I've taken a little break from playing (and mapping) the Temple of Apshai Trilogy to instead jump into a couple of much quicker games. First on the list is Adventureland, number one in the Adventure International series of games and arguably the earliest commercial text adventure. (Colossal Cave) Adventure and Zork were limited at the time to mainframe computers and would not have saleable versions until following years.
Adventureland is not viewed with much positivity through a modern lens, but at the time would have been very impressive, especially to those for whom the TRS-80 was their first experience using a computer for anything other than work. It's clear from its contemporary pricing that Adventureland was a premium product: SoftSide magazine (erroneously calling it "Adventure") charged $24.95 for a copy when it first appeared in their listings in their January 1979 issue. Very few other products within the issue cost more than $10 and no others crossed the twenty dollar threshold. In today's money (admittedly a flawed comparison), Adventureland would have cost around $110! [Edit: In the following month's issue, $24.95 would get you both Adventureland and Pirate Adventure together, so I'm inclined to think this might have been a mistake. Adventureland on its own was offered for $14.95.]
This naming confusion seems to have popped up from time to time. Dragon Magazine made a similar mistake in 1980.
Getting Started
Initially, I started playing Adventureland via the remake found on iFiction here. It became apparent, however, that this version does not match the original. I moved over to playing on an Apple ][ emulator instead for a more authentic experience.
It's worth noting that the game takes pains to tell me what it actually is. For most players there was no previous experience to draw from. I also enjoy the note about piracy. Bill Gates eat your heart out.
Playing Adventureland
Adventureland is far simpler than Zork I. It uses a two-word parser (actually telling the player off for starting to type a third word) and there are far fewer rooms, just 33 to Zork's 110. However, Adventureland fits into just 18kb of memory without any real trickery, so deserves some charity. The aim here is to gather thirteen treasures (indicated with asterisks), but the game doesn't tell you this until you reveal the underground by felling the tree in the swamp.
Rather than documenting a full playthrough, here are some thoughts I had while playing:
- I was pleased I could climb two different trees, but was surprised that in the original version, "UP" does not work. Instead I had to "CLIMB TREE".
- Adventureland is generous with signposts. Each of them gives a hint, usually about an object I am carrying or will end up carrying.
- Death is gentle in this game. Once you work out how to leave Limbo, you are pretty difficult to kill.
- I enjoy how darkness seems to work. You die if you travel in an illegal direction in the dark, but, if you have mapped effectively, you can travel around while blind and can even pick up items you cannot see!
- Needing to rub the lamp twice to get all the available treasures is a little cruel.
- After Zork, the maze was (thankfully) trivial.
- There's a couple of spots I really struggled with guessing the correct verb. "SWIM"-ing out of the quicksand, "YELL"-ing at the bear and knowing to "DAM LAVA" in the chasm are probably the worst.
- Finding the *CROWN* required a guide.
- The few moments of pure luck weren't too bad. Being bitten by the chiggers forces the player to pick up the mud, which leads to needing to complete the bees/honey section. Putting the bees in the bottle was the worst example of this—there's a decent chance they will suffocate (and disappear) before getting them where the player needs to.
- The Apple ][ can't backspace, so typos are ruinous.
In the end, victory:
Behind the Scenes
I think it's worth quickly seeing how a room is described in Adventureland. In a 1980 edition of SoftSide, a version of the BASIC source code was printed for readers to transcribe themselves. There were two files to make; first, a data file containing the content of the game and second, the adventure engine that will run it.
We can just about make out part of a room description: "BOTTOM OF A CHASM. ABOVE ME IS A PAIR OF LEDGES..." followd by six numbers. I originally thought these might be the six directions the player can normally move in (north, east, south, west, up and down), but it doesn't seem to line up. It does show how compact the code is though!
This early version of Adventureland is a little rough around the edges. There's instances of "a" when there should be "an", dropped punctuation and even a few spelling errors:
Closing Thoughts
Is it Worth Playing?
Maybe. It's impressive to see something so efficient, but the content hasn't aged well.
🆗
Loot for the Hoard:
The Golden Fish, found in the lake.
My Map:
(Click to view in full size)
No comments:
Post a Comment