Secret Mission - 1979

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There's a name change here. Adventure #3 was originally called Mission Impossible, but copyright concerns led to a rebranding. Secret Mission was branded as a much harder adventure than the previous two; not something for a newbie. This time round, the player is attempting to stop the detonation of a bomb connected to a nuclear reactor.

1979 appears to have been a busy time for Scott (and Alexis) Adams. By the end of the year, there would be eight games in the Adventure series, one of them written by a fan!

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Playthrough

Unlike the previous two titles, I find myself in the thick of things. I can play a tape to receive my briefing, but I'm described an envelope that seems to be missing. This game seems to be more dynamic too; there's someone else here with me moving around. I map out as much of the complex as I can for now and find a series of locked doors that require some sort of authorisation

The other entity wandering around, the saboteur, seems to kill himself after a random length of time and reveals a number of items. Most of them I assume are red herrings. The only other thing I have access to is a chair and strange device, which I quickly blow myself up with. I find myself longing for the verbose descriptions in Zork to help work out what I am looking at.

Once I understand how to take a picture (PRESS RED to activate the camera and then PRESS WHITE to gain a visitors pass), there's only a couple more sticky parts where I struggle to work out the next step. I'm blown up when I correctly guess that I need to break the window but have not brought the (dead) saboteur and his window maintenance pass to safely allow me through it. I also take longer than I would have liked to realise that I need to "KICK" the door to the control room. I appreciated that it was my own mess blocking the door though!

Finally, I mistakenly bring a pail of heavy water into the reactor core, ruining the bucket. It seems like there was a warning not to do this if I'd taken the film to the projector room, but that would have taken no less time than just playing from the beginning again.

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Closing Thoughts

While described as a harder game, I didn't think Secret Adventure was that bad. Like Pirate Adventure, I had a single goal to work towards, and I didn't feel like there were any impossible to guess puzzles, apart from possibly realising I needed to break the window.

Is it Worth Playing?
Yes, as a small self-contained puzzle.
👍

Loot for the Hoard:
The Anti-radiation Suit.

My Map:
(Click to view in full size)

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Pirate Adventure - 1979

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Hot on the heels of Adventureland, Scott Adams leveraged the game engine he had made to create several more titles in quick succession. The first of these, Pirate Adventure, initially appeared as part of a full-page advert for "Adventure!" in the February 1979 issue of Softside. This listing offered both Adventureland and Pirate Adventure together for $24.95 with the following text:

It's not easy to put together the timeline, but I get the impression that Adventureland was made in mid-1978 as a sort of hobby project, there was a gap, and then Pirate Adventure was made a few months later around the end of the year. Both adventures were then formally sold starting at roughly the same time, but Adventureland had been in circulation for a bit longer. [For my timeline, I am estimating this as Q4 1978 and Q1 1979 respectively, but I am very conscious of my lack of accuracy.]

Pirate Adventure was the work of both Adams and his then-wife Alexis. It's difficult to paint a picture of the exact division of labour due to the intervening years and conflicting statements, but I think it can be said with confidence that Alexis had a not inconsiderable part to play. It's refreshing to play something at this stage that wasn't either an evolution of Adventure or simply a representation of Dungeons and Dragons.

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Starting Out

Pirate Adventure starts with a surprisingly mundane setting. I'm in a flat (in London specifically), but I appear to be some sort of cosplaying pirate aficionado. I've got rum, I've got crackers, and it doesn't take me long to find a book as well. The book starts me on my journey properly and I am pleased to see that it functions in exactly the same way that the magic carpet did in Adventureland. Activating it (by typing "SAY YOHO") teleports the player to the ledge outside the flat, unless that's where they are already at which point they are taken to the game proper. The use of the ledge outside the window reminds me of Peter Pan.

I find myself on a beach with a couple of bits of boat nearby. There's not a lot of options for where to go—these Scott Adams are small and efficient rather than sprawling and verbose—so I quickly map the area. It seems like the bulk of the game is managing to collect the several objects required to build a boat. There's a tiny maze which I am more than pleased to map as it doesn't require any overlapping lines, along with an awkward squeeze puzzle that reminds me of the mine in Zork.

While I manage to find the plans for the boat with relative ease, I don't even consider the chance that there's a second item hidden within the same treasure chest. This leaves me with a completed boat but no map. This is one of the only two times I need to find some help online.

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The Endgame

With the ship complete, the pirate located and the map held, I can set sail for *Treasure* Island. One treasure requires some slightly clunky command guessing with the map and shovel in hand, while the other is in plain view but protected by deadly snakes. There's a humourous message displayed when I make the mistake of dropping the mongoose here. It turns out that the player character doesn't actually know what a mongoose is. Luckily, I had also brought the parrot along on the ship as it had not had a use in the game up to this point.

Locating more rum and piling back onto the ship takes me back to the first island where I can pick up the book (and safety sneakers) to return home. That's the full 100 points; only two treasures required.

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Closing Thoughts

I prefered this to Adventureland. It feels a little more focused, something I attribute to the relatively narrow inspiration. I think it probably also helped that it was a collaborative process. The ship was a nice clear goal to work towards and the underground section all felt completely fair. There was more interactivity too: both the pirate and the parrot moved around the map, if a little erratically.

Is it Worth Playing?
Perhaps, as an entry-level title for an enthusiastic beginner.
🆗

Loot for the Hoard:
The Dubleons[sic], found in a monastery.

My Map:
(Click to view in full size)

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Adventureland - 1978

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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.

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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.

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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:

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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:

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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)

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