the short story which the game is based on. There are a couple of minor parser issues where you understand what it is that you need to do but you have to find the right verb but you’ll eventually figure it out.

The next game on tap is going to be Roger M. Wilcox’s last game that he wrote in 1980. He wrote a total of seven games this year and The Poseidon Adventure based on Irwin Allen’s hit movie was the seventh and last game. So when next you hear from me I’ll likely be upside down and underwater.

Will ‘O the Wisp is an interactive text adventure which originally appeared as a type-in in Nibble, Vol. 1, No. 8. (December 1980)

It was later reprinted in Nibble Express and a VIC-20 version was published in Commodore Computing International Vol. 1, No. 11 (March 1983). A C64 version was published in the book CBM 64 Programs – Volume 1, Duckworth Home Computing, 1984. A version for Commodore PET also exists and the game was also later ported to the TI-99/4A and the TRS-80.

The game was written by Mark Capella and it appears to be his only adventure game. He is credited with another, World of Odyssey, which also sold commercially but presumably only a few copies were sold and it is not listed in any Apple II archives nor in any biographies of Mark Capella. The rumor is that a couple of text errors on the back side of data files rendered the game unplayable.

The plot of Will ‘O the Wisp is that you’re a poor country boy who is destined to marry the beautiful Brunhilde the very next day. So you decide to embark on a little adventure before the nuptials. The writing and descriptions throughout the game by Capella are humorous and quite clever. The game has a Princess Bride meets Shrek feel to it.

The game itself is a bit deceptive as there are not many puzzles and seems more a walking simulator much like Dante’s Inferno. Unlike Dante’s Inferno, Will ‘O the Wisp DOES have a parser and the ability to interact with the environment. There are a few puzzles and things that can get you into trouble as you play through the game. The pared down parser however allows for a great deal of text throughout the game and the author makes good use of it.

Some of my favorite passages are those describing the land of the evil witch; Prudence. The dirty, sneaky, little path descriptions had me laughing out loud.

Successfully playing through Will ‘O the Wisp is going to require you to map out the locations by hand. There are four major areas to explore and the size of the game is actually quite large. It will likely take you a few hours to successfully navigate through the game environment.

The cave complex and the land of the evil witch are especially challenging to map out and navigate your way through. I had to resort to mapping by hand and I used four sides of paper before I successfully made my way through to the end.

As I stated earlier there are four major areas within the game: 1) the forest area just outside of your old farmhouse 2) the cave complex 3) Ralph’s castle and then lastly 4) the lands of the evil witch; Prudence. The forested area and Ralph’s Castle are relatively minor mapping chores. Navigating through the cave complex and lands of the evil witch however is a dastardly affair. I was surprised at the amount of time I spent with the game. I cleaned up the forested area and provided you, dear reader with a clear map to get you to the cave complex. The rest is up to you as the heart of the game is a mapping exercise.

There are a couple of puzzles in the game. You’ll encounter a banana peel that you’ll keep slipping and sliding on until you pick it up at which point you can continue on. (in the C64 version I played but in a run through on the PET version I never had this problem with the peel – it was just simply there to take ) You’ll find a discarded bottle in the forested area that you’ll want to pick up as this bottle becomes extremely important late in the game.

Once you make your way through the castle area and encounter said owner of the castle an actual quest makes itself apparent:

Once you realize you’re being tasked with stealing a broomstick from an evil witch the game begins to channel a bit of The Wizard of Oz.

Finding the land of the evil witch is not easily done but once you find it you also discover a puddle of water. I used the bottle in my possession to collect some water.

Once again the humor and tone of the game stand out as you rid yourself of the evil witch. “I’m smelting….!” LOL The broom now in your possession, you have to make your way all the way back to the castle complex and present it to Ralph.

Ralph rewards you by sending you back to your farmhouse but not empty-handed.

I really enjoyed Will ‘O the Wisp. It was engaging and more challenging to map then I’d have thought. The game gets it’s title because as you’re getting close to the end of a particular map section a Will ‘O the Wisp will appear in an attempt to get you to follow it. This is certainly true for the forested area in the version that I played but was of little help in the cavern complex or in the land of the evil witch.

What’s even more amazing to me is that this program, which I rather enjoyed, was a type-in from various magazines Type-in magazines were very popular in the 80s. They were great places to learn to write programs and the published listings were well commented. Tricks used by programmers who wrote their articles were available for all to see and learn. Utilities and games were published in this way and disk were also usually made available containing all of the programs from a single issue for those who didn’t want to enter the programs by hand. We have covered a few of these type-in programs already.

I will be stepping away from commercial products in my next blog post and returning to the Roger M. Wilcox collection with his Vial of Doom; an interactive text adventure.

Galactic Hitchhiker was written by A. Knight for the CompuKit UK 101 which was a clone of Ohio Scientific’s Superboard II.

Galactic Hitchhiker is an interactive text adventure that seems very loosely based on Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The ties are tenuous but the famous catch-phrase from the series “Don’t Panic” appears multiple times during the game and even serves as a password requirement for one particular puzzle.

The game involves exploration of three different planets as well as some time travel. It’s actually a pretty good game and I quite enjoyed my experience with it. The premise of the game is that a mysterious stranger stole your transportation ticket while you’re waiting in a shuttle terminal. You give chase but ultimately discover that you’re stranded on a planet which is experiencing catastrophic earthquakes and is about to explode.

You find a key, after having missed your way off this dying planet, and use it to find a shuttle to escape. Your ship crashes on a planet known as Grecian 2000.

There are actually a lot of different locations to explore and the game is surprisingly large. The game is split into three major sections or areas to explore. The first is on the planet Gerbil as you’re in pursuit of the thief who stole your ticket and you try to escape the dying planet. The second section of the game will involve exploration of the planet; Grecian 2000. Lastly the third section will find you on the planet Gomerial which sports a whopping 24 locations to explore.

Once you crash land on Grecian 2000 there are 13 more locations to explore as well as a couple of a couple of moderately difficult puzzles to solve. Scott Adams was famous for first introducing what I call a location or map puzzle. Many players became accustomed to being told what the possible exits are out of a particular location while playing a game. For example, you’re in a wooded area and exits are to the north and east. Scott Adams took things a step further and attempted to obfuscate things by having the players type in a particular place to go to. We see it used effectively by Mr. Knight in Galactic Hitchhiker. I had hit a stumbling block on Grecian 2000 and wandered about experimentally for a bit until I discovered a new location:

A mountain is described in the background in one of the locations on the map and you can actually type in Go Mountain and you will trudge up the mountain and discover a mountain lodge up there. Going up the mountain had not been an obvious exit or choice. The ability to go there was not given with the other obvious east and west exits. But by typing in GO MOUNTAIN you went to another location all together. This is what I meant by the map itself being a part of the puzzle. At the mountain lodge you find a chopping-axe and a hint which will help much later in the game. You don’t find any old axe, you find a chopping-axe. Things clicked and I went to the only area of the map that seemed impassable, a ravine, that also sported the only blatant description of trees. I typed in chop tree and one of the trees conveniently fell right across the ravine for me.

I crossed the ravine and ended up within a city. There are a couple of important items to find in the city: a tatty old scarf as well as a pair of wire cutters. It was within the city that I encountered another stumbling block and also met an untimely death.

I was having a lot of difficulty getting by a rather surly Gerbicop when I ultimately discovered that I could chop him with the chopping-axe. Well, that was rather grisly but there it is. Getting by the Gerbicop allowed me to find the police telephone box and a rather tatty old scarf. This is an obvious nod to Doctor Who, another infamous series from across the pond.

In the upper level of a small building I found a shuttle service however I was prevented from reaching it by a chain link fence. I had also found some wire cutters so putting two and two together I used the wire cutters on the chain link fence. Only to discover that it was electrified and I died a horrible death. So I had to start the game all over again as there was no save game system in place. The chain link fence was an old “bait and switch” technique and there is another chain link fence in a different location of the map that you’ll get an opportunity to use the wire cutters on.

While exploring this planet I also came up on a little shack which had a still and there was a jug laying there. Well, of course, I typed in GET JUG

I got drunk and died.

Take three.

Once I made my way into a spacetran and it took off there was a button in the room with me. Well of course I pressed the button; and was promptly ejected into space. Getting rescued involved having to use an item in your inventory and it is probably the most difficult puzzle of the game.

Once rescued you find yourself on Gomerial, the third planet or location in the game.

There are 24 different locations to explore on Gomeril. You’ll need to get by a space ranger in one particular location and the solution to doing so will become readily apparent as you continue exploring. One of your inventory items, a large joint of beef, that you acquired on Grecian 2000 will be used to get by another obstacle in a different area of the map.

Eventually you’ll make your way into the plush office of the Temporal Travel Corporation and be asked for a password.

All I will say is remember the famous catch-phrase from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Once you give the correct password and are by Miggy you’ll find yourself in a chamber with an ear-splitting whine and a lever.

Pulling the lever takes you back in time just before the start of the game where you’ll find your ticket that you needed lying on the ground. Remember that you couldn’t go where you needed to because a mysterious stranger had taken your ticket that you dropped. Well since this story involves time travel it appears the mysterious stranger was actually you but from the future.

The map of the first planet is still the same map and you’ll have to make your way, ticket in hand, to the shuttle and catch your ride for real this time.

I thought this game was actually pretty darn good and I recommend that if you haven’t played the game you give it a try. It was fairly original and there were a large number of locations in the game to explore.

My next engagement is going to be with another text adventure from 1980 known as Will O’ Wisp.

Vampire Castle was written by Mike Bassman and published by Aardvark. We recently played Trek Adventure which was also published by Aardvark. The game was written for the Ohio Scientific Computer (OSI) and later ported to the Commodore 64, TRS-80, TRS-80 CoCo and unofficially ported to the Coleco Adam (special thanks to Gareth Pitchford for this information). The tape version sold for $14.95 back in 1981 and the disk version sold for $15.95 which is the equivalent of about $45.50 today.

I must admit that I am a sucker for a good vampire story. It’s a classic showdown between good and evil. Exploring an old castle, encountering the dreaded bloodsucker and then staking it through the heart has been a popular gaming theme thus far. We saw it first with Scott Adam’s The Count from 1979 and again in 1980’s Castlequest where your adversary was also a vampire. Even 1978’s mainframe game Mystery Mansion has a vampire as one of the antagonists. It is a popular theme and I know that going forward through time I will encounter many other vampire-themed games in my journey. Vampire Castle is the second game from 1980 that has slaying a vampire as the main goal (Castlequest being the other). Now that I’ve played the game I’m in the mood to watch Hammer Studio’s production of Horror of Dracula starring Christopher Lee. Many critics lauded Lee’s performance in this film as the best ever depicting Dracula.

I was able to play a DOS conversion of Vampire Castle which you can find HERE if you want to play yourself. If you are going to play you may want to give it a go first before reading a few SPOILERS below.

Vampire Castle is a short game and not too terribly difficult. I was able to play through the entire game with no help except for the fireplace puzzle. I deduced what I needed to do but I was playing guess the verb with the parser and I finally had to resort to a walkthrough only to get the proper wording. I didn’t use the walkthrough to aid me with the game.

I felt that Vampire Castle was another unique game for 1980 because it didn’t use common text adventure tropes from that period. There was no maze and it was not a treasure hunt. You move around and you explore the environment and there is an overarching goal to find the vampire in it’s domain and destroy it.

There were a couple of nice period pieces and interesting twists in the game. One such twist involves finding holy water in an old chapel in the basement. You can collect the holy water with an old bucket that you find on the upper level. Your first assumption is that you’re going to use the holy water in combat with the vampire. Soften him up before the final stake through the heart. But the holy water serves as a bit of a “bait and switch” in that you use it to douse the fire in the fireplace and not against the vampire. I found that to be a clever turn of events. A nice cliched set piece was moving the bookcase in the library to reveal stairs leading to a secret basement below. One other twist in the game involves finding a crate in the hidden basement. You also find a sledgehammer in another area of the castle. Thinking myself very clever, I smashed the crate with the hammer to provide myself with a nice collection of stakes. In a very clever twist, what I did there was “softlock” myself from being able to finish the game. You see before you smash the crate; you’re going to need it late in the game because you need to stand on it to reach something. THEN you can smash the crate. While I didn’t relish starting all over again (there is no save feature) I certainly appreciated the twist and this was something different that I hadn’t encountered yet in all of the text adventures that I have played.

Where I encountered a stumbling block in the game was with the fireplace in the study. I was sure that there was something about the fireplace that concealed a hidden passage. I was bolstered in this belief when I discovered I could put out the fire in the fireplace with the bucket of holy water. I then entered the fireplace itself but then couldn’t figure out what to do next. I tried pushing on the walls of the fireplace, smashing the walls, moving the walls. I probably spent a good twenty minutes guessing different verbs which may work. I finally resorted to a walkthrough and I am thankful that I did because the parser required me to type in BREAK FIREPLACE in order to find the hidden passage.

The hidden passage led me to an old boat and an underwater moat. I used an oar that I found in the castle to maneuver the boat to the other side.

I then found myself in a gallery and once I dealt with the puzzle of the tapestry I found myself in a room beyond with a locked coffin. The key to the coffin you can barter from a large rat you find in a torture chamber who has the key in it’s mouth. You can trade a piece of cheese for the key.

I was then able to kill the vampire with the stakes I’d created from the smashed crate.

Vampire Castle was a fun diversion and it had a couple of unique twists which I’d not encountered yet. The BREAK FIREPLACE parser-ala-palooza was a little frustrating but aside from that I’d recommend this game if you’re a fan of text adventures or the genre and you haven’t yet played it. This was Mike Bassman’s only adventure game and I thought he did a great job.

In a rather abrupt change of pace I’m off to the stars now as I tackle Galactic Hitchhiker; a science fiction text adventure.