Author: professor6153

On the morning of May 18, USGS volcanologist David Johnston, woke up at his campsite on a ridge 6 miles north of the volcano, and radioed in his regular 7 a.m. report. The changes to the bulging mountain were consistent with what had been reported several times daily since the watch began and left no indication of what was about to happen.

“This is it!”

Overhead, Keith and Dorothy Stoffel were making an aerial survey of the volcano when they noticed a landslide on the lip of the summit’s crater, USGS reported. Within seconds, the whole north face of the mountain was on the move. Just as they passed around to the east side of the mountain, the north face collapsed, releasing superheated gases and trapped magma in a massive lateral explosion. Keith put the plane into a steep dive to gain the speed to outrun the cloud of incandescent gas; Dorothy continued to photograph the eruption through the rear windows of the plane as they made their escape.

This landslide released a glowing cloud of superheated gas and rock debris that was blown out of the mountain face moving at nearly supersonic speeds. Everything within 8 miles of the blast was wiped out almost instantly.

The 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption was the most destructive in U.S. history. Fifty-seven people died, and thousands of animals were killed, according to USGS. More than 200 homes were destroyed, and more than 185 miles of roads and 15 miles of railways were damaged. Ash clogged sewage systems, damaged cars and buildings, and temporarily shut down air traffic over the Northwest.

Robert Payne, Mike Hubbard, and Keith Moore were fishing, sixteen miles northwest.

Hubbard recalls; “We could see half a mile of ridgeline. The cloud suddenly loomed over the ridge as a wall. It didn’t continue up but flowed down through the forest toward us. The front was a thousand feet high—boiling, gray, turbulent, coming very fast.”

“I dropped my pole and ran down the bank. I looked back and already it was almost on us, a hundred yards back. Bob ran just behind me, and I glimpsed Keith forty yards back running from the river into taller timber. Just ahead of me was a huge maple tree, four feet in diameter. I dove in behind it, Bob dove in, and it turned black.”

The three men mentioned above, as well as many others on the mountain at the time of the explosion survived.

A month later, Victor Albino decided to write a game based on the events. Originally written in 1980 for the Commodore PET, it later appeared in March 1981 it landed in the magazine SoftSide for the TRS-80.

Volcano Adventure is a very serious game and it pulls no punches. The tension is very real as you are forced to make a series of choices in order to stay alive. The game is very well written by an author who seems hell bent on making the experience as realistic as possible. So much so, that I was under the impression that Victor Albino was present the day Mount St. Helens exploded and was sharing the experience. This is a choose-your-path adventure and you are provided with choices to make at each step as you attempt to make your way off of the mountain.

When you start Volcano Adventure the game begins with a menu option. There is an educational section which describes the events of March 27th, 1980 and then proceeds to explain how and why a volcano erupts. It even provides a side view of a volcano including labels.

The game itself is not very long and I finished it in about 30 – 45 minutes. The choices that you have to make on your harrowing escape from the eruption are not easy and I found myself dying a couple of times. It is a miracle that there were any survivors at all given the conditions of that day. In a sense, you get to relive their story. If you are interested in playing the game yourself you can do so at this link: Volcano Adventure.

I strongly urge you to give this a try as it provides an educational experience as well as a serious glimpse into THE most destructive volcano in U.S. history. The fact that these events were very real makes it a more tension filled, immersive experience compared to any dark, creature infested dungeon of fantasy.

Robert Lafore had received an honorable mention from me for his game Two Heads of the Same Coin which was published in 1979. The entire plot of that game progresses through conversation between the characters and the setting takes place in just one room. It had broken the interactive fiction conventions of that time period.

Robert Lafore is back in 1980 with His Majesty’s Ship Impetuous which is a nod to author C.S. Forester’s Horblower saga.

In this game you play the role of the captain of the Impetuous during a time of war with France and Spain. It reads very much like a choose-your-own-adventure story. The writing is top notch and the story presents you with one hell of an ethical dilemma as well as a couple of difficult choices which greatly affect the story outcome.

The game gives the illusion of complete interaction but in reality it is searching for key words. Your written response may be brief or verbose but certain key words are interpreted the exact same way.

The story holds your interest and the player is prompted to respond to specific situations as they arise. There is an ethical dilemma you’ll have to tackle in this story and the decision is not easily made. I actually played the game more than once and chose differently each time to see how my choices would affect the story.

The player also has to choose who to promote to the position of Lieutenant. Your choices are Lt. Beagle who is fiercely loyal but a bit green in battle or Lt. Wiley who is very good in combat but wants your job or to maul you for supper. Your choice of who you promote has serious ramifications on the story outcome as it progresses.

There are seven total chapters that make up the story and the denouement is when your character finally meets with Admiral Wormwood to review your career. Then you’re involved in a large naval battle. Once again I played the game more than once because I wanted to see what the outcome would be based on my decisions in the battle. I found the experiment worth my time because the resultant endings were both very different.

This game plays more like a short story or choose-your-own adventure. The writing is well done and the choices you have to make in the game present quite a quandary. There are smaller, less significant prompts which you have to respond to that affect crew morale. There are also at least four major decisions that need to be made at various points which greatly impact story outcome. The writing by Lafore is top notch and a clear tip of the cap to author C.S. Forester. The game took me about forty five minutes to an hour to complete. It has been a pleasure to experience Lafore’s very different and unique contribution to this medium.

Haunted Mansion was written by John O’Hare and it is apparently the third in his adventure trilogy. I have not yet played the other two installments but it does not appear that you have to play them in any sort of order.

The game is a treasure hunt and you begin on a well worn path bordering a forest. Just to the west is a mailbox with a ring of keys inside. The front porch to a large mansion is just to the south of the mailbox. Once you step up onto the porch you are told to drop the treasures that you find there and type in the word SCORE to see how you’re doing.

This was a pull no punches short and sweet approach. The game does not try to hide the fact, but instead embraces, that it is a treasure hunt. There are 20 different treasures to find and deposit on the front porch before you can declare victory.

A few things stood out to me as I proceeded to play the game:

The map of the game is huge and there are at least 55 different locations. The descriptions of each location take the minimalist approach.

I thought that Mr. O’Hare did a great job trying to evoke a creepy atmosphere. Each time you enter a new location the brief description is usually followed by “you hear a door slam somewhere” or “was that a scream?” or “a black cat crosses your path” or “you hear footsteps” and there were a few others. I don’t recall another game going so out of its way to instill a sense of fear.

There were no puzzles in the game that you had to solve. The game seemed more like a walking simulator disguised as a treasure hunt. The parts of the game that may have caused some consternation were easily worked through because there were very specific hints to be found within books and scraps of paper that you find.

There are some adversaries in the game that act as obstacles to other parts of the map but you have items in your inventory to deal with each of the menaces. There is a ghost, a goblin, a troll, and a vampire that all need to be overcome.

The game probably took me 90 minutes to 2 hours to complete. This would have gone faster if I were not so concerned with mapping it out and being a completionist. The game held my interest and I found myself wanting to finish it due to the many locations and treasures to be found. The author deserves credit for a strong and unique attempt at atmosphere but admittedly this game is weaker than the other interactive fiction offerings in this same year.

If anyone wants to attempt a foray into the Haunted Mansion here is a link which will get you up and playing in moments.

Saddle up for another rip roaring Scott Adams adventure set in the old west. Put on your hat and spurs and be ready to explore a frontier ghost town. This one has snakes, ghosts, an old abandoned mine and explosions. Scott Adams published six games in his Adventure Series in 1979 and here in 1980 Ghost Town is the first of two games he published. The only other game with a western theme that we have previously played was 1979’s Lost Dutchman’s Gold.

Ghost Town is the ninth game in Scott Adam’s Adventure Series and I played it until completion. I have now played the first nine games in the series in order so I feel qualified to make the following statement: This game is hard! There may be some readers who will disagree with me but if we’re ranking the first nine games based on difficulty level I would have to place Ghost Town at the top of the list. I had, up to this moment, thought that his previous game Strange Odyssey was the most difficult but now Mr. Adams has outdone himself.

I have read reviews where players have written that they felt a bit more detached from this game compared to others in the series. I have a theory as to why a few may feel this way. Ghost Town has a degree of difficulty that most games of interactive fiction don’t possess. What you need to do next in the game is not hinted at in witty exposition nor is it initially obvious. You have to metaphorically tease the threads and then pull on them again and again to get the game to give up its secrets to you.

Ghost Town is not a figurative description but a literal one as well. You WILL be dealing with ghosts in this game. The ghostly puzzles in the saloon are diabolical and not easy to solve. The ghostly voice whispering Vain… to me throughout the game had me going to the mirror more than once. WRONG! The contrapositive hint when you step into the jail for the very first time is one of the hardest puzzles in interactive fiction I’ve encountered up to this point.

Good luck dealing with ol’ paint in the stables. This horse will soon be making YOU feel like a jackass who needs his own stall. There are multiple puzzles to solve before you can even ride this animal so believe me when I say that Mr. Adams was not horsing around here.

Ghost Town does not make things easy for the player. There are locations that will only reveal themselves ONLY AFTER specific actions have been taken. The best advice I can give you is to read everything carefully and take nothing for granted. Every word in the game might have a deeper context. For example finding a light source, which is a necessity, is not easily done. Nothing is easily obtained or freely given in the game. Every item obtained is usually a hard fought victory or a puzzle that had to be solved. There is no hand holding here which might explain feelings of detachment by players or a lack of investment by those same players. I may be interpreting this the wrong way but I feel that Mr. Adams was trying to step things up a notch here. I am speculating that the thought process here is that this is the ninth game in a series and that dedicated fans of the series should be ready to graduate to greater challenges. You could see the degree of difficulty jump when introduced to Strange Odyssey and you see that difficulty level ratcheting up another notch here in Ghost Town. The feedback from others is that Savage Island Part One (which would be published later this same year) was his magnum opus or hardest challenge of them all which seems to lend some credence to my theory.

I played the TRS-80 version of Ghost Town on an emulator with no save option. So each time I died I had to start the game over from the beginning. I died often. I struggled finding a light source at first. Once I worked my way through that particular puzzle I died from pneumonia a couple of times as I struggled once again with figurative and literal puzzles. I spent two days this past week with the puzzles in the saloon. Purely diabolical. Blowing the safe was exceedingly difficult. There is an early action that many players may take in the Telegraph Office which can “soft-lock” the game so that you can’t win (yes I had to start over once again). The horse, as I mentioned previously, will cost you some time and mental anguish. Once you solve that puzzle, there will be another one that awaits you but I’m not going to tell you how to solve that one either. The hint in the jail cell leads to what is an extremely hard puzzle to solve and may be THE hardest puzzle encountered in an interactive fiction game so far.

One of the things that I admired the most about Scott Adams in 1979 is that you could see his growth from one game to the next and you could appreciate how he was experimenting with the medium. He moved from typical interactive fiction tropes of the period (the treasure hunt with the obligatory maze) to plots and puzzles which needed to be solved with the items you found. We moved from treasure hunt score awards to story awards. There are those who have said that Mr. Adams seemed to be resting on his laurels with the publication of Ghost Town because he reverts back to the treasure hunt trope. I would disagree with this assessment and argue that, like any artist, he was again taking a canvas or trope that many were familiar with and stepping things up a notch. The player is forced to interact even more with the environment and WORK for the items. This is not a simple game of hide and seek but a puzzle box masquerading as a treasure hunt.

I enjoyed this game and the experience because I felt like Mr. Adams was saying “Ok you want a treasure hunt? HERE is a treasure hunt!” I felt that all of the puzzles were fair (the GO Board and $200 might be borderline lol) and I liked the literal and figurative meaning behind the title of the game. I spent more time with this game than I did with Strange Odyssey and I feel it is one of the more difficult, if not THE most difficult text adventures I have played to date. If you have enjoyed the previous eight installments in this series don’t stop now. Put your big boy pants on, or assless chaps, whichever you prefer, and saddle up for a western themed, pull your hair out puzzle-a-looza.

Gargoyle Castle was written by Kit Domenico and supposedly published by Panic Simulations in 1980. I use the word supposedly because I cannot find any cover art or documentation on this game. There is also a bug in the game, at least there was in my version, that prevents you from getting a perfect score. It is a shame if it never did get officially published because I found it to be very entertaining and actually quite good.

This text adventure is a treasure hunt with a twist. You’re tasked with exploring an old tower in order to find ten different treasures. You obtain points for each item that you deposit in the tower’s throne room. So far nothing that sounds original right? The unique twist is this: the puzzles which you encounter in this game are the items that you collect and the way that they interact with one another. There are no adversaries in this game or rooms that contain diabolical traps. The puzzle here is to find out how each of the items you find reacts with the other items in your inventory. You may find that this interaction leads to new areas to explore or may very well provide you with one of the ten treasures that you seek.

For example, in a waiting area you find an old, dull ring. In another location, a workroom, you find an old cloth made of soft fibers. If you use the cloth to clean the ring you find that you are holding a gleaming gold ring and that it is one of the ten treasures that you have to find. This example is the simplest of the item interactions and it is a puzzle which has been used in other games as well. You will find as you progress through the game that these interactions become much more interesting and original.

Another unique feature of Gargoyle Castle is that you create new locations or rooms by digging. Two different items that you can find in the game are a gardening trowel and an antique shovel. Both of them will give you the ability to dig. You will find many opportunities to use them.

The parser consists of a two word vocabulary and the location descriptions are very brief. However the tower locations and items that you find work together to create a mysterious and immersive environment.

There are ten treasures to find and deposit in the throne room and you receive 10 points apiece for putting each of them in the throne room.

However another unique feature of this game is that it penalizes you for sloppiness and deducts points from your score if you don’t clean up after yourself. I found that anything you do not deem a treasure, once you’ve exhausted it’s use, must be thrown in the garbage heap located in one of the rooms of the tower. I have not encountered anything like this in any of the previous games I’ve played. Once you do this you are no longer deducted points for sloppiness.

I encountered a glitch in my version of this game. I even started the game over and tried a different sequence and still encountered the same problem. I still encourage you to try this game as I found it highly enjoyable.

SPOILER AHEAD

I suggest that the last treasure you find is the gargoyle. There is a section in the tower in which you can dig a hole. When you descend into the hole you will encounter a gargoyle. If you attempt to pick the gargoyle up he will attack. If you are wearing your armor, you will remain unscathed. If you took your armor off, inventory management in this game can get tricky at times, you will instantly be killed by the gargoyle and have to begin again. When you encounter this gargoyle you must have the rope in your possession. You then want to tie the rope to the gargoyle which turns his reaction from hostile to angry for some reason. When you type LOOK again you will see a * appear next to the gargoyle which now denotes him as a treasure to be placed in the throne room. When you go to lead the gargoyle out of the hole it drops you to dos. In the game I was playing, the gargoyle just so happened to be the last treasure I needed. The other nine were safely ensconced in the throne room. When I went to lead the gargoyle out of the pit, it congratulated me on my win even though I had not returned him yet and didn’t give me the ten points for the gargoyle. So I found all ten treasures but finished with a score of 90. When I restarted the game and attempted to make the gargoyle my first treasure it just dropped me to dos with no congratulatory win or points. I am not sure if there are other versions out there where this error does not occur but I wanted to make you aware of it; so that you can play the entire game and save the gargoyle for last. It is worth doing so.

END OF SPOILER

Regular readers of my blog know that I was growing very weary of the treasure hunt trope but Gargoyle Castle presents it in a new and slightly unique way; enough so that it qualifies as a sleeper hit for me here in 1980.

I decided to stick with Ken & Roberta Williams and play their second major graphic adventure which they released in 1980. Gone are the wire frame graphics of Mystery House to be replaced with color graphics with slight dithering to provide some texture.

The documentation which accompanies the game explains that Princess Priscilla of the land of Serenia has been captured by the evil wizard Harlin. Her father, King George, offers half the kingdom to any soul who can bring her back alive. King’s Quest V also takes place in Serenia and while the King’s Quest series is not a sequel by any stretch it could certainly be considered a spiritual successor. The maps of King’s Quest 1-4 do not have the land of Serenia labeled on any of them but Daventry has been identified as the continent.

I have to admit that I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with this game. The land of Serenia is very large and when you finally stumble upon an NPC or major destination there are moments of cleverness and originality. Unfortunately these moments are irritatingly punctuated with one maze after another.

This is a game that starts with a major puzzle that needs to be solved before the game can progress. There is a rattlesnake which blocks your way to the north of the village and you need to find a way to deal with this obstacle. I probably spent two hours wandering through the desert and using Trizbort to map it out. The key to getting past the rattlesnake is to find a rock that you can throw at it to kill it. You can find this rock in the desert. It took me quite awhile to reach this realization. Each desert scene looks alike. There are large rocks in some scenes and small rocks. The large rocks cannot be moved. When you attempt to pick up a small rock you are bitten by a scorpion which was hiding behind it and instantly killed. In almost every scene each of the small rocks have a scorpion hiding behind it. Except for ONE of the screen locations. Once I had my “aha moment” I had to painstakingly move from desert scene to desert scene and look behind every small rock. I finally found the desert location which allowed me to pick up a small rock unmolested. I was then able to use it against the snake and move ahead in the game. I found this type of puzzle to be extremely annoying. I did not feel a sense of accomplishment but rather felt a bit cheated. The desert was basically one gigantic maze which needed to be correctly mapped out with a dose of Where’s Waldo thrown in for good measure. I am not sure if this was done to extend the playing time and longevity of the game or if it can be chalked up to experimentation within a new medium. The entire process left a bad taste in my mouth but I still continued with the game. There are a couple of puzzles involving snakes as you move forward and a chasm which provides a diabolical obstruction. The solution to crossing the chasm was quite clever.

Once you successfully make your way over the chasm you experience some interesting encounters and by this time have obtained some rather unique items. The locket, magic word provided by the King of Snakes, harp, sapphire ring, vial of liquid, and horn are all bits of foreshadowing for the beloved King’s Quest series which would come later.

You eventually come upon a rowboat and make your way off of this continent or island to another. The journey from one land mass to another is another maze which needs to be solved. Once you make landfall one of the more ingenious and original puzzles involves trying to get into a treehouse found in the jungle. Once you obtain the items that you need; you must figure out how to move forward in the game from here. The solution is again one of the endearing qualities of this adventure because it serves to immerse you further into this idea that you are indeed a wizard or at least an aspiring one.

Once you find yourself in the final third of this adventure you have to deal with a rainbow, a grumpy giant, and a process of elimination experiment involving a peddler. You finally find yourself just inside a castle only to discover that you once again have to navigate a maze. Ugh. Upon exiting the maze, the encounters with the bird and the frog are again endearing and clever.

I mentioned at the beginning of this review that I had a love / hate relationship with this game. There are clever, endearing moments sprinkled throughout the game that hint at the greatness of what the King’s Quest series would soon become and be known for. The seeds are there. The game itself is actually rather large and there are many items that you have to use in order to pass several major obstacles. The unique items you find and discovering how and when to use these items lends to creatively immersing the player in the role of fledgling wizard. Unfortunately these endearing moments are marred by several mazes which have to be mapped and traversed which prove to be tedious rather than entertaining. Two or three of the puzzles within the game were not easy and require some thought and experimentation. I am glad I was finally able to experience this early game. I remember seeing it advertised in Computer Gaming World in 1981 and the cover art still looks amazing.

Mystery House was not the first game to use graphics in 1980. Role playing games had already been using graphics for years. Applying graphics to an adventure game, however, was unprecedented as previous story-based adventure games were entirely text based. Mystery House has the notoriety of being the first “graphic adventure” game.

One day Ken Williams took a teletype terminal to his home to work on the development of an accounting program for the Apple II. He was rummaging through a catalog which accompanied the terminal and found a program called Colossal Cave Adventure. He and his wife Roberta both played it all the way through and they immediately began to search for something similar. They were surprised how underdeveloped the market was at the time. Roberta Williams liked the concept of the text adventure very much but she thought that the player would have a more satisfying experience with graphics or images. She began to work on her own game, a detective story inspired by Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None.

Ken then spent a few nights developing the game on the Apple II using 70 simple drawings which had all been made by Roberta. They packaged the software in Ziploc bags containing a 51/4-inch disk and a photocopied paper describing the game. It was sold in local software shops in Los Angeles County. Mystery House was a huge success. It sold a record breaking 10,000 copies at $24.95 apiece which was amazing for the time. In 1980, that same year, Ken Williams founded On-Line Systems which would become Sierra On-Line in 1982. Their experience with Colossal Cave Adventure would have a “colossal” impact and influence on video game history.

I had thus far only been playing CRPGs and text adventures of the period. I knew that I just had to experience what was considered THE very first graphic adventure. I was just as excited to experience this particular game as I had been to experience Zork I; the first Infocom title.

The game starts outside an abandoned Victorian mansion. Once you make your way inside of the house you are soon locked inside with seven other people: Tom, a plumber; Sam, a mechanic; Sally, a seamstress; Dr. Green, a surgeon; Joe, a gravedigger; Bill, a butcher; and Daisy, a cook.

Initially it seems that you, as the player, are competing with the seven other individuals to find a cache of jewels hidden somewhere in the house. However as you begin to explore the house the dead bodies begin to pile up as it becomes obvious there is a killer loose in the house.

I initially thought that I was going to have a much harder time with the graphics than I did. However I thought that the wire frame graphics depicted in the game were more than adequate enough to convey to the player what was needed. It took me a little bit of time to get used to the graphic adventure format as well being that I had been immersed in nothing but CRPGs and text based adventures. I initially had a hard time with the game. I started out by making an initial map of the house and collecting items that I thought might be useful but then I found my forward progression come to a screeching halt.

I finally found a use for the butterknife that I found in the kitchen sink which opened up exploration of many more locations. There were still a couple of sticking points in the game that halted my progress for some time. I mistakenly thought that the skeleton key which I found in the basement would open up the locked chest in the attic. I initially thought it was a parser issue until I realized I must find a second key.

The discovery of that second key DID become a parser issue. I knew that I needed to properly manipulate something in my possession to put out the fire which I accidentally start in the dining room. I was unsuccessful in my first few attempts to put out the fire and I just figured I would solve the problem by skipping that particular crisis all together. That turned out to be a mistake.

The other mystery I knew I needed to solve was that of the ladder in the attic. I wasted a lot of time up in that attic experimenting with the game’s parser. I would learn later that by visiting a new location I would trigger the ability to use the ladder.

It took me some time but I was eventually able to solve the game on my own except for one area. A text adventure trope is carried over into this graphic adventure; the obligatory maze. You find yourself in the latter third of the game in the forest just outside of the mansion. The forest itself is a maze that needs to be navigated. I spent probably a good two hours dropping items and mapping out all of the forest locations and yet I could not figure out how to return to the mansion. I finally resorted to peeking at a walkthrough that I found online and discovered that besides north, south, west, and east, I have to choose to go UP at one location and then that will deposit me outside of the kitchen door. Despite the fact that all the forest graphics that were depicted were exactly the same. This almost qualifies as not fair and I am glad that I did “cheat” and peek at a map because I’m not sure I would have returned to the maze and typed up and down in each location (there are many).

I eventually encountered the killer, which turned out to be a bit creepy, and ended up having to shoot the individual. Once the mystery of the killer had been solved all that was left was to find the jewels that were hidden somewhere in the house. The encounter with the killer revealed a final clue which helped with the search. Once the jewels were obtained it was a simple matter of leaving the house by successfully unlocking the front door.

I enjoyed my experience with this game. I felt it was important to experience first hand the period’s very first graphic adventure and the game which would launch an empire. I was fearful that what I viewed as now primitive graphics would be a poor replacement for the theatre of my mind where the text adventures were played. This turned out though to be an entirely different animal and experience and I am glad that I took the time to play it and savor it.

Mission Asteroid is Sierra On-Line’s Hi-Res Adventure #0. Mission Asteroid was published after #1: Mystery House, and #2: The Wizard and the Princess, but as it was intended as an easier game aimed at younger players, Sierra retroactively assigned it to number zero. It benefits from improved graphics over it’s predecessors, allowing color fills as well as vectors allowing for much more colorful graphics.

Mission Asteroid was first released for the Apple II and then it was later ported to the Atari 8-bit family and Commodore 64. The box art is extremely well done and the manual which comes with the game is of high quality as well.

The graphics are crude and have not aged well though I expected this before I even began play. The game is relatively short and is aimed at a younger audience. The manual, which comes with the game, even goes so far as to provide an example to young and aspiring adventurers on how to properly create a map of locations.

You play the role of an astronaut who has been assigned to intercept an asteroid on a collision course with Earth and blow the hell out of it. The game begins outside of the NASA training facility and once you make your way inside you’ll need to receive a mission briefing and solve a couple of minor puzzles before you’re ready to blast off.

In a relatively short time you find yourself on the airfield and ready to board your ship.

You needed to file your flight plan before you can blast off and the four colored buttons on the instrument panel represent your thrusters. In order, they allow for the ship to move left, right, up, and then down. Deciphering the flight plan and determining the proper sequence of buttons to push was probably the most difficult part of this short graphic adventure.

Once you land on the asteroid you need to make your way to a small cave and then drop explosives that are on a timer into a pit. You then need to make your way back to the ship and return to Earth. Once you’ve made it safely back you can then watch as the asteroid explodes and you win the game.

Mission Asteroid – Victorious!

Mission Asteroid represents the very first graphic adventure that we’ve played on this journey. It has not aged well compared to previous games that we’ve played but this was to be expected. The segue from text adventures to graphic adventure games was a long transition during the 80’s decade. Whereas gamers have to create the scene or the stage in their mind when playing a text adventure; programmers wanted to move away from that and present something visually stimulating for the player.

The game was enjoyable enough and just the right length to hold my interest. It took me about an hour to complete. I was worried that I would be dealing with poor graphics that had not aged well and would have to hunt for an object depicted in the graphics but that was not the case at all. It was exciting to segue to the very first color filled graphic adventure of that period and experience it for myself.

Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling spent a lot of time trying to solve Colossal Cave Adventure written by MIT grad Will Crowther. The four of them had bonded because of their interest in computer games and they had collectively earned seven MIT degrees themselves. “The four of us spent a lot of time trying to solve Adventure,” says Lebling. “And when we finally did, we said, ‘That was pretty good, but we could do a better job.’”

In June of 1977 they had created Zork’s sophisticated word parser which allowed the game to understand far more words than previous games. The parser was able to understand adjectives, compound verbs, conjunctions, and prepositions. This meant that the game could include more intricate descriptions and puzzles. The writing was top notch and set it apart from other games. Zork sported no graphics but it didn’t need any. The game was developed and first played on the MIT mainframe operating system.

In February of 1979, three of them, plus seven other Dynamic Modeling Group members founded the software company called Infocom. It’s first product was a modified version of Zork that was split into three parts and released over three years so that it could fit a PCs’ limited memory size and processing power.

In the 1980s, at the height of it’s popularity, commercial versions of Zork released for home computers sold more than 800,000 copies.

I was extremely excited that Zork I was on my 1980 list of games to play and I could not wait to revisit it. I remember playing it with my friends in high school as we sat hunched over a Commodore 64. It was disruptive technology at the time and the world of Zork seemed large, exciting, and mysterious.

Zork I was the flagship game that launched a company which would become a titan in the 80’s gaming industry. It was a precursor or ambassador for several top notch Infocom games that would follow.

You begin the game standing before a mailbox just outside of a boarded up house. The sophistication of the parser is readily apparent as you begin to explore the surrounding locations.

The game understands most anything that you type, above and beyond anything I have experienced so far in my time traveling gaming experience. In the example above you are in a clearing which contains a pile of leaves. I type in ‘jump in the pile of leaves’ and the response is ‘Do you expect me to applaud?’ I then try counting the leaves in the pile and the game’s response is that there are 69,105 leaves in the pile. This is the kind of wit, writing, and sophistication found all throughout the world of Zork.

My experience with Zork I reminds me of the scene in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy leaves the cabin and encounters the land of Oz for the very first time. The black & white scene is suddenly filled with vibrant color. The Infocom parser is so good that it creates that same experience of divergence and color whereas other text adventures remain in black & white.

Zork I was a game that I had beat when I was a teenager in high school. I mistakenly thought, therefore, that my reacquaintance with Zork would be a “breeze” or a “walk in the park”. Wrong. Zork I is hard. There are three or four different puzzles that are diabolical in nature.

Zork I definitely pays homage to Colossal Cave Adventure as it is a traditional treasure hunt which also includes a very tricky maze. However it is so witty and charming, so mysterious and so well done, that we can forgive Zork for these classic text adventure tropes. The dungeon complex beneath the house as well as the surrounding locations are so well written that one cannot help but feel fully immersed in a strange fantasy world. You receive points for not only finding the treasures but then you are allotted additional points for placing the items in the trophy case. The following is the list of treasures which need to be found and placed into the trophy case:

• Jeweled Egg
• Bag of coins
• Painting
• Platinum Bar
• Trunk of jewels
• Crystal trident
• Ivory torch
• Gold coffin
• Sceptre
• Crystal Skull
• Emerald
• Scarab
• Pot of gold
• Jade figurine
• Sapphire bracelet
• Diamond
• Silver chalice
• Clockwork canary
• Brass bauble

You also receive additional points for the following actions:

• Entering the house
• Entering the cellar
• Getting past the troll
• Entering the Drafty Room
• Entering the Treasure Room

This game took me almost 10 hours to complete which greatly exceeds any of the previous text adventures I’ve played with the exception of Empire of the Overmind. There are some puzzles that are just plain evil within the game; so much so that they almost caused me to give up. There is more to the Jeweled Egg than meets the eye but good luck figuring out just what that is. You may need some help. Getting through the gates of hell to obtain the Crystal Skull is going to take some trial and error on your part. One of the hardest or trickiest puzzles of the game involves getting your hands on the Diamond. The Brass bauble, Gold coffin, and Trunk of Jewels are by no means easy to acquire either.

I want to rely on past practice here and avoid providing a complete walkthrough. My goal here is to bring attention to the game and my personal experience with it It is my hope that this may entice you to revisit this game or play it yourself. If anyone has any specific questions you can certainly reach out and I will be glad to nudge you in the right direction.

In my opinion Zork I and other Infocom titles that will follow are the crown jewels of the genre and represent probably the best parser that you’re ever going to find in a text adventure. I had an absolute amazing experience with this game and in my opinion it by no means shows it’s age. The puzzles are difficult so be prepared to save often. Brew the coffee or put your favorite soda in the fridge and get ready to be frustrated. I spent a lot of time in thought and drumming my fingers on the desk with this one.

Death Dreadnought is the fourth game published by The Programmer’s Guild. I have already played and reviewed Lost Dutchman’s Gold and Spider Mountain Adventure but have yet to play Temple of the Sun. The game was written anonymously by a Biff Mutt and Spud Mutt. Bob Lidddil, head of The Programmer’s Guild and also known as Captain 80 said in an interview that their royalty checks were endorsed the same way.

Death Dreadnought takes place aboard a derelict space ship. The entire crew appears to have been brutally murdered by an alien infestation. When the game begins you are the only survivor and looking for a way off of the ship. You realize however…that you are not alone.

Death Dreadnought is filled with gore and visceral images. While exploring the derelict ship each location contains vivid descriptions of blood soaked corridors, entrails and dismembered body parts. I actually had a hard time initially with this game. I knew that I was going to have to deal with an alien adversary but beyond that I wasn’t sure what to do. Once you begin exploring the ship you realize that the engine core is useless and that the ship is now a floating derelict. It is only then that I realized I might need to find a way off of the ship as well. I must admit that my approach to the game was influenced by my bias and presumption that this game was influenced by the movie Alien. The only similarity is that you’re trapped on a ship with an alien or aliens and that you must escape. This would be and still is a popular game theme as the years wear on.

Once I began to explore and create a map of the ship I realized that there was a shuttle bay which contained a lone shuttle. This was to be my way off of the ship. The ad description for the game above contains the biggest clue as to what you need to find in order to escape the ship. You’re going to need to find food, oxygen, fuel, and batteries in order to leave the ship.

There really are no puzzles to be found in the game. The game is more of a trial and error experience. There are many different levers and knobs throughout the game that you have to experiment with. Most of the levers and knobs result in instant death. I had to start this game over MANY times. There is a bit of a maze to deal with as you have to crawl through an air duct to ultimately find the ship’s batteries but it is a simple enough labyrinth to map out. The only way you can reach the fuel supply is to deal with one of the aliens. This is probably the only puzzle of the game and not a very logical one at that. In all honesty, it was through frustration that I accidentally uncovered the solution.

** SPOILER ALERT ** **SKIP this next paragraph if you want to avoid it**

One of the first things that you find in the game is a weapon. It is a blaster or phaser of some sort. My first reaction is that you can use the weapon to deal with the alien. You will find however that when you shoot the alien all you do is piss it off and it then proceeds to eat your face off and you die. However, and this is just so odd, if you THROW the weapon at the alien, it grabs it out of the air, examines the weapon and plays with the settings, and then accidentally discharges the weapon and kills itself. All righty then. The alien had been blocking a corridor and once the alien is dealt with you eventually find a way to fuel the shuttle.

There is a cruel red herring in the game that I spent a considerable amount of time with. You come upon a door which can only be opened by way of a fingerprint scan. Your own fingerprint does not open the door but you do find a dismembered hand near an air lock that you can use to open the door (this took some time for me to find). Once you open the door you discover that the crew must have trapped another of the aliens inside. Now that you have freed it, it rushes out and once again eats your face off. The gun can only be used one time so this particular puzzle is not integral to the game solution and only serves as yet another way to instantly kill you. I think I had mentioned that I had to start this game over MANY times.

Once you have collected the fuel, batteries, food, and oxygen you also need to make sure that you open the shuttle bay doors. Once you have accomplished all of this you will then be able to successfully use the shuttle to escape the derelict ship.

I enjoyed this game more than I thought I would. My initial bias was that this was just going to be an Alien rip-off however it stands on it’s own. The theme is a popular one and will be used quite often in the years to come. This may be the very first game to implement such a plot device. The location descriptions and plot device were enough to hold my interest and propel me forward. I am not sure if I liked this game more than the Lost Dutchman’s Gold but it was certainly much better than the previous Spider Mountain Adventure. I look forward to seeing where Temple of the Sun ranks among the lot.