Renga in Blue

It’s been a while since we’ve played Peter Kirsch, despite this being his 16th game for this blog. (Most recently: The Dalton Gang, Alaskan Adventure, The Curse of the Pharoah). This is the 20th and last game for the SoftSide Adventure of the Month (he didn’t write all of them, but he edited all of them and wrote the majority). He kept going after this with the SoftSide Adventure Series (10 more games!); it was published on their “SoftSide Selections” which has more than just adventure games.…

It was remembered as a “joke” computer, with its 22 by 23 character screen and 3.5Kb of RAM. Revisionists forgot that at the time there was nothing else, and that within the confines of that 3.5Kb of RAM (sometimes more) we made magic happen. Brendan Jones (quoted above) we’ve seen before with three VIC-20 games from 1982, the most memorable being Fatman: Crime and Vice which invokes gritty American ultracrime stories despite being written by a teen-aged Australian. He was friends with Nigel…

(Continued from my previous posts on Catacombs, and in particular my last post which described how the 1981 PET version of the game was recently rescued.) The disk copies we have are for the “4040” edition of the game. This is referring to a disk drive pair by Commodore; image via the Centre for Computing History. While the predecessors (2040 and 3040) were for the US and Europe respectively, this one seems to have gone international; it gets mentioned in an Italian book, for instance.…

(Continued from my previous posts on Catacombs, which you probably should read before this one if you want the full background.) Last weekend, I received a message from Marcel Ingram Lansing that one of the most sought-after Commodore PET games had been rescued. Specifically, Colin Haynes had copies of both Catacombs and Goblin Towers by Brian Cotton in Commodore PET disk format. They’re part of a series of five adventures from the author published by Supersoft starting in early 1981. Goblin…

Back already! (Continued from my previous posts on Thissala.) From a 1981 brochure for the Data General Dasher terminal. Well. Rob pointed out I still missed a chunk of content, but I still would have made it an addendum or a comment on my last post, except then I found a puzzle that both of us had missed, and here I am. Many of the lingering puzzles could be “this isn’t coded yet” territory, but the nature of the puzzle I found is such that it feels highly likely there’s a way through. Let’s…

This is my last post on Thissala for now, although given the authors never finished it, and there seems to be content I haven’t been able to access, I can’t promise it is the last word. My previous posts on this game are needed for context. Via S. Howlett-West Books. Prior to officially being To Your Scattered Bodies Go, the first book of the Riverworld series was published as two novellas; this magazine has the second. Let me first address something I mentioned in my post last time: what…

(Continued from my previous posts.) I’ve finally finished filling in the map of the desert, and found absolutely no items whatsoever. It’s all just rooms and more rooms. If there are any puzzles, they’re of the “hidden” variety. This presents an opportunity to do something I’ve done only marginally on this blog: analyze the prose. Via eBay. Before I get that, let’s lay out the rest of the geography. I mentioned a rusty key after a rock slide; heading farther northwest leads to a view by a cabin…

(Continued from my previous posts.) One thing to keep in mind with mainframe adventure games is they were often experienced by players of that period in a state of “under construction”. This started directly with Crowther who left a literal “under construction” sign in the lower parts of his cave, where one of the exits simply crashes the game. This was kept to an extent by Woods (who left “under construction” in at Witt’s End) but Woods also had one release that included his own “under…

(Continued from my previous posts.) Last time I left off on getting immediately killed by a pirate when entering a niche at the train station. Predictably, you can also get killed by waiting for the train in the track while not going west into the niche. It is now 13:5 There is a rumbling sound and a distant whistle from a VS+EL RR train. WAIT It is now 13:10 You have just been run over by a VS+EL RR train. There are no other exits. I ran through my item list (rope, pendant, charm, keys, can…

(Continued from my previous posts.) While I have explored the cave some and will share my results, I have not gotten that much farther; I’m intentionally saving part of the game for a later post, because I want to focus on the parser, world model, and trying to work around the game’s bugs. Before getting into all those things (and the cave itself), one brief bit of business from the town that I had trouble mapping. Aula in the comments pointed out an alternate map shape, and once I realized…

(Continued from my last post.) As is tradition with one of these gigantic cave-delving based games — and there is cave-delving, even though it wasn’t clear at first — let’s spend some time outside first. To recap from last time, the game starts with you in a parking lot with little direction. Nearby is a dowel rod, a charm with triremes, two disks that allegedly allow teleportation (when magically charged), and a $10 bill. Going west from the road with the bill (and the two to the north) gets…

Public attention, as well as the attention of groups such as this, has been focused on the design and application of large, expensive “super computers.” Our national preoccupation with size and power makes this fact understandable. However, the minicomputer, which I define as a stored program computer selling for under twenty-five thousand dollars, is deserving of much more serious attention than it has heretofore been given. — Robert L. Hooper, from a paper presented at the 1968 Fall Joint…

This is a temporary post for anyone attending my talk on the 1st year of Japanese adventure games. This links to my discussion of each one I have been able to write about in depth. For those not attending, there will be a YouTube upload eventually! (Although for my regular readers, there won’t be anything new! But maybe you’d like to hear me talk anyway.) Omotesando Adventure Mystery House Mystery House II Diamond Adventure Takara Building Part 1 Cosmo Cross The Phantom Ship / Yuureisen The…

I’ve finished the game, and my previous posts are needed for context. Cover from an early Apple release, via Mobygames. To continue directly with the most immediately clear solve: the way the barrel works is as a teleporter. It’s not a new location at all, but rather is the dark place between the dungeon and the magician’s room. You can go east or west to get out; the reference to finding a nearby fire to light the candlestick is to the fire in the magician’s room I had already used before. The…

(Continued from my previous posts about the game.) Progress, but not quite as much as I’d like. Still, I think I’m one or two posts away from the end. My main target for today. The most immediate thing I solved — roughly five minutes after making my last post — came from one last re-read of the fairy looking for their glasses. I realized that it might not be a tiara or hat on the fairy’s head (as my brain was originally interpreting), but rather the glasses themselves (especially since the game…

(Continued from my previous posts.) Before getting into the puzzle solving, let’s tour the last part of the map, where “there’s less hustle & bustle”. This is just past the main town, to the south. Just west of the room above are the stockade (with the scene I discussed last time) and the jousting. Just like with town, the various rooms have random encounters. It isn’t nearly as bad as it could be, and I’m guessing they’re programmed in a way that forces a rotation rather than hoping the random…

(Continued from my previous post.) I’ve got most of the map laid out, and things are open enough that I’m not really “stuck” but I wanted to report in anyway. Story from the later version of The Coveted Mirror, via the Museum of Computer Adventure Game History. To clear one thing up right away, regarding the mirror pieces: you don’t pick up the ones you find. You instead just see them and remember their shape, and trying to pick one up mentions a “protection spell” (I’ve only found one of them…

We’ve featured companies here before (like Adventure International and Sierra On-Line) that started their main development in games, with a few extra utilities being sold on the side. When Mark Pelczarski formed Penguin Software, their initial core product was (rather than a game) their Graphical Magician, which held them steady through their early years. However, they eventually became prominent for their adventure games: Transylvania, Crimson Crown, The Coveted Mirror, The Quest, and their…

I’ve finished the game, and you’ll need to have read my previous three posts to understand this one. Rendition of Sapas Mons on Venus, a volcano 400 km across and 1.5 km high, using coloration from Venera missions. Via NASA. Last time I was thinking about the bug I had run across with the rod becoming two rods when entering the pool. Despite the glitch here, some further mucking about confirmed the rod is the only item that this happens with, and the special coding indicates that it is meant as…

(Continued from my previous posts on the game.) I was trying to push to the end, but I still must be missing something fundamental. At the least, I can say (checking the list of rooms in the machine code) that there isn’t much more for me to explore; this is intended to be a “tight” game like Savage Island Part 2, and the way the alien-transformation works makes me think the author even had Savage Island Part 2 specifically in mind. True color picture of Venus, from Reddit. Progress hinged on…

(Continued from my previous post.) I haven’t made real progress in terms of events happening, but I did manage to get more objects to do something, so it seems worth an update. Exploration across the inventory space rather than the locational space, so to speak. Actual pictures of Venus from the Ventura 14 probe, front and back cameras. Via The Planetary Society and Ted Stryk. First, most straightforwardly, I figured out how to operate the boots: you need to JUMP UP (as opposed to just JUMP)…

I’ve now played Epic Hero #1 and Epic Hero #2 of the series by Marc Leduc. I’ve given the history already at those entries, but as a brief reminder: he was a Canadian who moved to England (and married and had children there); he was a fan of both the Video Genie and the much rarer Colour Genie and produced a series of three games (Epic Hero) followed by a series of six (Colour Quest), where two of the Colour Quest games were written by a different author and the sixth Colour Quest game is…

I wanted to knock down one more game from the Rainbow Book of Adventures contest (the first text adventure contest) before moving on to other things. There will be eight left to go (saved for some future time). Deed of the York is another case like Escape from Sparta where something went awry in the credits. Specifically, the opening title screen indicates a different original author than Chris Harland (as seen in the image above). So the game is actually by Dwight Logan, originally?…

The story so far: PRISM was a storydisk/game released by a business software company, International Software Marketing, in 1982. Inside are clues that lead to real life buried treasure: three golden keys. Back in January of this year, I wrote a series about the game and the commenters of this blog took a swing at solving the puzzles. My original posts used the Apple II version (which still seems to be the original intended platform), but an Atari version surfaced as well (thanks to Atarimania).…

So far, out of the Falsoft contest adventures, I’ve played Polynesian Adventure, Search for the Ruby Chalice, and Escape from Sparta. I pointed out last time that these tend to be the only games published by the particular authors, although in the case of today’s author (Robert Mangum II) this isn’t true. He published two games, one that won in the first Falsoft contest and one that won in the second. Robert Mangum, a 15-year-old sophomore at Astronaut High School in Titusville, Fla., purchased…

This returns to the Tandy CoCo adventure contest from Rainbow magazine, culminating in thirteen games printed in The Rainbow Book of Adventures; I’ve played Polynesian Adventure and Search for the Ruby Chalice so far. I wanted to get a few more of the set taken care of. Even though I’m not following strict chronology by month, the book was released in January and I’d feel awkward being near the end of my 1983 sequence and still pulling games to play from the book. Just as a reminder, this…

This is the first visit of the All the Adventures project to Ireland. I can’t fully say “this is the first adventure game from Ireland” due to the possibility of something slipping through the cracks (and also the fact I haven’t finished 1983) but we can still assert 1983 as a general starting point; anything that came before that was too obscure to be noticed by the various modern archives. (We have an author upcoming from Northern Ireland with a game from before 1983, but it wasn’t written…

I’ve finished the game; you should read my previous posts on the game before this one. I apologize for the delay, but I had the perfect storm of life-interference, the game being finicky, and me being slow to translate. Also, just to announce straight from the top (before any serious spoilers on the rest of the game): if you want to play the game in English, Jim and Charlie Gerrie now have a translated version available. Inside Shinkigensha. LOGiN, August 1983. “For entertainment, people began…

Last time, I mentioned three books published at the incorporation of Shinkigensha. One of them was an NEC PC “yearbook”, essentially an encyclopedia of software. Looking at the inside front cover, you can see publication info. This includes a publication date (March 10, 1983, noting it is a first printing), the creator (The Micro Communication […]

I haven’t made as much progress as I’d like — it’s still The Phantom Ship except in the sense of being a ship where searching reveals nothing — but I’ll give a report anyway. Before starting on gameplay, I have a piece of history to cover. (Rather, I have three pieces of history, but I’m […]