Author: professor6153

Quest was written by a school teacher by the name of Roger Chaffee. The code can be found in the July 1978 issue of Byte Magazine which you can find in the Internet Archive here. Chaffee’s school received a pair of Commodore PETs and he wrote the game in only two weeks!

Surprise surprise! We’re going spelunking in search of treasure. In the game you explore the cave complex using compass directions of North, South, East, West, Up and Down using only the first letter of each word.

It took me probably 45 minutes to map the entire game out AND find the treasure. The problem? Now that I had the treasure in hand I found I could not leave the cave complex. The obvious exit is now blocked by the treacherous Gnome-King. The other exit is too narrow for me to fit through now that I have the treasure.

I methodically began to more carefully explore my locations. There are a couple of instances where new locations open themselves up to you. I was not clear if this happened after multiple explorations and was in the code that way or if it was because I was in possession of the treasure. Once I found the Crystal Palace it then led me to a new labyrinth which I was able to work my way through to escape with the treasure.

Colossal Cave continues to influence the interactive fiction in 1978. There is a maze within the cavern complex here AND a labyrinth that you have to work through. I also had my treasure stolen by a pirate in the game but I was able to find it in a dead end to the maze. Once I recovered the treasure the pirate never bothered me again.

The game is small but the locations within the cave complex are interesting enough. I believe I spent a total of 90 minutes playing Quest and I enjoyed the experience. I thought it was very impressive for a teacher to produce this in only two weeks for his students to play. It must have been the talk of the school and thrilling to go into Mr. Chaffee’s computer class in 1978 and play Quest in class.

This is adventure #2 in Scott Adam’s text adventure series. I chose to emulate the game on a TRS-80 platform.

This interactive text adventure is the first to move away from fantasy & horror and delve into a pirate theme. I found the change rather refreshing and I was looking forward to the experience. I found the game to be much tighter thematically than Adam’s previous Adventureland. Yes, like other text adventures that we’ve played from 1978, we’re going on a treasure hunt. However it’s the journey and the pirate-themed trappings that set it apart from the rest.

The difficulty level is easy to moderate and I spent roughly two to three hours on the game.

You start in your flat in London and you’ll have to spend some time exploring your surroundings and picking up some items that you may need later. You’ll eventually find an old, blood-stained copy of Treasure Island among other things and your adventure begins from there.

The first tricky part of the game involves you trying to figure out how you’re going to go from your apartment to an old pirate island. It does involve a bit of magic and if there is anything this old wizard knows regarding magic it’s all about location, location, location.

Once you make your way to the pirate isle you’ll encounter a pirate, a parrot, man-eating alligators, and mysterious locked doors. None of the puzzles are particularly difficult nor do they violate my fair play rules. There were only one or two areas on Pirate’s Isle where I got “stuck” for a little bit but I was able to work my way through it with persistence and a bit of luck. Fans of interactive fiction like to work through puzzles so I always hesitate to provide a complete walkthrough. If this is something you’d like to see me change I’d love to hear from you. My thought process is if I give you the answers to the puzzles then I am possibly spoiling the experience for you should you decided you’d like to play the game. I am very aware as well that many enjoy reading a good walkthrough. I’d love to hear where you stand on this. I will offer up this piece of advice: you may find yourself going back to your flat out of necessity so don’t completely put your flat in London out of your mind.

Instead of 13 treasures like Adams had in his previous adventure you’re only looking for two and both of them are hidden on Treasure Island. You’re going to have to deal with the obstacles on Pirate Island and then figure out how you’re going to get to Treasure Island from where you’re currently marooned.

The length of the adventure took me by surprise. Once I arrived on Treasure Island I thought I might have quite a bit of game left but this last part was a bit anti-climatic though still entertaining. There are two different puzzle solutions in this game where Scott Adams seems to be paying tribute to Colossal Cave.

I was able to complete the entire game without help of any kind though I did become stuck in a couple of spots for a little while.

The theme is new and the story is tight and enjoyable. I enjoyed my time dealing with pirates and searching for buried treasure. Once I had finished I had the yearning to read Treasure Island once again and to watch Pirates of the Caribbean.

Mystery Mansion is an interactive text adventure programmed by Bill Wolpert for a mainframe or university computer similar to PLATO. There are a lot of moving parts in this game; some of them work quite well while others left me extremely frustrated.

Mystery Mansion was not a commercial release in 1978. It was played by university students on campus much like Dungeon, Moria and Zork. Therefore there is no official documentation or instructions which come with the game nor did the game itself offer any. The picture above depicts the start screen for the game. A taxi has dropped you off at the front gate of an old mansion and the game begins there. There is no explanation of any kind as to why you are there or what you are supposed to do. I decided I would walk around the mansion and explore my surroundings before trying to venture inside the gate.

Your movement while you are outdoors is controlled by the compass directions N, S, E, W but the system of movement changes once you are inside the mansion. More on this later. I began exploring to the east and three moves later fell over a 500 foot cliff without warning and I died. This would not be the first time that I fell to my death. It was then that I noticed my score was 47 out of 999 possible points placing me in the Incompetent Asshole category; the latter being my own designation not the games’. I continued my exploration of the grounds outside of the mansion and mapped them out by hand. I encountered a hunter and a woodsman while I was exploring and found a double-bladed axe and an old rusty shovel. Once I was satisfied that I had seen all there was to see I decided to go through the main gate and make my way into the mansion. Now remember up to this point I still had no idea what my purpose was in this game or what I was supposed to do. This will all change soon enough but let’s move away from the story itself and talk about a couple of the games moving parts that I had referred to earlier.

Once inside the mansion movement is no longer dictated by the N, S, E, W commands. It completely changes to Left, Right, Forward and Backward. It took me quite some to figure this out and I found it to be frustrating and not very intuitive. Even after learning that there was a new, unique way to move throughout the house I still found myself having terrible difficulty mapping out the mansion. Rooms and exits that had not been on my left before were suddenly on my left and nothing ever seemed to stay the same. I thought perhaps something was wrong with my version of the game. Then I realized that the new Left, Right, Forward and Backward commands were not static! Meaning that each time you made your way into an area your perspective changed. It always depended on which way you were facing. So maybe the living room was to the left of the main hall; but if you entered the main hall from the ball room then the living room would now be on your right. I have to tell you; I found this to be so frustrating that it was almost a deal breaker for me. It was the first time in my exploration of these older games that I had encountered something so maddening that it almost ruined the entire experience for me. If you find the compass in the mansion it will revert movement so that you can then use N, S, E , W and get a true read of the map of the mansion. While some might have appreciated this I found the whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth. The idea of finding an item to fix a game mechanic didn’t sit well with me. I didn’t find the compass, which was located on the second floor, until much later in the game because I wanted to explore the lower levels first. In later games I would rush upstairs to go get the compass so I could quickly put this issue to rest.

The writing in Mystery Mansion is extremely well done. It is far superior to the other text adventures which we have experienced in 1978. This was the first piece of interactive fiction where you really had to pay close attention to room and location descriptions. You have the ability to manipulate and remove items based on the descriptions. In this game nothing is apparent. Everything is hidden. An example of this can be found in the game room. One of the objects described there is a radio. You can actually turn the radio on and it will provide you with an important clue. In interactive fiction we have experienced thus far, items you can take or manipulate have been kept separate from location descriptions. This is still the case with Mystery Mansion however there are so many other things you can manipulate that are embedded in the location descriptions now. The words confuscate and obtuse come to mind.

The more exploration of the mansion that you do you come to realize that you are in the middle of a murder mystery. The main part of the game plays like a game of clue. There is a corpse, a list of suspects, and multiple murder weapons. In order to win the game you need to have the correct murder weapon in your possession; and you have to lure the murderer back to the scene of the crime. Once you have all three things: suspect, scene and murder weapon correct you will be awarded many points. None of this is very clear. You have to do quite a bit of exploring and combat the movement mechanics of the game in order to deduce that this is what you need to do.

This leads me to what was another infuriating aspect of this game. I had no idea at all that you could QUESTION your suspects. The only way I found this out was by obtaining a book found in the library. If you READ the book it will give you one word or verb that it recognizes in the game. I had died enough that eventually the word QUESTION was found in the book. I almost fell out of my chair. Once you begin to QUESTION each of your suspects they randomly offer you clues which causes the game to make much more sense and have more cohesion. I also spent a good number of minutes trying to figure out how to examine the corpse. LOOK AT CORPSE are the VERY SPECIFIC words you have to use to get a clue as to how the victim died. You will need to do this to find the correct murder weapon. There a number of these scattered throughout the mansion.

The murder mystery is something that the game does very well. Examining corpses, finding the murder weapon, questioning the inhabitants of the mansion is very entertaining and quite a programming feat in 1978. Each new game the murderer, scene, and weapon randomly change UNLESS you type in the case number located in the opening scene. Doing so will keep the murderer, suspect, and scene the same. As entertaining as this is, once again Mystery Mansion mixes the salty with the sweet.

One of the things you have had to deal with in 1978 with every piece of interactive fiction is your light source. Mystery Mansion is no different. The lantern that you find in the game does not last very long. You have to be VERY economical with its use. There are secret passages scattered throughout the mansion that can economize movement between floors and you can also open the curtains in many of the rooms but you STILL have to be very conservative with your light source. You can find a battery replacement for the lantern in a, wait for it, maze which you have to map out which will help. This can become very frustrating.

The inhabitants of the mansion can be questioned but each of them tend to hamper your investigation in a very frustrating way. Let me explain. The list of suspects in the game are: the master, lady, maid, butler, cook, and gardener. Sometimes the suspects will begin to follow you around from location to location after you encounter them. If you come upon a location that you have not explored yet and have one of the inhabitants in tow; they may quite literally pick up and take an object in the room that you needed before you get the chance to. It does not matter if they are the guilty party or not; they pick up objects and take them and deposit them in other areas of the house. When you are dealing with a light source that allows for limited moves this becomes a headache. In one of the games I played I knew from examining the corpse (excuse me LOOK AT CORPSE) that it had died from poison. I knew where the vial of poison was located and went to go procure it. When I got to the location where the vial was located the cook picked it up before I could. I moved about the mansion and looked in each of the rooms and never did find the vial of poison again in that particular game. It was another frustrating aspect of the game that only forced you to have to begin again.

The main part of the game is arguably the murder mystery. There is so much that goes into the design and it is quite impressive. I was able to eventually solve the mystery and after doing so you actually use a phone located in the mansion to call the police who then come and take the murderer away. I was half expecting the murderer to exclaim; “..and I would have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for you meddling kids!” but alas that didn’t happen.

There are other layers to Mystery Mansion however. There is a crypt located in the basement of the mansion which houses a vampire. I was able to lure the vampire upstairs and kill it in a very gratifying and original way which I’ll leave you to figure out on your own should you decide to play.

One of the inhabitants of the house is also a werewolf and I found a handgun and silver bullet in the house but never got the opportunity to slay the werewolf. I am not 100% positive that there is a werewolf but a note I found in the mansion suggested that is the case.

Mystery Mansion is also a treasure hunt. There is supposedly treasure or treasures hidden somewhere in the mansion or on the grounds and I am sure if you find these items it will greatly increase your score. I also found some sort of futuristic transmitter and receiver hidden in the house that you can use as some sort of teleportation device but I never used it. So there are all sorts of crazy going on at Mystery Mansion.

Once I had solved the murder mystery of Mystery Mansion I was ready to move on. There was a lot to explore and map and for much of that I was in constant combat with the movement mechanics, my light source, and the inhabitants themselves taking items from rooms before I could. I was in no mood to spend more time with the game looking for treasure to increase my point total. I was very happy to walk away.

I am usually a pretty big completionist, especially where CRPGs are concerned (look no further than my Moria victory), but I felt I met the minimum requirements needed to place this in the win column and be grateful for the experience. There are a few reasons I decided to end where I did: 1) the game can be very obtuse and I knew I was starting to get to a point where I might lose patience and resort to cheating. I was not going to feel rewarded for finding the treasure if I had to resort to a walkthrough in order to do so. I knew I could ask comrades in arms for subtle clues but that would have been a big expenditure of time 2) there is another maze in the game called the “mole maze”. I started to drop items and map out the maze on two different occasions but then the earth shifted and tunnels changed or collapsed which completely altered the maze and obliterated my previous map attempt. My patience was already wearing thin with this one and I knew that solving the maze would be tedious and a big investment of time. A couple of the puzzles that I had solved in the mansion on my own had been what I would term difficult and it was only time and luck which helped me there. In the back of my mind I am thinking that the mole maze and many of the secret passages hold the key and I didn’t have the patience for either and did not want to resort to cheating to find the treasure.

Mystery Mansion is large. It has murder, vampires & werewolves, and a hidden treasure to find. There were not many games available to play in 1978 and I imagine that many university students spent hours with this game competitively trying to get the highest score. There are too many other games awaiting my attention for me to spend hours and hours trying to increase my score. There are too many unfair or “gotcha” events that eroded my patience with this one as well. I enjoyed solving the murder and the writing and programming here are the best I have seen in interactive fiction thus far. If I had been warned ahead of time about the movement mechanics of the game it might have helped take some of the “mystery” out of the mystery.

I always feel a twinge of excitement when I am getting ready to start a new game. It is that thrill of discovery combined with the wonder of what new challenges and surprises might await.

I am on a personal quest to play as many CRPGs, Adventure Games, & Graphic Adventures as I possibly can in the order in which they first appeared. I know what you’re thinking. ‘This is impossible!’ or ‘This guy is nuts!’ Well you may be right on both counts but I’m certainly going to have fun with the process.

I wanted to cover each of the games that I played in detail here in this blog. My favorite genre or type of game is the role-playing game; specifically the dungeon crawlers. So I decided to start my quest with games created in 1975 because it was in this year that CRPGs were being created on university computer systems. In his book, Dungeons & Desktops, Matt Barton calls this period of time the “Dark Age” and it persists through 1979. There were not many games to cover in 1975 & 1976 but I had a hell of a time playing the CRPGs found on the Plato System. You can read about my experience with those early games here on the blog. Moria was one of the games that ended up occupying hours and weeks of my time which brought the blog to an almost screeching halt.

1978 provided me with many more game experiences as the home computer revolution begins to take shape. I found myself on quite a roll as I moved from one game offering to the next from 1978. It was in 1978 that text adventures or interactive fiction began to gain in popularity and we were introduced to a number of these.

I am now wrapping up the last game that was on my list to play from 1978. I knew about a week ago that I would have to begin research on which games were eligible to make the list for 1979. My criteria were pretty simple: 1) was the game available to play in 1979? 2) does it fall under the category of computer role-playing game or interactive fiction? 3) thematically does it sound like something that I’d like to play?

The list has been officially created and I wanted to share it with you. I will also make it available so that it can be accessed from the homepage of the website. If you think that I have made an oversight and I have missed something that belongs on this list; please leave a comment and I will add it to the list. You’ll also notice that I wanted to take a little time to experience Asteroids, Galaxian, and Space Invaders because these treasures debuted in arcades and took the world by storm.

This is the playlist that I compiled from 1979. I will play them in no particular order though admittedly it is the CRPGs I am drawn to the most. I have been particularly looking forward to playing Akalabeth: World of Doom and the Dunjonquest series. There are some amazing looking games on the list and I cannot wait to begin. Once again, fellow wizards, if there is a game I have overlooked from the annals of our history please bring it to my attention so that I can add it to the list. There are a total of 43 games on that list. I am not sure how many hours, days, weeks, months of my time this list is going to occupy but I am looking forward to the journey. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to charge the battery for my lantern, procure some rations, and find 50′ of rope.

King Tut’s Tomb is the third text adventure published in 1978 from 12 year old Greg Hassett. His previous two games: Journey to the Center of the Earth & House of Seven Gables have already been covered. The game was developed for the TRS-80 and is yet another treasure hunt that has been wrapped in an Egyptian theme.

This text adventure also contains the additional tropes that we’ve seen so far in 1978: 1) you have to closely monitor your light source or it will run out on you leaving you in the dark and effectively ending your game 2) there is a maze within the pyramid that you’re going to have to decipher.

I had high expectations for this game going in. I had really enjoyed House of Seven Gables and thought it was a vast improvement to Hassett’s first game so I was expecting to see further progression. I am also a sucker for an Egyptian theme and the idea of exploring a pyramid for lost treasures.

While exploring the pyramid, instead of dealing with ghouls and ghosts, you have to contend with Goobers and mummies. I am not exactly sure what a Goober is but my guess is that it is Greg’s answer as a replacement for the Grue which are found in Zork and afraid of the light. These Goober’s are not afraid of light but they are afraid of something else.

There really isn’t much in the way of puzzles. The hardest part of the game is managing your light as a resource and dealing with the Goobers. There are numerous treasures to collect that are scattered about the pyramid so it becomes a simple matter of mapping the pyramid by hand and getting the treasures back to the surface. You can only carry or manage seven items at any one time in your inventory so you’re going to have to make multiple forays into the pyramid.

King Tut’s Tomb is better than Journey to the Center of the Earth but nowhere near as good as the House of Seven Gables. There really is no story to speak of and it is light on puzzles. King Tut’s Tomb was packaged as a trilogy by Mad Hatter Software with Hasset’s other two games. I think I spent about 90 minutes with the game and I was able to obtain all of the treasures and make my way out of the pyramid.

I’m not exactly sure why I didn’t get the maximum score of 207 but I can live with that. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go wash the sand out of my hair.

Treasure Hunt is a puzzle box masquerading as a text adventure. The game was created in 1978 by Lance Micklus for the TRS-80. I could find no packaging or documentation of any kind but Nathan P. Mahney of CRPG Adventures found this short blurb in Softside Magazine:

Here is the plot hook or introduction screen from Treasure Hunt:

I had mentioned in a previous blog post that the influence of Colossal Cave upon other games was far reaching. Up to this point we have seen what seem to be staples in commercial adventure games in 1978: a treasure hunt involving a number of treasures or items that need to be collected and a maze that you are going to have to navigate yourself through. While this game certainly has both it is more than that.

When I first sat down to play Treasure Hunt I made the mistake of assuming that it was a simple little game whereby all you need to do is navigate through the caves and collect the treasures. I was actually biased with ‘fools gold’ on my first playthrough because I was able to collect 15 treasures. Things went from bad to worse at that point.

There are 95 total caves that are numbered 0 to 94. Cave 0 is the entrance & exit and where you can safely deposit the treasures that you find. Each cave lists the other caves that it is connected to by number and you merely choose which cave you want to go to next by typing in the number. It looks like this:

When I first started to play I would list the cave number and then alongside that cave number I would list the exits that you could reach. Like this 50: 25, 49, 73. Each time I visited a particular number I would circle it so that I could easily see the path I had not taken or what numbers were left to reach. Sounds easy enough right? Wrong

There are a number of hazards and problems that are introduced as you play.

• There are pits that you can fall into that immediately cause death. There are three of these pits in the game and so you have to work around the pits by avoiding those cave numbers
• There is a pirate in one of the caves and if you do not avoid him he will take your treasures and scatter them about to other caves and your hunt for those treasures will have to begin anew (with a lantern that is running low)
• You can experience an earthquake which shakes the entire cave. I did not understand what the big deal was at first until I realized that each time there is an earthquake (yes they are random and can occur multiple times) that it changes the locations of each of the items in the game. I cannot even begin to tell you how devastating this is.
• There is a giant bat that can randomly swoop down, pick you up, and deposit you in a different part of the caves. When it does this you drop all of the items you are carrying and they are randomly scattered about the cave. This too is particularly devastating.
• There is a dragon located in the caves that will kill you unless you are carrying a particular item……….

These hazards presented a problem for me because of the way that I had decided to map the cave complex. There is an additional wrinkle or complexity to the game. Some of the treasures or objects are needed to acquire or activate other treasures or encounters. You can only carry three treasures at any one time and you cannot drop a treasure. So you must avoid picking up certain treasures but remember where those treasures are located so that you can use them later to solve the game’s puzzles.

This is where I pause to introduce Jason Dyer’s excellent Renga In Blue and the All Adventures project that he is working on. They say imitation is the best form of flattery and it was his idea to begin the All Adventures project which led me to the decision to do something similar. My absolute favorite genre in computer gaming is the role-playing game and particularly the dungeon crawler subset. While my primary goal was to play each CRPG in the year in which it was published I could not ignore the fact that I am a voracious reader and love puzzles. If I focus solely on CRPGs then I am missing out on an entire world of adventure so I decided instead to take a page out of Jason’s book and play and blog about every adventure game ever made in chronological order. There was an individual named Peter who had commented on Jason’s own experience with Treasure Hunt. I am sarcastically paraphrasing (because it was anything but simple in my opinion) Peter who offered that there was indeed a pattern to the numbers and that they could be mapped into overlapping rings. I admit to being humbled by this individual because he made it sound so simple and then he provided a most excellent map. I wadded up my own maps in disgust and I instead used Peter’s map which Jason posted and I will now provide as well. Once I had this map in my possession it made things much easier.

It then became a simple matter to work through the puzzles and acquire the treasures. Even when the bat deposited me in another area of the caves and scattered a couple of the treasures I was able to quickly regroup because of Peter’s wonderful map. The puzzles are unique and fun to work through. One of my favorites involved the dragon. Now normally I do not like to provide spoilers for the games I am playing through. It is my hope to accomplish three things with this blog: 1) to leave you with an appreciation for the history of computer games and how they have changed through the years and influenced other games that would come after 2) that each game is a work of art to be appreciated and that programmers and the people who have created these games should be considered artists; and 3) that reading about my experiences with these older games may entice you to attempt to play them and experience them for yourself. I love to create my own hand drawn maps for the games that I play but I felt like having Peter’s map improved the experience for me. In fairness, I likely feel this way because I spent a good amount of time creating a map on my own. Now getting back to the dragon; I just had to share this bit of comic relief with you however I must warn you that it contains a SPOILER.

I laughed out loud at that one. Classic. You’re on your own with the other puzzles in the game.

I ended up spending more time with Treasure Hunt than I expected to. It first presents itself as a simple affair but it is layered in complexities. It is more a puzzle box than text adventure. The map is diabolical as well as the random events which serve to hinder your progress. The waning lamp also adds a time constraint to the game. There MAY be a way to extend the life of the lamp but that is up to YOU to figure out dear reader. While I expected Treasure Hunt to merely be a box to check for 1978 I found it to be a very unique experience; different from anything that has come before it. I wanted to thank Lance Miklus, the author, for this little piece of gaming history and work of art.

This is the second in a series of text adventures published by Mad Hatter Software and written by the 12 year old Greg Hassett. We played and reviewed Greg’s first game, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and while I found it enjoyable I felt that it needed to be fleshed out a bit more with a bit more polish added.

Hassett’s sophomore effort, House of Seven Gables, is loosely based on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s book; The House of Seven Gables. The novel is a gothic romance focusing on a New England family and their gothic home. There are suggestions of the supernatural and witchcraft throughout the book. The House of Seven Gables has been adapted several times to film and television.

The publishing company or Hassett must have felt a need to commercially tie two of his games to published books. The relationship between the Journey to the Center of the Earth game with Verne’s work is tenuous at best. The same can be said for the House of Seven Gables. The supernatural and witchcraft elements are only presented as undertones in Hawthorne’s work but in Hassett’s text adventure they are very real.

Greg Hassett’s second effort is a much more concise and enjoyable game. The game provides a first for us as I believe this is the first commercial game to feature a haunted house theme.

The game begins with you outside of the house. You can see a shiny compass which you can pick up. Once you enter the house you are effectively trapped inside of it. You cannot escape the house until you have killed the witch responsible for locking you inside.

There are several horror movie themes scattered throughout the game. You’ll encounter ghouls, ghosts, a vampire, a mad scientist’s laboratory and eventually the wicked witch.

The House of Seven Gables contains a couple of characteristics which seem to have become common place in text adventures during this time period. There is a maze which you have to traverse and figure out in order to claim your “reward” at the end and the game also involves a treasure hunt.

There are eight different objects for you to collect and you get points for depositing these objects in the living room. This was not clear nor were there any instructions telling you to collect these treasures but I found that once I started dropping them in the living room I started to accrue points. The number of points that you receive for finding these treasures is secondary to the ultimate goal of defeating the witch and escaping the house. Once you have slain the witch and you leave the house you then win the game regardless of the points you have or the number of treasures that you have collected.

The ghoul and the ghost are two supernatural opponents who keep appearing randomly throughout the game. There is a way to deal with the ghoul and a disembodied voice in the hall closet will give you a hint to help with that endeavor. I never could find a way to deal with the ghost other than to give it a treasure. It demands treasure and once you give it one of the eight valuable objects it will go away for awhile. Perhaps there is another way to deal with the ghost but I did not find it.

I am not going to list the eight treasures that you can collect as I do not want to spoil it for anyone who wants to experience the game for themselves. I have always been a fan of the supernatural and haunted house themes so this checked a couple of boxes for me and was a refreshing change of pace from the Colossal Cave fantasy treasure hunt clones.

There are a few spelling errors in the game which should really be unforgivable. I am surprised that neither Hassett or the publisher caught these and allowed them to exist in a commercial product. I am not sure that Greg Hassett actually knew what a gable is or perhaps I don’t because architecturally they did not seem to make sense where they were located in the house.

There were also a few things in the game that left me confused. I am not sure if these were merely red herrings, or if they existed to provide some background color, or if I failed to find a use for them or connect them properly within the game. One example of this is the black cat in the game. When you attempt to interact with the cat it disappears in a puff of smoke but threatens that it will return later. The black cat never does return in a different way nor have any other integral part of the plot that I could find. There are a couple of other things like this but they did not ruin the game but only served to add to the mystery of being trapped within a haunted house.

I was able to defeat the witch and make my way out of the house. It took me a bit of exploring to realize that a new exit direction was created out of the living room after defeating the witch. I did not score the maximum 160 points because I held back a couple of the valuables in my possession in case I ran into the ghost while trying to get out.

I really had a positive experience with this game. I think it was the refreshing change away from the fantasy genre and the fact that this was the first commercial game to make use of a supernatural or haunted house theme. The game was tighter and I actually enjoyed my time with it.

I have decided to play Treasure Hunt as the next game in my challenge as I continue to work my way through the 1978 offerings.

Journey to the Center of the Earth is a treasure hunt text adventure game written by Greg Hassett for the TRS-80.

An astounding piece of trivia concerning this game is that Greg was 12 years old and in high school when he wrote the program. Greg would go on to write eight additional text adventures and was the only competitor to Scott Adams in this particular arena at the time.

Journey to the Center of the Earth is loosely based on the Jules Verne book of the same name with particular emphasis on the word loosely. Once you step outside of your ship in the beginning of the game any similarities to Verne’s work ends. The game looks and feels more like a Colossal Cave or Adventureland clone.

There are treasures to collect and you deposit them in your ship. The more treasures you collect and safely deposit the higher your score in the game. A few of the locations feel half-finished; the beginning of an interesting idea that only serves to add color. In this treasure hunt you also have the “maze” trope which has been a staple of the other text adventures that we have played from this era. There are really only three or four puzzles to solve in this game. The hardest puzzle is dealing with the nine-headed hydra.

It did not take me very long to explore all of the areas of the game and eventually solve it. I maybe spent no more than 45 minutes to an hour with the game and the game was much easier than that of Adventureland by Scott Adams.

I am inclined to believe that there were players who enjoyed and appreciated the easier difficulty level. I would have liked to have seen the game locations and descriptions fleshed out a bit more and I would have appreciated the addition of more puzzles. The game just felt a bit incomplete to me or rushed and needed a bit more polish. I had to remind myself also that the game was written by a 12 year old in high school. The game mechanics were flawless and I find that detail to be extremely impressive.

My next game is going to be another text adventure from Greg Hassett entitled the House of 7 Gables.

Knight’s Quest is a role-playing game released for the TRS-80.

The game came packaged with two other games: Robot Chase and Horse Race.

There was no written documentation which came with the game. All of the instructions for the game as well as the plot hook can be found just after the title screen shown above.

The plot hook is interesting enough. You are a new knight for the King of Norsax who is sending you out on your first quest. Nothing too terribly difficult for a first quest; merely obtain a gold chalice from a mountain demon or a gold anchor from a sea demon. Your king doesn’t want to tax your abilities too badly your first day out after all.

The main screen of the game shows you a grid which is supposed to represent an outdoor map. There simply isn’t much in the way of graphics. The gameplay ran very smooth. Your move codes are displayed for you and you use these to move about the map. You may find when you move that the area is safe or you may have an encounter. If there is an encounter it is possible your opponent will challenge your or you may challenge the opponent. I encountered evil knights, sorcerers, smugglers, and a man eating giant. Once combat begins the outcome seems randomly determined. I could not tell you the math or numbers involved if I wanted to. If you win the combat your reputation score goes up and you receive silver pieces. If you lose the combat you are most likely dead or seriously wounded.

I also encountered health springs and monasteries in certain squares. One monastery gave me a magic dagger. If you are in combat you can use the magic dagger to automatically win that particular combat and then it vanishes. It can only be used once.

In my first game I eventually made my way to the sea demon, beat him, and obtained the golden anchor. I made my way back to the castle in five moves and won the entire game in under 15 minutes. I thought perhaps that fate was allowing me to roll a natural 20 so to be sure I started a new game. Again I found the sea demon, beat him, and obtained the golden anchor; making my way back to the castle in five moves. This time it took me only 9 minutes to beat the game. Now; I like to think that I’m good at times; but not THAT good. The game seems rather quick and easy to beat however I found portions of the game to be original and slightly entertaining. The evil knights, the health springs, monasteries that grant a magical dagger, movement on the outdoor map, all of this seemed a bit refreshing or original from what had come before.

The ease with which you can win and the speed of the game are sure to turn many hard core gamers off. It took me longer to emulate this game on my PC than it did to beat it. I don’t regret for a moment though all of the different stops and discoveries I am making on this journey with these different games.

Next up for me is Journey to the Center of the Earth; a text adventure from 1978.

I took a break from computer role playing games in 1978 and turned my attention to the first commercial text adventure. Adventureland is the first of several text adventures created by Scott Adams. He co-founded, with his ex-wife Alexis, Adventure International in 1979. The company developed and published video games for home computers. The cornerstone products of Adventure International were the Adventure series of text adventures written by Adams.

Colossal Cave was written two years earlier by Will Crowther but on a mainframe computer. Adventure International released early text adventures for most of the major home computers of the day. Scott Adams’s work was influential in adventure gaming. In 1990 Computer Gaming World published a statement by a ‘respected designer’ that “it was impossible to design new and more difficult adventure puzzles because Adams had already created them all in his early games.”

Adventureland is #1 in this series of early text adventures by Adventure International. The influence of Colossal Cave here is unmistakable. The number of locations are smaller than that of its predecessor however there is a tightly knit cohesion with each location and their respective puzzles. There is a quirky sense of humor sprinkled throughout the game as well

The goal in Adventureland is to find 13 lost treasures and deposit them in a safe location. This type of game fits into a “treasure hunt” theme which was pervasive in many early text and graphic adventures that flooded the market. The shadow of Colossal Caves would be far reaching. There is also a maze to traverse in Adventureland and this would be another staple which would be included in many future adventure games.

I remember as a youth walking into computer stores and seeing Adventure International games on most shelves. I would end up later cutting my text adventure teeth on Infocom games but as the years rolled by I had always regretted not exploring the worlds created by Scott Adams. I am glad that I finally got the chance to sit down with Adventureland.

I found most of the puzzles in Adventureland to be extremely fair and to make sense. My gripe with many early text adventures is that many break what I call “fair play” rules with their odd logic puzzles. The game runs extremely smooth and I had no technical issues running it in Dos Box. Full disclosure: I had to get a hint for the quicksand portion of the game. I did not have a problem figuring out how to get the treasure found there. My problem was how do I extricate myself from the quicksand? My issue ended up being one of syntax. I also had an issue concerning the bees. I had deduced how they MIGHT be used correctly but both times I carried out my plan the bees suffocated and died. So I naturally thought I must be missing something or doing something wrong. I ended up spending quite some time on that particular puzzle and ended up reading that the bees even when used correctly will suffocate about 50% of the time. GRRRR. I ended doing two more run throughs with those bees and they survived on the 4th take. This comes close to violating my “fair play” rules because WHO is normally going to keep trying the same action multiple times hoping for a different result by the 3rd or 4th time? I had no issues with anything else and I don’t feel too badly allowing myself a gentle nudge to finish.

You may have noticed, dear reader, that I try very hard to avoid giving you the answers to these puzzles or providing a walk through. I know this breaks the mold a bit from other bloggers and I wrestled with this decision because it seems that there is a large audience who do like a complete walk through or spoilers. It is my hope however that by drawing attention to these pieces of history (they are after all an art form and should be considered creative pieces of art) that it gives you the urge to try them out for yourself.

I would like to report that I did find all 13 treasures and completed the game. I enjoyed my time spent with this one and strongly recommend that you grab your favorite beverage, make yourself comfortable, and immerse yourself in this land of adventure. Do you think YOU have what it takes to find all 13 treasures? I look forward to playing the sequel Pirate Adventure and taking you with me on the high seas.

I will be returning to computer role-playing games with Knight’s Quest for my next game.