There's a couple of names that crop up regularly within Softside magazine, a publication dedicated to the brand-new home computer industry in the United States. Initially focused on the Tandy TRS-80 (sold through Radioshack), it would later expand into producing issues for other devices like the Apple ][ and the IBM PC. In the very earliest issues, SoftSide feels like being part of a small club. We see a small group of enthusiastic programmers produce games and more, and we see the magazine help sell them through its software publishing arm, The Software Exchange.
One such name, Lance Micklus, is all over the listings. Much of his work was produced free for the reader—they just had to type the BASIC into their TRS-80 by hand, but his programs (particularly the games) were also prolific within the for-sale section.
One of Micklus' many listings for the TRS-80. The late 70s were truly a time unburdened by copyright concerns!
Dog Star Adventure first appears for sale within the April 1979 issue but just one month later appears with its full source code available for hand transcription. It's notable for appearing so soon after Scott Adams' Adventure and, given Micklus' varied other listings, shows some real skill at working with the limitations of the system. There are, however, several typos within the published code, so I am wary of investing any time attempting to get it transcribed and working. Instead, I'll be playing a Commodore PET version from a little later using a Commodore 64 emulator. The game was also re-released (I think in 1981) as DEATH PLANET The Dog Star Adventure, Other Venture #5 through Scott Adams' Adventure International.
"HAMBURGER" vs "HAMBERGER".
Starting and Mapping
Right. I've done several text adventures now, so I know that I shouldn't start the game by trying to win but instead by creating as complete and accurate a game map as possible. Dog Star Adventure does not have a huge world, but it manages to squeeze in two small maze-like areas: the research labs and the pipes. The latter stymies me a little until I realise there are two rooms with the same description! Other than that, there's not too much to note here. The game is similar in size to Adventureland but has a more thematically consistent world most likely helped by the fact that the setting was cribbed from elsewhere. There's treasures to collect and a few simple puzzles. I've had the two outliers spoilt. The "BIG MAC" (in the version I'm playing) use and the BLASTER hidden in the supply depot.
I actually quite like the supply depot puzzle. It doesn't seem completely unreasonable to have a location within a text adventure that has so many different things that they cannot be listed and so the player needs to identify them in advance. If there was some sort of partial inventory list found nearby, this would have felt fair. Unfortunately, a player going in blind would have needed a very lucky guess (or to have a cheeky look at the code) to pass this check.
I do find one unusual issue with the Commodore version I am playing. When I die, the game does not correctly clear my inventory. I only notice this when I go to pick up (and load) the blaster in the supply depot and am told I am carrying too much. I have to fully reset the emulator each time I lose. I do wonder if this would let me score higher than the maximum points by duplicating treasures, but I would rather move on to greener pastures.
Finishing Up
The random element to guards (stormtroopers) walking into rooms seriously hinders my attempts at collecting all the treasures in one legitimate run. I am pretty sure that the BLASTER is meant to be loaded when it is picked up rather than requiring the additional ammunition in the supply depot immediately. This would increase the number of guards I could handle from four to eight, giving me a bit more freedom to wander the ship. Given that there's two mandatory kills (one in the testing lab and the other in the strategic planning room), failing the game if three random encounters happen feels more than a little cruel. Luckily, the version I am playing (incorrectly?) retains my progress upon death; items remain in my inventory or where they have been dropped rather than returning to their original locations.
Only a single treasure remains and eventually I give up, resorting to looking up the answer online. The supply depot had a third item all along! I can use the cassette tape I find their to make a copy of the invasion plans.
And there we go:
This Commodore 64 version is clearly not happy, but at least I have the full 215 points.
Closing Thoughts
Dog Star Adventure is a solid example of a very early BASIC adventure game. It is not, however, that interesting to play. While it's a product of its time, a time in which hobbyists were breaking through and managing to sell their personal products to the public, I'm not happy with the setting. This is exacerbated by the Commodore version making every previously loose reference to Star Wars completely explicit. It even launches with an ASCII-art picture of Darth Vader! I didn't find a playable copy with a cursory search, but I might have reacted more positively to this game by playing the Adventure International version as I imagine that would be a little more sanitised.
The puzzles aren't too bad. Locking yourself out of victory by using the COMMUNICATOR to open the bay doors and leaving the flight deck a vacuum at the wrong point is neat. The world layout is perfectly reasonable. It's roughly the same size as a Scott Adams adventure, there's little that feels unfair, and no locations that I think are completely illogical. The only difficult-to-map section is a maze of pipes and even that fits within the design of the setting in a believable way.
Is it Worth Playing? Not in the modern day, but the source code found within SoftSide is interesting. Certainly avoid the Commodore 64 port. π
Loot for the Hoard: Secret attack plans, recorded on a cassette tape.
While there had been many earlier RPG titles within the thriving Japanese PC market, Dragon Quest was the first of the home console games to fully lean into the turn-based sensibilities drawn from CRPGs like Ultima and Wizardry, both inspired by the unescapable Dungeons & Dragons. Development was started in 1985 by Chunsoft and it's clearly evident that strong early design choices shaped the final product. Akira Toriyama (of Dragonball fame) was brought in to give the game a mass-market appeal and, combined with the lone male protagonist, this leant a healthy dose of shΕnen manga to the feel of the product. In another coup, music was composed by Koichi Sugiyama, an already prolific composer of musicals, TV and film. Toriyama and Sugiyama would remain active creating art and music for the series until their respective deaths, all the way up until the most recent installment, Dragon Quest XI, Echoes of an Elusive Age.
Mechanically, the game was designed from the outset to mix the overworld travel of Ultima, the first-person combat of Wizardry, and some under-the-hood choices that kept things simple and accessible in comparison to the genre's "older brothers" on home computers. Not all of these choices were voluntary, however, as the limitations of the system combined with the lack of experience programming for it narrowed the scope. A potential full party was limited to the single protagonist and, due to hardware restrictions, the original Japanese release did not have the ability to save, a consequence of the early battery-less cartridges shared by other games like The Legend of Zelda.
Getting Started
I am playing the North American upgrade of the title and will refer to it using the western name, Dragon Warrior, going forwards. It was released more than three years later in August of 1989 (by which time Enix was already preparing for Dragon Quest IV in Japan!) There's a few differences between the versions, but a little research implies that the mechanics of the game were left untouched. Even the bugs! Dragon Warrior was given a lot of attention throughout the second half of 1989 in Nintendo Power with several pages devoted to tips and information in each issue. There was also a full guide to the game included in the November/December magazine.
Dragon Quest begins by asking your name. This—or at least the first four characters—is used to seed your stat progression for the game. I dive in with the name "Theo" rather than picking something a little more optimal. I find myself locked upstairs in Tantagel Castle with the king, his guards, and a selection of treasures. These treasures act as a convenient tutorial as I need to find a key to get out and it gives me a chance to try out the perfectly functional command menu.
I follow the instructions and walk over to the nearby town of Breconnary, where I buy myself a weapon and prepare for the grind. The towns are evocative of early Ultima titles; there's shops that sell equipment and sundries, and NPCs who repeat the same speech each time you interact with them which gives both flavour and valuable hints of how to progress. Outside, the experience is more modern feeling than I ever anticipated: I am genuinely surprised at the smoothness of the combat screen, which pops up in front of the overworld when it is time for a fight. I am impressed further by the user interface changing colour when I reach low life. It lends a genuine sense of urgency to the moments when you get close to death and need to run back to the nearest town.
Making Progress
The gameplay loop of Dragon Warrior is simple: you move to the next region of the world map and kill hordes of enemies until you have gained a few levels and have the funds to upgrade your equipment. At around level 12, this noticeably slowed down. There's a lot of grinding in this game! It's around this point that I'd collected a few unique items, including the Silver Harp at the bottom of one of the larger dungeons—a hidden grave entered only by unlocking a door in the northwesternmost town Garinham. There's been a few hints from NPCs on how I am meant to progress, but the impression I've got by this point is that I likely need to brute force the exploration of the world which requires gaining the levels to comfortably survive in more difficult regions. Level 15 was a major breakpoint. While I couldn't sustain lots of fighting and so relied on the spell REPEL and running away from stronger enemies, it made me just powerful enough to grab the best armour in the game (Erdrick's Armor) from the ruined city of Haukness and to rescue the princess.
Wait. My sprite changes while I carry the princess?! Brilliant.
The Endgame
With the princess safely returned to her father in Tantagel Castle, I can prepare to face down the Dragonlord. I have a little item-gathering to complete and a whole heap of grinding ahead of me before I'm comfortable trying this. I've already found items that represent the sun and the rain, which I've been told by villagers are part of an old legend, but I need something to prove I'm the hero. I end up having to look up the last piece of the puzzle online. Erdrick's Token is found by combining my new ability to learn my map coordinates with a clue from a single NPC pointing me to a specific location at the very bottom of the map. I don't think I'd have got this alone.
I use the reward for all this, the Rainbow Drop, to add a new bridge to the map that leads to the final area (the island in the middle which you can see right from the start of the game). I get completely wrecked and return to safer shores to kill hundreds of weaker enemies. It takes several hours of grinding to reach the point where a feel a bit more capable and I once again try to assail Charlock Castle, hoping to at least get the strongest weapon in the game to speed up my grinding. Instead, I power through (with a little save scumming and judicious use of the REPEL spell), grab Erdrick's Sword, and with the extra damage it affords me I slay the Dragonlord.
Returning to Tantagel Castle once more, I am greeted by the King, turn down the gift of the throne and close out the game by declaring a new journey. I take Princess Gwaelin with me.
Closing Thoughts
Dragon Warrior feels like a tutorial for beginners to retro JRPGs. It has simple core mechanics that befit its console home, but is held up by punchy visual design, a surprisingly modern user interface and more unique experiences than I expected. Memorable moments included rescuing the princess, gaining the ability to teleport back to Tantagel Castle, and the animation that played when I activated the Rainbow Drop.
On the other hand, this game is far too sluggish after the midpoint. I had to spend too much time grinding out experience points for the final encounter long after I'd finished everything else on the map. I gather that the GBC remakes speed up the leveling process, so it would be a lot easier to recommend them over the NES original. Still, for a first offering by a team who had not made a similar game before, Dragon Warrior is a remarkedly solid title.
Is it Worth Playing? Yes, but the godfather to console RPGs is best enjoyed with a way of speeding it up. π
Loot for the Hoard: Erdrick's sword and 65,535 gold pieces (the integer cap!)
P.S., a Name Stat Calculator
Below is a simple name checker so that you can see your starting statistics and growth rate based on the name you pick for yourself.
(or the story of twenty-five bodies for the meatgrinder)
It is the year 666 -- the year of The Beast.
In the country of Caer Omn, near the town of Mersad, stands the ruined castle of Ramething. Beneath the castle lie the terrible dungeons of Ramething, an incredible maze of rooms and corridors, occupied by horrid monsters and piles of ancient treasure.
You are a brave young fighter preparing to enter this dungeon, to kill monsters and amass treasure. For every monster you kill and every bit of gold, etc., that you bring out of the dungeon, you earn experience. The greater your experience, the better fighter you are and the harder you are to kill. Your object is to reach 20,000 experience points and then retire from dungeonry with an established reputation.
As a well-educated young person, you know how to use a sword and have a certain acquaintance with magical and clerical spells. These capabilities will improve with your experience level.
I won't retread too much ground here as many other, better writers have documented this game, but pedit5 is held as the earliest example of a CRPG that can not only be proven to exist (m199h fails on this front) but also can still be played to this day via the brilliant emulation team at Cyber1.
Shortly after the original release of the first edition of Dungeons & Dragons, enthusiasts with access to computers leapt to create digital representations of their new hobby. Rusty Rutherford, working within the Population and Energy Group at the University of Illinois as a PLATO programmer built pedit5 within the spare mainframe space allocated to the department. He recalls that a similar game—dnd—was under active production but wasn't locatable so jumped into making his own program, taking roughly six weeks to finish.
The version that is accessible using Cyber1 feels a little like a museum piece as it opens with a credits message describing its provenance before offering the option of jumping straight in or offering some help. These help files (which I think were originally stored within pedit4) are approachably comprehensive and include information on the basic mechanics, the spells, and the denizens of the dungeon.
Getting Started
It doesn't take very long at all to settle into the brutal gameplay. The behind-the-scenes combat is harsh enough that most randomly-rolled characters will not survive a fight with even the weakest of the enemies and it is impossible to escape fights when within spaces defined as rooms. A fresh avatar has a single spell slot (yes, we've got Vancian-inspired, Dungeons & Dragons spellcasting here) which gives access to Sleep, Charm, Light (which does nothing), and Magic Missile. Both Sleep and Charm will allow for an instant kill if rolled successfully but are limited in the creature types they work on. Magic Missile simply does a little damage as a prelude to a fight, which should help the player's odds of survival.
In practice, this means that the simplest way to play is to enter a couple of rooms, hoping to find a valuable treasure, and then flee as soon as the single spell slot is consumed. Upon leaving the dungeon, gold is converted into an equal amount of experience and accruing enough of that to gain a level unlocks valuable spell slots and a larger "hits" pool.
In reality, you die. A lot.
Twenty-five Dead Theos
I called it quits after the death of Theo the 25th. I estimate that I have only mapped a tenth of the dungeon, so I may return at a later date to throw more bodies into the dungeon.
Overall, I think pedit5 is just a little too random to mine much enjoyment from. Unlike later games with permadeath, there is neither the opportunity to learn from mistakes nor a sense of difficulty progression as one treads deeper into the game. Instead, the very first room you enter may contain a level six dragon, the strongest enemy in the game, which is likely to kill you regardless of your power level.
Is it Worth Playing? Only as an absolute curiosity piece. It's just too random to truly have fun. π
Loot for the Hoard: Nothing! Because no character survived.
Another thank you to the team over at Cyber1 for keeping this and many other history pieces alive.
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!
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.
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. π
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.
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.
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.
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. π
Loot for the Hoard: The Dubleons[sic], found in a monastery.
If one were to draw out a Venn diagram with one circle including the earliest game programmers and the other circle including players of Dungeons and Dragons, one would find that they were pretty much entirely overlap. With its requirements for personal bookkeeping, many dice rolls, and its piles of reference tables, D&D practically begs for digital assistance. Combine this with the need for a Dungeon Master making it impossible to play alone and you have a pretty good explanation for why so many early coders built what became known as "CRPGs", first for fun and later for profit. In the earliest days, these manifested as programs for mainframe computers — like dnd in 1975—a similar story to how Zork was built. Over the next five years, companies spouted out of the woodwork. Many were founded by these earliest coders, and all were hoping to sell to this wave of potential customers.
Dunjonquest: Temple of Apshai was one of the earliest commercial endeavors for the genre, releasing for the TRS-80 home computer in 1979. It was heavily inspired by Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, which had been published just a few years before. Automated Systems (which later rebranded as Epyx) released numerous follow-up games within the same game engine and the whole library was ported to various home computers.
Getting Started
First, the elephant in the room. Epyx remastered the three Apshai games into a single package for the Commodore 64. This is what I am playing, because the original release is staggeringly slow to play and having easy access to lots of dungeons is hard to argue against.
The game was sold with an expansive manual which lays out how character creation works. A player can let the game generate them a character, which is random, or they can import one from outside. The manual even explicitly instructs the player that they can transfer their already-existing D&D character into the game. It is worth noting, however, that all adventurers are fighters. There are no magic spells in Apshai. Neither are there thief skills, although the player can locate secret doors and traps.
I rolled a random character until I was happy with the results, spent my starting money, and finished with the following statistics and equipment:
I had spent every single silver piece on this equipment (thanks to the ability to haggle letting me punch slightly above my purse's weight), so it was clear that I needed to get started with the dungeon delving.
Gameplay is a little different to other early CRPGs. Rather than choosing between moving a single tile or taking a different action such as attacking, the player chooses their facing and then a number of steps to take. The manual implies that the player can wear themself out if they run around all the time, especially with heavy loads, but in my own play I never dropped below 100% fatigue. The game is also only pseudo-turnbased. An enemy gets a single action per player action but gets a free turn if the player takes too long to do something.
Jumping straight into the first level of the original dungeon, I quickly found that not leaving myself any silver for healing salves was risky. It took me a few trips to just the first few rooms to gain a level and find some elixirs before I felt confident going further.
My first impressions are positive. I enjoy the sounds (particularly the short pieces of music) and the gameplay loop—while slow by modern standards—is compelling, especially as I am mapping as I go. Combat and traps feel threatening enough that I don't want to sprint through the hallways; it's hard to know how much I'll be hurt by something until it is too late. I do not die, but sometimes I limp back to the entrance with my tail between my legs. I attribute this to the game using an armor class system: I either get hit or I don't.
By the time I have explored, mapped and looted the whole of the first floor, I have enough experience points to count as a 3rd-level Fighter (running on the assumption that the game uses AD&D progression), I've upgraded my equipment to have the best the shop has to offer, and I have a small pile of healing items banked. I've also found a +1 sword but it isn't clear what the base, unenchanted item would be. I struggle with this when I return to the game and have to type my character statistics back in.
Several More Levels
As I play more and more, it's hard to shake the feeling that fully mapping the first floor and purchasing all of the items from the innkeeper's shop is the biggest victory. In most D&D settings, a warrior getting full plate and a magic sword is kind of a Big Deal. They are likely a local hero at this point. The second floor is similar to the first and I particularly enjoy the descriptions of the prison space.
As the manual suggests that levels 3 and 4 are harder, I move from the original temple to the game's first expansion, the Upper Reaches. This may have been a mistake. The tone is lighter and there's little challenge to be found for my increasingly experienced character. I fly through the first level and, by the time I have finished the second map of the second game, I am very nearly level 6, and I have increased my Intelligence to 18.
Winding Down
I think that at this point I had realised that I was likely to run out of motivation before I ran out of dungeon. It was not that I was not enjoying the game, it was that I had a creeping feeling growing in me that I'd seen all it had to offer.
I completed the third floor of both the first and second games (here and here respectively), and then poked my head into the final level of the first game where I was killed by the very first enemy on screen. I elected to try the final level of the Upper Reaches and finished up with my character at level 7 with only two ability scores not at 18. This was where I decided to call it quits for now.
Thoughts
I found Temple of Apshai Trilogy to be highly compelling and surprisingly tense during my first few hours. The slow, thoughtful process of entering a new room, reading the description within the manual, dealing with any enemies and then searching for secrets created a gameplay loop that remained fun up until I felt like my character was no longer improving. Unfortunately, a lack of an outlet for the large amount of money a player accrues combined with very little personal progression turns the later floors into a mapping exercise. I found that the more I played, the quicker I went and the more diminished the exploration felt. I don't think this is specifically an Apshai problem, though. When I hit a proper flow while gaming, it's easy for me to lose the detail and get locked into just the basic mechanical aspects.
With regards to the mechanical aspects, the opaque nature of the game system both helps and hinders. When actively playing Dungeons & Dragons, I can see when I roll poorly; no matter what, there's an unavoidable element of metagaming. I know more than my character does. With this game, I can only see results, so the opposite feels true. I can't tell how close I was to a successful hit, nor can I see my armour class or any bonuses from magic items. It feels like my character knows more than me.
Is it Worth Playing? Yes, but only the first level unless particularly interested in the style of gameplay. π
Loot for the Hoard: 144,891 silver pieces, and a magical lily with healing properties.
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. π
Loot for the Hoard: The Golden Fish, found in the lake.
Pausing to release their first non-Zork game, Deadline, Infocom quickly followed it up with Zork III. The last pieces of the now heavily chopped up and borrowed from PDP-10 "mainframe Zork" were used to create the backbone of the game.
By this point in Infocom's history, they had released four games which all would go on to sell more than 100,000 copies. They would only manage to cross this threshold three more times across their whole catalogue, a total of thirty-five games. The trilogy would later be repackaged into one box (with just a single floppy disk!) in 1988, potentially as a last-ditch effort to lift their rapidly diminishing sales figures.
Starting Out
by David Ardito and Steve Meretzky, 1982
I start right where I left off. I finished Zork II at the start of a staircase and I begin this game disheveled and confused at the base. The scene-setting is flowery compared to the previous entries and it points towards this entry being a bit more magical and a bit less static than its predecessors.
As in a dream, you see yourself tumbling down a great, dark staircase. All about you are shadowy images of struggles against fierce opponents and diabolical traps. These give way to another round of images: of imposing stone figures, a cool, clear lake, and, now, of an old, yet oddly youthful man. He turns toward you slowly, his long, silver hair dancing about him in a fresh breeze. "You have reached the final test, my friend! You are proved clever and powerful, but this is not yet enough! Seek me when you feel yourself worthy!" The dream dissolves around you as his last words echo through the void....
I grab my familiar light source and start mapping the surroundings. Similarly to Zork II, I note an improvement in the prose, especially in the language used to describe where I stand in relation to the wider world. I also quickly notice that there doesn't seem to be a huge amount of space to explore and that I really don't have much idea what I am doing.
I have a slightly awkward interaction with a man who appears to be trying to rob me. I battle a little with the parser here, but following his instructions seems to work and I am left with a wooden staff. I am also beset by a foe while walking around the Lands of Shadow so I spend far too many turns killing him. More on that mistake later...
I also notice that I can give some bread I found to an old man and he opens up a secret passageway.
The Portal and the Aqueduct
by David Ardito and Steve Meretzky, 1982
Realising that I could swim in the lake after more time than I care to admit, I find a few more rooms to explore. In fact, I find what has become one of my favourite puzzles from across the whole trilogy. Within the Scenic Vista is some sort of scrying/teleport system that lets me step briefly into one of four rooms; one from Zork I, one from Zork II, the Damp Passage from this game and some sort of instant death sequence that could be a preview of Zork IV.
This is the interior of a huge temple of primitive construction. A few flickering torches cast a sallow illumination over the altar, which is still drenched with the blood of human sacrifice. Behind the altar is an enormous statue of a demon which seems to reach towards you with dripping fangs and razor-sharp talons. A low noise begins behind you, and you turn to see hundreds of hunched and hairy shapes. A guttural chant issues from their throats. Near you stands a figure draped in a robe of deepest black, brandishing a huge sword. The chant grows louder as the robed figure approaches the altar. The large figure spots you and approaches menacingly. It reaches into its cloak and pulls out a great, glowing dagger. It pulls you onto the altar and, with a murmur of approval from the throng, slices you neatly across your abdomen.
Rest in peace me I guess.
I get lucky here as the map I have made so far lets me intuit the layout of the world just well enough to guess at the overall puzzle here almost immediately. The architecture is dominated by a large aqueduct/drainage system that is noted in the descriptions of several rooms, so I'm pretty sure that I'm going to be making my way along the top of it before long. Since the Damp Passage may be chosen as a destination for the scrying window and it appears to be the natural, northern end point for the aqueduct, I'm pretty sure I need to leave something there. After completion, this puzzle feels like a more elegant version of the mine shaft in Zork I. In both cases, I need to get a light source into a location that I will be entering in future. The big difference, and the reason I am much happier with the Zork III version, is that a player may solve the puzzle while trying to achieve something slightly different. I used the viewing window as a way to pass the torch (which I had assumed had infinite duration) out beyond the lake so that I could use it when the lantern ran out, but instead found it illuminating my destination after completing the aqueduct. In contrast, Zork I required an active decision to use a relatively unclued leap of logic (that one room sat directly beneath another) with no benefit if you were wrong. On the way, I douse myself in the previously unused grue repellant from Zork II and find myself a curious magical key, which appears capable of changing shape.
The Museum
by David Lebling, 1978
Just a quick aside here: I really don't like the time limit the game imposes before the aqueduct collapses. You are given no in-game warning and, after between 100 and 150 turns, the whole thing falls apart. This opens up a new area (which took me far too long to notice) but also leaves players unable to complete the game. When I compare this to the overarching meta-puzzle of Zork I — where you have several tasks to complete in mostly the right order, but you can and puzzle them out and feel like you are progressing in any direction prior to attempting a "complete" play through — this part of Zork III feels a little clumsy.
The collapsing aqueduct has broken open the passage into the museum, which contains two puzzles: liberating the crown jewels and the Royal Puzzle.
In the game files, the Royal Puzzle is named the Chinese Puzzle, possibly as a reference to the traditional Huarong Pass Puzzle but is more recognisable as a version of Sokoban. However, Sokoban actually released a few years after mainframe Zork, so the whole thing feels a bit like comparing Seinfield to other American sitcoms that followed! This is my favourite puzzle across the trilogy because it relies heavily on mapping the area out before attempting a solution. There's also what appears to be a red herring in how to get out; an easily accessed door appears to destroy any item used in an attempt to unlock it. My only complaint is that the game is a little generous in giving you information in the form of the little top-down 3x3 map you are given each time you move. Completing this puzzle allows me to leave with a book, one of a growing number of items that I appear to be automatically equipping myself with.
The other puzzle here involves attempting to liberate the crown jewels from a museum using time travel. There's a bit of a cultural reference here too: the time machine conjures strong images of H. G. Wells' device. While the core premise of this puzzle was interesting — and contains some fun failure messages! — I found that there was the familiar struggle around guessing some actions that were possible to be taken without clues pointing me there like, most notably, the fact that the whole device may be pushed into other rooms. However, even though this puzzle left me struggling a little, it still felt like there was a natural progression to my failures. The further I get through the series, the more partial successes exist, which give a rewarding sense of improvement and knowledge on my part. For example, the first time I manage to steal the ring, I leave too many clues behind as to how I did it which causes the guards to confiscate the time machine and thus hiding it in the present day.
This, to me, is the true improvement and growth that is happening throughout Infocom's interactive fiction.
Nearing the End
by David Ardito and Steve Meretzky, 1982
Finally, I make my way to what appears to be the final region in the game. I encounter the most overengineered in the series and, frankly, it leaves me a little cold. I am given the biggest block of descriptive text I've ever seen and it still doesn't manage to clearly describe what I am inside:
You are inside a rectangular box of wood whose structure is rather complicated. Four sides and the roof are filled in, and the floor is open.
As you face the side opposite the entrance, two short sides of carved and polished wood are to your left and right. The left panel is mahogany, the right pine. The wall you face is red on its left half and black on its right. On the entrance side, the wall is white opposite the red part of the wall it faces, and yellow opposite the black section. The painted walls are at least twice the length of the unpainted ones. The ceiling is painted blue.
In the floor is a stone channel about six inches wide and a foot deep. The channel is oriented in a north-south direction. In the exact center of the room the channel widens into a circular depression perhaps two feet wide. Incised in the stone around this area is a compass rose.
Running from one short wall to the other at about waist height is a wooden bar, carefully carved and drilled. This bar is pierced in two places. The first hole is in the center of the bar (and thus the center of the room). The second is at the left end of the room (as you face opposite the entrance). Through each hole runs a wooden pole.
The pole at the left end of the bar is short, extending about a foot above the bar, and ends in a hand grip. The pole has been dropped into a hole carved in the stone floor. The long pole at the center of the bar extends from the ceiling through the bar to the circular area in the stone channel. This bottom end of the pole has a T-bar a bit less than two feet long attached to it, and on the T-bar is carved an arrow. The arrow and T-bar are pointing west.
Honestly... what?
Echoing my frustrations in previous parts of the game, this puzzle relies the leap of intuition that I am actually inside a vehicle, but there is no real hint in the description that the whole apparatus can move. I come to the conclusion that this might be the case because the short pole sounds a little bit like a low-tech handbrake, but I struggle to get the whole thing to move. I end up resorting to finding some answers online and then kick myself — this is the third puzzle in the game solved by "PUSH"ing.
A pair of statues here that destroy anything they see. While this is solved as part of the mirror box vehicle, I find myself wishing that the solution involved tricking them to destroy each other rather that sneaking past them.
Finale
by David Ardito and Steve Meretzky, 1982
Now conspicuously wearing the various treasures I have collected, I find myself at a large door that stands as a barrier to the very last bit of the original Zork trilogy. It's a barrier that I cannot open. I cannot open it because "KNOCK" has not been a verb I have used at any other point in the series and so I am completetly stymied until I get bored and look up the answer. This leaves me with strong feelings. Perhaps contemporary players (especially those exploring the iterative additions to mainframe Zork) would have had a lot more patience with experimenting with new verbs, but I just don't really like it as part of a packaged narrative.
Inside, I am greeted by the Dungeon Master. He becomes a companion like the robot of Zork II and can be ordered around. He helps me solve the final puzzle of the game, which I have to admit I simply brute forced. I am rewarded with the remaining untold riches of the Great Underground Empire:
This is a large room, richly appointed in a style that bespeaks exquisite taste. To judge from its contents, it is the ultimate storehouse of the wealth of the Great Underground Empire.
There are chests containing precious jewels, mountains of zorkmids, rare paintings, ancient statuary, and beguiling curios. On one wall is an annotated map of the Empire, showing the locations of various troves of treasure, and of many superior scenic views.
On a desk at the far end of the room are stock certificates representing a controlling interest in FrobozzCo International, the multinational conglomerate and parent company of the Frobozz Magic Boat Co., etc.
But wait! Something else has happened. It seems that all may not be as it seems. The treasures I have been collecting throughout the game have given me a uniform, and a final event occurs:
That's quite the ending. In mainframe Zork, the final paragraph had not been added so I can imagine this was quite a polarising final screen. It almost feels like the first players to have completed the game were in some way being mocked for their accomplishment. In Zork III, however, the final section gives us a better hint at the true reward we have earned for our journey that started outside the little white house three games ago. I think this underground empire — The Great Underground Empire — is mine now.
Closing Thoughts
While I think that Zork I had the best world to explore, Zork III was leaps and bounds ahead with its puzzles and the ongoing improvements to narrative structure. There has also been a behind the scenes shift throughout the series. More and more of the content has been missable or optional, particularly the interactions with other characters within the world. Being able to peek into the source code and see all the actions I could have taken, especially those around mistakes or silly actions, reveals a wealth of missed things. It is possible, for example, to use the torch to set the wooden staff on fire, which instantly kills you.
Playing these three games has given me insight into what I find enthralling about the genre: the methodical mapping and mastery of the game environment, and well-crafted puzzles that don't rely on guesswork or illogical leaps of intuition.
Is it Worth Playing? Yes, but it feels smaller than Zork I. π
Loot for the Hoard: A strange key, which changes shape.
My Map: (Click to view in full size)
A thank you to The Digital Antiquarian, for an entertaining, detailed insight into Zork, Infocom and interactive fiction as a whole.
An additional thank you to Zarf Updates for a neat collection of Zork maps.
