Author: professor6153

Mike Singleton wrote Lords of Midnight for the ZX Spectrum in 1984 and allowed Beyond Software to publish it on a gentleman’s handshake. Singleton took a turn as a theoretical physicist, taught English for a decade, and then turned his attention to the home computer market. To say that Singleton was a smart guy is an understatement.

It is obvious that Singleton was heavily influenced by Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Before he started coding the game, Singleton spent three months developing the world, story, and characters. He began by first working on a large map using felt tip markers. Once the map was complete, Singleton then worked on the story. The story that Singleton wrote wound up included with the game as a novella. Then he began the process of coding. He finished the game in only three months! He started in January and finished in April, working 12-hour days.

The Lords of Midnight sold 10,000 copies in the first two weeks and was a smashing success. In Crash magazine’s 1984 year-end poll it was voted Best Text/Graphical Adventure by 51% of the voters. In 1991 the same magazine called Lords of Midnight and its sequel “the two best computer games ever written”. Lords of Midnight still carries the distinction of quite possibly being the greatest game to ever be created for the ZX Spectrum. I think what I’ve enjoyed most during my investigation of this game are all of the former ZX Spectrum owners waxing nostalgic over their many long hours spent with the game. I really enjoyed reading the many love letters by fans to the game and to Mike Singleton.

Beyond Software really pushed the word “epic” when marketing the game. I must admit, when you’re playing the game, it certainly has an epic quality to it that other games in this era have been lacking. Perhaps it was Singleton’s background as an English teacher, but his process of creating world, characters, and story before coding certainly seemed to work.

In the past, I’ve talked about reciprocity when playing these older games. I discovered that a novel had been written based upon the game.

It is obvious that Drew Wagar, himself an English teacher as well, is a fan of the game. This shows itself in his adherence to the game material and the world that Singleton created. The book weighs in at a whopping 552 pages and I took it with me on our vacation to St. Thomas. I didn’t do much reading on the island itself but devoured the book on our travel days. I found the book to be entertaining and it was probably responsible for helping me to defeat the game in a timely manner.

There are two ways in which you can play The Lords of Midnight. You can choose to play the game as a strategy/war simulation in which you try to enlist allies and then maneuver them about the map, trying to defeat Doomdark’s forces of darkness. The second way is more of a story and adventure format. You focus on Morkin, the son of Luxor, and his quest to find the Ice Crown. If Morkin can find and destroy the Ice Crown, the source of Doomdark’s power, then the forces of good instantly win.

I have never been a big fan of tactical simulations. I like the “idea” of an epic fantasy battle, but I don’t enjoy the application of it. I’m more a fan of (obviously) role-playing games, text-adventures, and even graphic adventures. So, I chose to concentrate on Morkin and his quest to find the Ice Crown.

The joy of exploring dungeons in a CRPG is in finding hidden items and locations, uncovering the secrets that the labyrinth jealously guards. The overland map of Midnight pays homage to this very experience. There are many hidden locations and objects to be found which are not on the map. So, a player can spend hours going over the grid of the overland map and mapping everything out by hand. Fortunately, because I chose to read the novel just before playing the game, I knew that I had to enlist the aid of a fire-breathing dragon to destroy the Ice Crown. I also knew where the dragon had been encountered. Assuming that the author was staying true to the source material, I concentrated my explorations to the northwest portion of the map and was quickly rewarded.

Once I allied myself with the red dragon known as Farflame, we began to make our way towards the Tower of Doom. It was there that I found the Ice Crown and we were able to destroy it.

The innovative landscape views and the popularity of the game turned Mike Singleton into a rockstar. Magazines were frequently fighting to interview him. He created a sequel shortly after entitled Doomdark’s Revenge and then hinted for years at a third game to be entitled; The Eye of the Moon but it never saw the light of day.

I can see how ZX Spectrum owners could have spent countless hours with this game. If you wanted to map out the lands of Midnight and uncover its secrets, you would have to painstakingly do so by hand. No easy feat.

I am not going to attempt to win in campaign mode, however after having read the novel, if I were to attempt to do so, I would enlist as much aid as I can and send them all to Xajorkith to make a final stand there against Doomdark’s forces. I am going to remain content having beat the game in story mode with Morkin.

I spent roughly four hours with the game, probably quadruple that number had I not read the book beforehand. The epic feel to the game is not exaggerated. It’s two different types of play, the game’s AI, the large scope of the map with all of it’s hidden secrets, makes it seem astounding that all of this was crammed into a 48k ZX Spectrum. Quite an accomplishment. I believe that if you want to consider yourself a historian of these games, that playing The Lords of Midnight is an absolute necessity.

Next up on the docket is Doomdark’s Revenge which was also released in 1984. I may as well dive right into the sequel.

Until next time….

I completed 27 role-playing games in 2023. I’ve noticed that the games are getting longer and more complex. There are a couple of reasons for this: 1) designers were sort of feeling around in the dark when it came to CRPGs – experimenting to see what worked and what did not. The definition of a CRPG continues to evolve at this stage but one characteristic begins to emerge: the time commitment needed to finish a role-playing game is much more than that of most other genres in this era. We now know this wiill continue to increase dramatically with the roll of years with many requiring over 100+ hours to complete.

2) the technology of home computers is now starting to advance. Thus far developers have had to deal with harsh technology limitations when crafting these games for the home computer user.

We’re also seeing the birth of the JRPG which quite literally just means “a role-playing game from Japan”. In the coming years however we’re to see it become the name of a sub-genre whose evolutionary branch creates quite a different product from Western RPGs. The Black Onyx wasn’t the first original role-playing game out of Japan, this distinction belongs to The Dragon & the Princess, but it WAS the best selling.

We also were introduced to Courageous Perseus and Hydlide in 1984. Both of these titles also came out of the east. Hydlide would later be dubbed as a pillar that greatly influenced the Japanese RPG scene. Hydlide ushered in what would be known as the action RPG. It set down the formula for the Y’s series as well as The Legend of Zelda. We are still in the 80’s computer era but we’re very close to crossing the line into 8-bit territory shortly.

The Sword of Kadash was a bit of a genre buster in 1984. The game featured 250+ rooms of dastardly traps, monsters, and puzzles. While it was spiritually close to a couple of others that came before it, I felt that it started to push the envelope a bit and give us a glimpse of what would be called metroidvania-style of play, a bit of open world, side quests, and a taste of what would become the action RPG subgenre. I died many times and spent many hours getting to the end of this one.

It’s really difficult to pick a favorite from this list of 27 games. The Dungeon Master, Dragon Quest, Questron, Xyphus, and the Sword of Kadash are five that proved very difficult and ate up much of my time.

I think my favorite game that I played in 2023 has to be Questron. I remember seeing the box on the shelf as a teenager and I just never had the time or opportunity then to devote to it.

It did not disappoint. I know there are some that call this a blatant Ultima pastiche, but I still really enjoyed my time with the game.

I found that, other than the lone Eamon adventure I played, that I had gotten away from playing text adventures and stayed firmly rooted in CRPGs. I was happy to do so and I may find myself continuing along this same avenue in 2024.

As I look ahead, there are upcoming Japanese RPGs and a lone French RPG that may create a bit of a conundrum for me but I’m going to see if I can muddle through. The technology and programming required to get some of these older games to run will continue to be a challenge for me but thus far I am lucky that I have had some support from colleagues in this area.

I am really enjoying the thrill of discovery of these older games and feel a little bit like an archaeologist in the search of old tombs in that regard. I also enjoy studying the history and development of games and how they influence each other so in that respect it’s a bit like taking on the role of historian as well. I continue to update the game database section of the website and it is more of a labor of love for me than anything else.

I do have a Twitter account that I use for the website Retrogamestrove.com (@OldManGamer12) / X (twitter.com) and I encourage you to follow and interact with me there and I will try to do more with the twitter account as well. I also have a Discord room in association with the blog and website and you can join here. Join our Discord server! I’d really like to see a greater response and discourse to the blog postings, especially on the website itself in the form of a reply. My audience is still quite small, but again, I’m getting a lot of personal satisfaction playing these games and maintaining the site. It’s a labor of love.

My goal for 2024 is to see if I can play 12-24 CRPGs at a minimum and report on them to you. Thank you for taking the time to read me and I look forward to gaming with you in 2024. Happy New Year everybody!

Pendragon: Water of Life was released in 1984 by Abacus Software for the Dragon 32/64. It was written by David Jenkins and it seems this is his only credit.

I looked far and wide and could find no documentation for the game. This was unfortunate because the player has the ability to cast spells but when you choose this option the game wants you to type in and provide the name of the spell. Since I was unable to do so I always resorted to physical combat. The lack of documentation will also prove a problem at the very end of the game; more on this later.

I played this game on an emulator, and it took me roughly 4 hours to finish. It is not too terribly difficult, but it is not easy either. The world that you’re exploring is slowly being overtaken by the forces of evil, led by the Warlocks of the Eye. You can elect to move about the map using the four cardinal directions. You can review your status as well as the map of the land you’re exploring.

You can also review your statistics at any time from the main screen.

You gain experience by battling the different creatures that you encounter in the game. These include: the living dead, a mercenary, a hunter, Warlocks of the Eye, a troll, dark birds, a giant spider, and a few others. Your health and strength are easily depleted through combat. There are two ways to regenerate these attributes: by finding food and water as you explore the map, and by choosing to rest. For some odd reason, regardless of what terrain you are in, you can only rest if you have gold in your possession. The objects that you find in your travels are not fixed but are completely random from one game to the next. Finding gold, food, and water is very rare which makes survival difficult. I probably played close to 30 games before I was able to reach the end of the game because of this random factor. Whether or not you reach the end of the game is NOT based on any skill though there is a strategy involved.

The map is a very simple affair but traveling across it is not. The random encounters are quite numerous, and combat is an odd affair. When choosing to attack the game will quickly, in the corner of the screen, flash a number from 0-9. You have to very quickly react and hit the key. For example, if the number flashed is a 5 you have to press 5 as quickly as you can. If you are quick, then you deal a Mighty Blow. If you’re able to respond in a timely manner than it is a Swift Blow. If you hesitate slightly or hit the wrong key, you are informed that you are Too Slow and you then suffer an injury and take damage. When you defeat an opponent, you gain experience and your health and strength increase based on your experience. When you move across the map however it constantly depletes your health and strength requiring you to constantly rest. If I cannot randomly find food, water, or gold (the latter allows me to rest) then you will die, and your game will end.

The objects that you can find are found on the inventory screen up above. A rope, lamp, boat are the common items that you can find. They are necessary in order to access various locations on the map. You need the lamp to enter the Caverns of Doom. Inside the Caverns of Doom, you’ll find the Ring of Power. You’ll need the boat to reach the Island of Chaos which hides the Shield of Life. You’ll need the rope to climb the Wizard’s Tower which contains the Necromancer’s Map. Your wandering across the map will hopefully allow you to randomly find a Cloak of Invisibility. You will need the Ring of Power, Necromancer’s Map, and Cloak of Invisibility to access the Castle. The Castle harbors the Water of Life which completes your quest. The Shield of Life allows your character to be resurrected, if killed, while keeping the items in your inventory.

So, there is a bit of strategy involved. I found that you have to hope that you can find a boat to reach the island so that you have a means of resurrecting yourself. Getting to the island should be your first order of business. Then you have to hope that you find the lamp and rope so that you can obtain the other items that you need. You also have to randomly discover the Cloak of Invisibility in your travels. While all this questing is transpiring, you’re besieged with random encounters. Even when those encounters go well, your attributes are constantly being drained due to travel AND said combat, so if you’re not finding gold, food, or water, you DIE!

Once you’re able to storm the castle you find the Water of Life, however you need to cast a particular spell in order to be awarded the prize. This is the equivalent of entering a password. I mentioned up above that I could find no documentation for the game, so I was not able to cast spells during combat, which is an option always presented to you, and so as a result I was not able to provide the password at the end of the game. The game afforded me six guesses before kicking me out of the castle.

I wasn’t able to provide the password due to the lack of documentation, but I WAS able to finally reach the castle after obtaining all of the quest items. I am thus going to chalk this up as a win and declare that I’ve finished this particular entry. If anyone reading this reached the end years ago, and you can remember the name of the spell which awards you the Water of Life, I’d love to hear from you, just to satisfy my curiosity.

Next up on the docket is Lords of Midnight and this will be the first game that I tackle in 2024 as our year draws to a close.

Until next time…

Computer role-playing games in 1984 began to usher in what would become known as action RPGs. The Tower of Druaga, Courageous Perseus, Hydlide and Sword of Kadash heralded what would become an entirely new subgenre where reflexes and arcade-like play are combined with role-playing elements. Admittedly, this has created some problems for myself, and it will continue to do so. Why? While I am enjoying this subgenre, I am just not that proficient at it. I struggle a bit when reflexes are called upon. It is this very reason why many gamers prefer turn-based role-playing games. In these types of games there is a much greater time commitment requirement but the threshold to be able to play these games is low compared to a Dark Souls. Perhaps my skills will increase over time but as of right now it is a concern.

Sword of Kadash in an action RPG that was developed by Dynamix and published by Penguin Software. It was released in 1984 for the Apple II, 1985 for the Commodore 64, and 1986 for both the Atari ST and Macintosh. The game was written by Chris Cole who finished it at the incredible age of 17. This is a game that is quite a bit different than anything I’ve played to this date. It is a little reminiscent of the Caverns of Freitag from 1982 in terms of style, but the similarities end there.

The Sword of Kadash is an extremely difficult and challenging game featuring a sprawling dungeon of 250 different rooms. Each of these rooms are filled with monsters, diabolical traps, secret passages, useful items and/or treasure. I think I perished in this game more times than any previous game to date. Every single room requires constant experimentation.

I played the Commodore 64 version of Sword of Kadash on an emulator, and it took me over 20+ hours to beat the game. There were moments where I thought that I might never win the game. The map can be extremely confusing, and it is filled with its share of secret passages and hidden rooms. It took me hours of exploration to find the hidden passages that would take me deeper into the game. My first time through the dungeon, when I entered the dragon’s lair near the game’s end, I had 2400 hit points and discovered that these were woefully inadequate in order to defeat the dragon. I started the game all over again. When I next faced the dragon, hours later, I now had 5500 hit points, and discovered to my dismay, that this was still not enough. I started the game over a third time, and I took my time with every single room and in this run through I liberally used save states. I waited until I fully mastered and stripped each room of its possessions before moving on. When I next faced the dragon, I had over 11,000 hit points. This finally proved to be enough. Once I vanquished the lich who guarded the Sword of Kadash, I then learned that the sword protects me somewhat from the dragon’s fiery breath. The sword made the encounter with the dragon much easier whereas before it seemed a nearly impossible task.

The game begins with you wandering about the desert with very little water left. You are wondering how long it will be before the sand covers your bones when you are suddenly surprised and captured by brigands. They offer to spare your life if you will complete a task for them: which is to enter the deadly catacombs of the Fortress of the Dragon and retrieve the enchanted Sword of Kadash. They march you to the Fortress and force you to enter..

Your character gains experience as a result of your victories in battle and treasure that you find. When enough experience points have been gained, your level increases. When I defeated both the dragon and lich and retrieved the Sword of Kadash, I was 66th level.

There are various weapons, some that are magical in nature, that you can acquire. These range between axe, dagger, morning star, and sword. You can also find shields and rings which help to improve your armor class. The highest, or best, armor class which you can achieve is 50.

The various items or treasures that you can find throughout the Fortress are symbols, keys, scrolls, chests, and healers. The symbols resemble an Egyptian ahnk and they can help to remove a curse. The keys represent experience and money and are NOT necessary to open any doors or passages. Scrolls contain magic spells. The only spell you possess in the game is a Fear spell. When you cast the spell, it causes the monsters to move away from you for a short time. You can then use this reprieve to flee or to blast the hell out of them. The healers are boxes that heal up to 300 of your hit points. They are rare and much sought after.

The best shield that you can find in the game is a +4 shield which is hidden in one of the fortresses towers. This is a very hard to find area and I only found it on my 3rd time playing the game from the very beginning. The best sword I could obtain without sacrificing a lot of hit points was a +3 sword. Some of the creatures can be dastardly to kill. Ghosts and Wraiths in the very beginning and middle of the game can be particularly deadly.

The map with all of its secrets is the biggest challenge of the game. There are myriad hidden passages and rooms and hidden trigger bricks. The picture up above shows the dragon. You must get past the dragon, obtain the Sword of Kadash which is guarded by a powerful lich, and then use the sword to come back and defeat the dragon. Once you do, you are rewarded with this screen:

I really enjoyed this game even though I also found it to be very frustrating. This game is so much different than any of the other action RPGS thus far – that I feel like this game is somewhat genre breaking. I am surprised that it doesn’t get more recognition. Between work and preparing for the holidays, this game consumed much of my free time in December. I highly recommend it.

Next up on the docket is Water of Life.

Until next time…

DnD was developed and published by Bill Knight as shareware and released for DOS in 1984. The game would later be updated, retitled, and released as Dungeons of the Necromancer’s Domain in 1988. This was to avoid legalities and lawsuits, which seems a convoluted tale.

Once you’ve generated your character and the game begins; the graphics and mechanics seem very familiar to two of the very first games that I covered when I started this blog: The Dungeon and The Game of Dungeons. I had to access the PLATO system by remote terminal in order to play these games. There is a reason why these games all seem so very similar. A game called “dnd” was written in TUTOR programming language for the PLATO system by Gary Whisenhunt and Ray Wood in 1974 and 1975. Another dungeon crawl, called “DND” was written in BASIC for the DECSystem-10 mainframe computer’s TOPS-10 operating system in 1976 by Daniel Lawrence. The games were very similar and territorial arguments about source code still exist today. DND had three dungeons – Lamorte, Shvenk’s Lair, and Telengard – and Lawrence eventually ported DND to home computer systems, whose limited RAM forced him to drop two of the dungeons and forced the character into a single class. The game was commercially sold under the name of the surviving dungeon, Telengard. The source code for the mainframe version of DND was ported to other computer sysems. Bill Knight discovered one of these ports while working at Digital and created a DOS port, adding two new dungeons – The Cavern and The Warren.

Knight apparently wouldn’t learn who the original author of the game was until many years later. This topic is thoroughly covered in both Matt Barton’s Dungeons & Desktops book, which I highly recommend, and in CRPG Addict’s post: The Final Word on Daniel Lawrence’s DND. Of the five dungeons, only Lamorte and Telengard list as “Ready for exploration”. I chose to explore the Lamorte dungeon. I find the drama of this very fascinating from a historical perspective. I feel like I’m sometimes playing the role of archaeologist as I play each of these early games. There is a tremendous influence involved regarding the growth of the home computer and in technology from year to year. Much like the Gold Rush, there was a tremendous rush by many to get a piece of this pie and in the 70s and early 80s publishing and developing was a bit like the wild west.

Bill Knight’s DnD is the closest iteration to what I experienced on the PLATO system. When you’re generating your character, you get to choose between 3 different classes: Fighter, Magician, or Cleric. I elected to play as a Cleric only because this class is usually a rare to non-existent option. I chose the name of Cadderly based on R.A. Salvatore’s Cleric Quintet.

Where this game appears to be quite robust is in the number of spells you can choose from. Magicians have four levels of 24 spells to choose from while Clerics have four levels of 16 spells to choose from. We haven’t had spell lists like this since Wizardry. I almost abandoned my Cleric character when I discovered that Magicians had access to a 3rd level spell called Pass Wall. The spell shifts the molecular structure of the desired wall and allows the spellcaster to pass through it. This spell was absolutely necessary to in order to reach the end in The Caverns of Zoarre and I was fearful that this might be the case with this game as well. I did decide to stick with my choice of Cleric in the end.

I really enjoyed experimenting with the various spells. Two spells that I couldn’t have survived without were the Continual Light and Hold Person. Continual Light is a 3rd level spell that mimics the affects of a magical torch. This allows you to see surrounding permanents, encounters, and treasure areas in the dungeon. Hold Person causes your opponent to be held in place while you basically thump on it. This spell worked against much tougher opponents which helped me to both survive and gain experience at a faster pace.

There are 15 different types of monsters that you can encounter in the game: kobold, goblin, orc, dwarf, harpie, troll, bugbear, doppleganger, ghoul, minotaur, ogre, giant, vampire, balrog, and dragon. I have listed the monsters in order from weakest to strongest. The vampire, balrog, and dragon are particularly deadly. The monsters, however, also have a level attribute. So an 8th level balrog is a much tougher opponent than a 1st level balrog. While the kobold is the weakest opponent in the list, a 12th level kobold can be deadly as well.

In the beginning, the game is balanced quite well and staying alive can be extremely difficult. You gain experience by slaying creatures and finding treasure. Early on, it was particularly rewarding to gain a level. When you achieve a new level, it gave you access to more hit points and spell slots. This game balance begins to go “off the rails” once your character begins to move past 7th level. The magic items that you find on each dungeon level, increased hit points, and greater number of spell slots begin to make you almost invincible.

I started the game by mapping out each of the dungeon levels. I would explore each level, making sure that I found all staircases leading up and down as well as any other exits. There are elevators also which always take you UP one level. There are also pits which always take you DOWN one level. There are also teleport squares which randomly teleport you almost anywhere. I always tried to avoid these. There is also something called the Excelsior transporter. This takes you to any dungeon level you want, for a price. Once you obtain the ORB, more on this later, the Excelsior transport will not work and is no longer an option. You will have to use stairs and elevators to reach the surface. I found that once my character was 9th level and I had mapped out the first 10 Lamorte dungeon levels, that I was beginning to get bored and restless with the game’s balance.

So, I decided to shake things up a bit. There is no story or quest associated with Bill Knight’s version of DnD. However this plays very closely with The Game of Dungeons from the PLATO system. Much like Game of Dungeons, there is an ORB located on the last level of the dungeon, which equates to the 20th level. So what I did was I used the Excelsior transport to take me down to the 20th level and I started playing it blind. The 2oth level was tricky because the area that the Excelsior transport takes you to is sealed off from the rest of the dungeon level. If I had played with a Magician, I could have just cast Pass Wall and moved on. Since I did not have access to that spell. I had to go back up to Level 19 and pray that I find a stairway or pit down to a different area of the 20th level. I WAS able to find this, as well as the location of the ORB, however getting the ORB proved to be extremely tricky.

You can see from the image above, that the ORB was surrounded on all sides. South of the ORB had been a 35th level Dragon! You can see by my spell slots that my character was exhausted, having searched most of the 20th dungeon level for the orb. Luck was with me, I hit the ancient dragon with a Plague spell, causing it to contract a combination of several deadly diseases, which killed it instantly. I moved forward, obtained the ORB, and made my way all the way back up to the 1st level. There is no end sequence or congratulatory screen when you return with the ORB. The magic item makes you Immortal. If you should die while playing the game you automatically revert to half of your hit points, thus making it impossible then to kill you.

The image above shows my final character stats, having returned with the ORB.

The 20 dungeon levels were in a 20 x 20 format and contain permanent fixtures that are always found in the same place on each level. These include: stairways, altars, elevators, the EXCELSIOR transporter, fountains, Djinn, Dragon Lairs, Mirrors, the ORB, pits, thrones, teleporters, and treasure troves.

This game certainly felt like a reskinned version of others which have come before it. Out of all of the games that have branched out from the original source material, this one felt the closest to the original game that I played on the PLATO system.

I played the game through DOSBox and it took me about 8 to 9 hours to complete.

Next up on the docket is The Sword of Kadash.

Until next time….

While playing Courageous Perseus I was reminded of a bitter truth; that I’m just not as good at action and platform games as I’d like to be. I was able to persevere and beat the game Moria (a very large dungeon crawler made in 1975 for the PLATO system – a distinction not many can claim) and yet I find myself struggling mightily to advance beyond a certain point in this game.

Courageous Perseus is one of the very first action RPGs (which is actually a particular category of games) from Japan. It was released in the same month as Dragon Slayer, and one month before Hydlide. I have not yet attempted to play the former but I did just recently play the latter. I found Hydlide to be a very difficult game as well, yet I was able to persevere and reach the end. I wish I could say the same of this particular game. Courageous Perseus was developed and published by Cosmos Computer and released in 1984 for the PC-88 and FM-7 and then in 1985 for MSX and Sharp X1.

When the game begins Perseus starts with 2000 hit points which are persistently drained at the rate of 1 point per second. Enemies are destroyed by running into them while keeping the Space bar on the keyboard pressed. Sounds simple right? Wrong! The problem here is two-fold as you’ll soon discover. In the screenshot found above, Perseus has attack and defense values. These values both start at zero and then increase with every slain enemy. Almost all of the enemies are invincible to Perseus except one. Perseus can only defeat the light blue soldiers at the start of the game. Once you get your attack and defense values high enough, you can begin to attack and affect the next enemy. The wrinkle here is the game never lets you know which enemy you’ll be able to attack next, so then it becomes a matter of trial and error. The game is so punishing in this way that sometimes you’ll find yourself wandering all over the map to look for 1 or 2 more creatures that you can slay BEFORE you’re able to move on to the next group. This leads us to the second part of the dilemma: the map itself. The game world or island consists of 120 total screens and certain enemy types are only concentrated on a particular screen. This is where strategy is involved because the map of the island is very confusing.

Chester, better known as the CRPG Addict, took the time to take a screen shot of each piece of the game world and then stitch them together. I know a good thing when I see it, but even with the aid of Chester’s map I found that I could only progress to a certain point in the game. Several hours into it, I can now mentally place each of the different enemy types where they appropriately belong on the map, however your health is still on a strict timer. Time is not your friend here and it’s still taking me too long to traverse this maze of a map to reach my enemies. There are caves on the island that make it possible to get around a bit faster, but where you come out is determined at random. You must also leave the screen to re-enter the cave too which places you in danger of nearby enemies, so I have not found the caves to be all that helpful yet.

Here is the order of enemies that have been vulnerable to my attacks thus far. I have not yet been able to make it beyond the scorpions.

• Light Blue Soldier
• Unicorn
• Satyr
• Centaur
• Devil Soldier
• Scorpion

I know not which enemy is vulnerable to me after the scorpions because I always find time depleted before I can move on. There are five different signs on the island that remind me of those found in the Ultima games. Obtaining a sign will grant you 1000 hit points, but even finding all five of them doesn’t seem to grant me or allow me enough time to finish the game.

You finish the game apparently in one of two ways: either by finding the 12 signs of the zodiac (accomplished by defeating an appropriate enemy type) or rescuing the three princesses held captive on the island. Thus far I think I’ve found 3 of the 12 necessary zodiac signs. They are not in a particular area of the island; they just appear randomly after defeating a particular enemy type.

I am now 216 games into this journey, and in almost every single instance, I have been able to persevere and finish the game before moving on. I have not yet been able to do so with this one. And if I’m being honest, I’m not sure that this game has deserved so much attention from me. For the sake of my ongoing mission, I’m going to slide Courageous Perseus into the background. I’m not giving up on it completely and will come back to it now and again, but I must continue on, the list of games yet to play is massively long. I’d like to talk to someone who has actually finished this game to find out how they accomplished such a feat and what I am doing wrong.

Next up on the docket is DND from 1984.

Until next time…

The Citadel of Chaos was released in 1984 for the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum. Penguin Books was the developer and publisher, and the game is based off of the Fighting Fantasy series.

Fighting Fantasy was a series of single player role-playing gamebooks created by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone. The first volume in the series was published in paperback by Puffin in 1982.

The series distinguished itself by mixing Choose Your Own Adventure-style storytelling with a dice-based role-playing element included within the books themselves. The caption on many of the covers claimed each title was an adventure “in which YOU are the hero!” The majority of the titles followed a fantasy theme, although science fiction, post-apocalyptic, superhero, and modern horror gamebooks were also published. The popularity of the series led to the creation of merchandise such as action figures, board games, role-playing game systems, magazines, novels, and video games.

Puffin ended the series in 1995, but the rights to the series were eventually purchased by Wizard Books in 2002. Wizard published new editions of the original books and also commissioned six new books over two series, ending in 2012. The rights were then acquired by Scholastic in 2017, which has since published four new titles and reissued thirteen of the original books with new artwork.

You begin the game by creating your character. You roll for three attributes: Skill, Stamina, and Luck. You then roll for your Magic points which determines how many spells you can start with and cast throughout the adventure.

Once you roll for your attributes you are then asked to name your character and then taken to a list of spells and asked to choose from them until all of your Magic points are depleted. You have quite a selection of spells to choose from and for some reason these evoked pleasant memories of Infocom’s Enchanter, which I played when I was much younger.

Some examples of your spell choices include: Creature Copy, ESP, Levitate, Fire, Weakness, Strength, Illusion, Stamina, and others.

The actual writing and the overall story are both very good. The descriptions of the locations are excellent, and the encounters are well thought out. The right action that you need to take is not readily apparent and the results are often not what you would expect.

Combat can occur quite often in the game and conflict is handled in a separate combat screen. You and your opponent each roll 2d6 and add your skill points; whoever has the highest roll deals two points of stamina damage.

I found the magic system in the game to be highly enjoyable. There are different ways to tackle each of the obstacles that you encounter in the story. You might choose to use an object in your inventory to solve a problem, or you may want to cast a spell which might be particularly useful, or you may just want to resort to physical combat. Your spells that you initially select at the beginning of the game are much like inventory items, once you cast the spell from your spell slot, it is gone.

There were a couple of instances in the game where I felt I might find myself unable to continue because of the branch of choices that I made. I soon discovered however that your player is “funneled” to a particular location and that there are multiple ways to deal with the problem. In MOST cases, if you think you’re in trouble because you don’t have a particular inventory item, there is work around to the problem.

Your ultimate goal is seizing control of the citadel from Balthus Dire; a dark sorcerer of ill repute. The game seems to suggest that Balthus Dire is also a vampire or at least something very close to it. There seem to be a number of ways that you can choose to deal with the big bad but the most satisfying is to cast Levitate soon after Dire causes the tower to tremble and rip a set of curtains from the window. Sunlight floods the chamber and causes the ultimate demise of our villain.

There are some areas that can be extremely tricky to successfully complete. Your research foray into the library can be a tricky affair that can lead to you being captured which opens up an entirely different story branch. The battle with the dreaded 7-headed hydra is also particularly deadly.

This introduction to the fighting fantasy series left me with a surprising reaction to this product. It made me want to purchase or read some of the books from the series as I really enjoyed the writing and locations. I suspect that this game is quite literally a computerized translation of the book itself. The surprising reaction I am referring to is that I found myself thinking that I’d rather read the book than play the computerized version. I wish the programmers would have just had the text describing the locations appear to you all at once, much like a normal text adventure. Instead, each new location slowly parses the text out to you, line by line, until complete. Haltingly reading each location line by line got to be quite a slog. This was a very poor programming choice and almost ruined the experience for me. I even set my emulator to warp speed and still found myself infuriated with the text streaming across like a teleprompter.

This felt more like a text adventure than a CRPG even though you had inventory to manage AND your combat was determined via die rolls. You also found that your three attributes could increase and decrease throughout the game. This observation is not necessarily a bad thing as I love text adventures, the one negative though, and it is a big one, is the way in which the text in the game was dispersed. I should add that even after lodging this chief complaint, I am curious and look forward to playing the other computerized fighting fantasy installments.

I played the game on a Commodore 64 emulator, and it took me roughly three hours to complete.

Next up on the docket is Courageous Perseus.

Until next time…

In Wizardry II we’re braving death and danger to find the Staff of Gnilda. In Ultima III we’re traversing the land far and wide to look for marks and cards in anticipation of the final showdown. Even in Maze Master, your mission is to make your way to the last level and slay the Balrog. What is your main objective in the Caverns of Zoarre? To find the Kinoben Cat! What in the hell is a Kinoben Cat you may ask and why are we looking for it? Errr….I don’t know. It certainly isn’t what I expected. Here is what you CAN expect with Caverns of Zoarre:

Quite a bit of mapping with paper and pencil! The dungeon levels are extensive and roughly 37 x 37 in size. Every single inch of the map is fair game because of a Melt Wall spell. You have to explore even the inaccessible areas. There are very few unused spaces among the entire five levels. Levels 3 and 4 were particularly difficult to map and thus time consuming. This is not a complaint. I love mapping these dungeons by hand.

There were trap doors that you might fall through to the level below you or teleporters which will place you in a different area of the same level.

On Level Four there many different rooms that contained altars. Most of the time, when I could, I donated all of my gold. In almost all cases nothing happened but one time I was awarded with an experience level. There were a couple of really cool gargantuan rooms that housed ancient dragons that you had to fight. They were guarding huge treasure piles of 14,000 gold coins. I slew them with a Death Spell.

On Level Five of the dungeon there were a few wishing wells. I would routinely, when able, throw all of my gold into the well. Nothing ever came of this.

You can also expect some solid gameplay. Each movement you make is a 10′ move which makes mapping a treat unlike the older Dunjonquest games where scale was always an issue. The spell system in the game was a lot of fun. There were a lot of spells and you had a lot of variety to choose from.

Near the end of the game I was 24th level, with 169 maximum hit points, and 1,250 magic points. I was already mentally making arrangements to purchase a small estate somewhere nice and to hire staff and retainers.

Now remember that in my previous posts I divulged that I was unable to find any kind of documentation. While you can press the ? key to help with the gameplay commands, I still never read any kind of background, nor did I know if there was an overall goal to the game. I was greatly enjoying myself and so I was content to continue mapping to see just how deep this dungeon ran.

It was on the fifth dungeon level that I never found any further stairs going down. On the western edge of the dungeon, I used my Melt Wall spell to access an inaccessible area and I found something called the Kinoben Cat. It was THE only inventory item I could actually pick up and it was added to my character sheet to show that I was carrying it. This seemed rather significant to me, so I attempted to cast Glyph of Recall to take myself back to the castle. The spell fizzled and the CAT was then described as glowing. Well…great. I had to trudge back through five levels, which wasn’t bad actually because I’d taken the time to map them all out. I knew where each of the stairways were. Once I made it safely out of the dungeon I was awarded with the following message:

..and then I was dropped to DOS.

I enjoyed the game and thought it was well done. It was better than some of the older commercial games I’ve played despite the fact that it was a shareware offering.

Next up on the docket is the Citadel of Chaos as I’m still working through some technical issues with Tyrann.

Until next time…

Caverns of Zoarre is a shareware offering that was written by Thomas Hanlin III and I was able to find these comments that he made about the game online:

“For what it’s worth, this started out as a TRS-80 game, Dungeon of Mirandor, which never quite made it out. The TRS-80 market fell off a cliff about the time I finished it. Mirandor owed a lot, conceptually, to the DEC VAX 11/780 version of Telengard, which I’d played extensively around ?1983?. Zoarre was an expanded version, finished painfully at intervals over the course of a year or so. The “fight” handler was unduly tedious to program, and balked me for too long. I wrote Zoarre using the IBM BASIC Compiler, a renamed version of one of Microsoft’s early BASICs. The compiler went through DOS and BIOS services for I/O, and was so unspeakably slow at updating the screen that I had to write assembly language routines for direct screen writes. Plus, it didn’t support the new DOS 2.0 features like subdirectories… albeit this wasn’t a major issue on the typical floppy-only system of the time. Anyway, the assembly language routines eventually made it out as a separate product, AdvBas, which was far more successful than Zoarre. AdvBas later went commercial, and started me on my career in writing tools for programmers. But, that’s certainly a great deal more than you wanted to know. Anyway, it’s nice to have a copy of Zoarre again. I’ll bet it cranks along very smoothly on a Pentium. :-)”

I have made quite a bit of progress since my last entry, thought it would appear ‘I have miles to go before I sleep’. When your character gains experience and increases in levels he has access to more spells. One of those spells was entitled Melt Wall and this led to the realization that every inch of map space is now put into play. Armed with this new information I went back and more thoroughly explored the first level.

The level is still not 100% complete but it doesn’t have to be because I was able to find stairs down to the next level. There is no inventory management in this game. You do not pick up or find objects other than gold pieces. You can only carry 4000 gold pieces at a time at which point you have to leave all gold you find behind. I was able to deduce that you gain experience points in two ways: 1) through combat and 2) by exchanging gold pieces for experience points when you climb out of the 1st dungeon level.

I still have no idea how many dungeon levels there are in this game. The dungeon locations and the things that you find in different areas of each level appear to be fixed so I believe that there is a purpose in place here. I currently find myself on the 3rd dungeon level and it has been a nightmare to map because of the numerous 10′ x 10′ rooms with multiple exits. You’ll find that you’ll have to sharpen your pencil often and I would have a straight edge handy. The maps are quite large.

The sets of stairs that lead up and down are very hard to find and the equivalent of discovering a great treasure. When I find a set of stairs that lead lower then I stop mapping the current level and descend deeper into the labyrinth.

There are some interesting special features that Hanlin includes as dungeon dressing. Sometimes as you pass certain areas, you’ll receive a message that reads; ‘You hear a scream in the distance’ or ‘A large *BOOM* echoes in the distance’ or ‘A black viscous material oozes from the walls’. It’s not a lot but it’s just enough to add some character to the game.

I have also discovered chests that contain gold and skeletons which become animated and attack you. I have discovered a fountain on each level that contains liquid of a random color ranging from violet to black to green and so on. Drinking from the fountain can be harmful or beneficial depending on the color. I have discovered a throne with numerous choices. You can sit on it, ignore it, pry jewels from it, move it, etc. On the third level I recently discovered an altar with the choice of praying before it, donating gold to it, or ignoring it. All of these small dungeon dressings help to add a little character to the dungeon and breaks up the tedium of mapping out these large levels.

There have been a couple of interesting transport options as well. I discovered an elevator which immediately transported me above the first level. I also encountered a transport booth which asks which level I’d like to go to. I am hoping that there is a point to this game because I have spent a considerable amount of time mapping out these dungeon levels.

If you like dungeon crawlers and enjoy mapping out levels via the old school pen and paper method this game packs quite the entertaining punch. My goal is to continue to map out the 3rd level and hopefully find a way down to a 4th level. I am hoping that I will have made more meaningful progress by the next post or even finished the game. Hopefully I will have something positive to report back to you with.

Until next time…

Greetings fellow dungeon crawlers and computer adventure game enthusiasts. When I sit down with my current role-playing game du jour, I wanted to share with you the mug that sits beside me filled with my favorite coffee.

Caverns of Zoarre certainly requires you to do some graphing by hand. It was developed by Thomas Hanlin III and published as shareware. Back in the day, for a $25 fee, you could write Mr. Hanlin who would then send you the manual. I searched high and low and could not find any evidence of the manual online. Fortunately, the game comes with a built in HELP page and is somewhat easy to figure out. What is not as obvious is the premise for playing the game nor do I know what the overall goal here is.

The character creation process is easy and routine. The computer rolls randomly for five attributes and then you decide whether or not you want to keep those scores. You then name your character and then choose between two classes: a fighter or sorcerer. I chose to go with a sorcerer and gave myself the name of Houdini – I was feeling a little whimsical. There is an odd moment during character creation where you are asked if you want to begin the game with a Freen. Not knowing what the hell a Freen was, I responded with a YES. As you can see down below, you seem to wear the Freen. One of the spells you achieve as you gain levels as a Sorcerer is Summon Freen. So, I am now assuming that maybe it is some kind of living pelt or familiar. I later discovered, during combat, that when you are attacked by something that has poison as a special attack ability, the Freen absorbs the poison damage. So thus far, it seems completely advantageous to equip yourself with a Freen.

You can see the full character sheet above and each time you exit the dungeon and return to the surface you’re able to get a full glimpse of your character statistics.

You can get a listing of the commands available to you by hitting the ? once you are in the dungeon.

The view here is reminiscent of the Temple of Apshai and all of the sequels which followed. I moved about using my numeric keypad with 8 for north, 2 for south, 4 for west, and 6 for east. On the 1st dungeon level I encountered the following creatures:

• a goblin warrior
• a wraith
• a Uruk-Hai orc
• a white wraith
• a forest wight
• a Uruk-Hai troll
• and lastly a giant spider

When you encounter a dungeon denizen you have the choice to (F)ight, (S)pell, or (B)ribe. I always choose to sling a spell, but I have had a couple of instances where the creatures have begged for their life, and they then offer you gold in exchange for their life.

It has been a real treat playing a sorcerer. There is quite a spell selection to choose from and I seem to have more interesting options than your run-of-the-mill fighter variety.

The many spells to choose from, as well as the variety, has made this a very enjoyable experience so far. One of the more interesting spells when you’re NOT in combat, is Melt Wall. This completely changes the complexity of the game and I’ll have to now go back to the first level and explore all of the areas that I artistically shaded in. I’ve since learned that whenever there is a space in your map, it can be explored via that spell.

It appears that obtain experience through combat and I’m trying to determine if your gold counts as experience as well. I’ll report more on this in my next blog post. There is a higher-level spell entitled Glyph of Recall and when I cast that it immediately transports me out of the dungeon. An extremely valuable spell to have but I also lost 1000 experience points and a level when I used it so I am choosing to only use it in case of an emergency.

I still have no idea how many dungeon levels there are in this game, or what my end goal is, but I am currently enjoying myself. I had mapped out much of levels 1 & 2 but then fell through a trap door and now find myself on the 3rd dungeon level. I am currently 4th level, have 40 hit poins, and 250 magical points. Each spell that you cast has a casting cost. When you walk around the dungeon your spell points regenerate. You have at your disposal the spells Cure Wounds and Cure Serious Wounds so it is a simple matter of healing yourself magically.

Here are the first two dungeon levels for Caverns of Zoarre but be aware they are both still a work in progress and in no way finished.

I am going to go and refill my favorite coffee mug now and then settle down to continue to map the 3rd dungeon level. Wish me luck.

Until next time…