"I also played and finished many of the original SSI Gold Box games such as "Pool of Radiance" and etc. but I would usually go back through them years later with the Clue Book to see what I missed the first time around."
Exact ditto lol
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Adventure Games. Now many did you complete without cheating?
- Thread starter tezza
- Start date
Exact ditto lol
Chuck(G)
Gone, but never forgotten.
Only one--and I cheated.
Back sometime around 1975, a friend who worked as an FE for DEC gave me a DECSystem 10 tape (IIRC it was 7-track) with something called "Colossal Cave" on it. At the time, I was working for Control Data.
It took me about a week of company time to (a) read the tape (figured out the the DECSystem 10 wrote its text files as 5 7-bit ASCII characters per 36-bit word--CDC systems used a 6-bit internal code) and (b) convert the DEC FORTRAN to CDC FORTRAN.
I'm lucky I didn't get fired or worse. Adventure made it around the company (and thence to other sites) like wildfire. Thousands of hours were wasted playing it and exchanging notes. System operators were under standing orders to kill the game if it came up and several "search and destroy" purge runs were made on user permanent files.
But then, I had the source code and travel tables...
Back sometime around 1975, a friend who worked as an FE for DEC gave me a DECSystem 10 tape (IIRC it was 7-track) with something called "Colossal Cave" on it. At the time, I was working for Control Data.
It took me about a week of company time to (a) read the tape (figured out the the DECSystem 10 wrote its text files as 5 7-bit ASCII characters per 36-bit word--CDC systems used a 6-bit internal code) and (b) convert the DEC FORTRAN to CDC FORTRAN.
I'm lucky I didn't get fired or worse. Adventure made it around the company (and thence to other sites) like wildfire. Thousands of hours were wasted playing it and exchanging notes. System operators were under standing orders to kill the game if it came up and several "search and destroy" purge runs were made on user permanent files.
But then, I had the source code and travel tables...
tezza
Veteran Member
Interesting. I was too young to be there when Collosal Cave first did the rounds and I always wondered whether administrators saw it as a time-wasting "virus" as such, or whether they just turned a blind eye to programmers and operators working through it (in their own time of course *cough*).
Tez
docred
Experienced Member
I played a lot of the old adventure games on various platforms, but I think the only one I actually completed was Adventureland (Scott Adams)...though it seems to me there was one on the Apple II+ I finished, can't remember the name (have to look for it). It was an adventureish type one....hmmm.
Speaking of ones you didn't complete, anyone else play Nethack? Great game, huge dungeon. Its still going strong as far as I know version 3.something.
TSR (D&D AD&D) played lots
Still have all my first edition stuff on a bookshelf in the spare room...hoping my little guy will want to play when he gets a bit older, lol.
Speaking of ones you didn't complete, anyone else play Nethack? Great game, huge dungeon. Its still going strong as far as I know version 3.something.
TSR (D&D AD&D) played lots
Still have all my first edition stuff on a bookshelf in the spare room...hoping my little guy will want to play when he gets a bit older, lol.
channelmaniac
Veteran Member
Oh boy... I was addicted to these as a kid...
I played and solved:
Zork I, II, and III (Mapped ALL of these by hand)
Enchanter
Leather Goddesses of Phobos
Space Quest series
King's Quest series
Leisure Suit Larry series
And later:
Myst on the 3DO platform. But, I needed a bit of help in the tunnels on this one.
THE way to play the text based ones was to sacrifice some of the 640K of RAM on the PCjr (512K sidecar for the win!) to a RAM disk and copy the whole 360K game disk to it. Lightning fast disk reads made it much more enjoyable.
I played and solved:
Zork I, II, and III (Mapped ALL of these by hand)
Enchanter
Leather Goddesses of Phobos
Space Quest series
King's Quest series
Leisure Suit Larry series
And later:
Myst on the 3DO platform. But, I needed a bit of help in the tunnels on this one.
THE way to play the text based ones was to sacrifice some of the 640K of RAM on the PCjr (512K sidecar for the win!) to a RAM disk and copy the whole 360K game disk to it. Lightning fast disk reads made it much more enjoyable.
scorch
Member
You are near a small cave looking east - LOL
Oh Yeah, I used to play on my various S-100 front panel whiz bangs. One of the greats along with Mastermind, Hunt the Wumpus, and Startrek. Does anyone remember the language that was specifically tailored to making adventure games? I remember a language about that time called STOIC, but I don't think that was it.
Oh Yeah, I used to play on my various S-100 front panel whiz bangs. One of the greats along with Mastermind, Hunt the Wumpus, and Startrek. Does anyone remember the language that was specifically tailored to making adventure games? I remember a language about that time called STOIC, but I don't think that was it.
tezza
Veteran Member
I do remember TAS (The Adventure System) on the TRS-80 Model 1, which allowed you to build adventure games a la the Scott Adams variety.
Tez
TandyMan100
Veteran Member
Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy is the only one I've attempted. Didn't even get half way through.
Beat World of ZZT, though.
Beat World of ZZT, though.
Did I mention this before? Ok stolen story, but a friend has a funny story of telling his (11yr old at the time maybe?) son when he was showing him his C64 or vic-20 and telling his son about the game Adventure. He was explaining how unlike todays games which make it simpler back then you had to sit down and figure out your map to get around yourself. So he handed over the system and game to his son and said "Here. If you beat the game I'll give you $20." His kid obviously eager to get $20 takes the deal.
A while later (maybe 2 hours) his son comes back with a very interesting (read incorrect) paper resembling a map and says he's confused about ending up in the same spot after going one direction. He explains to his son the world goes around/loops. Fair enough, kid tries for a little longer then comes back "I give up. .. you know.. for a game called Adventure, you'd think there'd be more of it."
Anyway I think after recovering from a mild stroke he decided his kid didn't earn the money and grounded him.
..ok I may have filled some gaps in my memory of the story with slightly embellished details [the end] but it still made me laugh at the time when he told me that. I guess a lot of kids won't respect the art of game play over graphics now adays.
A while later (maybe 2 hours) his son comes back with a very interesting (read incorrect) paper resembling a map and says he's confused about ending up in the same spot after going one direction. He explains to his son the world goes around/loops. Fair enough, kid tries for a little longer then comes back "I give up. .. you know.. for a game called Adventure, you'd think there'd be more of it."
Anyway I think after recovering from a mild stroke he decided his kid didn't earn the money and grounded him.
..ok I may have filled some gaps in my memory of the story with slightly embellished details [the end] but it still made me laugh at the time when he told me that. I guess a lot of kids won't respect the art of game play over graphics now adays.
tezza
Veteran Member
Yes. I think one thing that's often not appreciated is that those very early text-based adventure games were actually written for big kids (i.e Adults). There was a lot of subtle humour in the good ones, and you also needed a lot of patience.
Tez
Tez
While I always loved the text adventures, I'm pretty sure I only ever beat Wishbringer without cheating. That was a great, although simple, Infocom game. Although only peripherally related, I did manage to beat the three modern Zork games (Return to Zork, Zork Nemesis, and Zork Grand Inquisitor) without cheating as well. I never could get into the point-and-click Sierra-type adventures, though.
On the other hand, adventure games continue to be my genre of choice. I'm a big fan of the Syberia series, and I'm currently working on Syberia II. The Longest Journey series (including Dreamfall) are quite spectacular as well.
As a side note, I try to participate in PyWeek, a week-long Python game programming competition, whenever I can. Last year, for the March 2008 competition, I wrote a text adventure from scratch, available at http://pyweek.org/e/PrintStarZero/. It didn't fare well in the competition, but it was fun to write.
On the other hand, adventure games continue to be my genre of choice. I'm a big fan of the Syberia series, and I'm currently working on Syberia II. The Longest Journey series (including Dreamfall) are quite spectacular as well.
As a side note, I try to participate in PyWeek, a week-long Python game programming competition, whenever I can. Last year, for the March 2008 competition, I wrote a text adventure from scratch, available at http://pyweek.org/e/PrintStarZero/. It didn't fare well in the competition, but it was fun to write.
I finished the quest:
www.mobygames.com
Text adventures are hard for me. The best text adventures - Kayleth.
www.mobygames.com
Leisure Suit Larry 1: In the Land of the Lounge Lizards, VGA DOS version.
Leisure Suit Larry 1: In the Land of the Lounge Lizards (1991) - MobyGames
Leisure Suit Larry 1: In the Land of the Lounge Lizards is a remake of the first game in the Leisure Suit Larry series. It introduces a new interface. Instead of typing commands, the player performs the desired actions by choosing appropriate icons,...
www.mobygames.com
Kayleth (1986) - MobyGames
The Zyroneans were an advanced, pacifistic civilization until the arrival of the tyrant Kayleth. Sending down armies of androids from his space ship, he enslaved the planet Zyron and forced its inhabitants to work in mines and gather Chromazin, a rare...
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Bruce Tomlin
Veteran Member
As long as we're going necro today, I finished all of Zork I in a single session without a game save. I wrote an interpreter for TRS-80 Coco (a few months before they had an official one) and was testing it. I couldn't save because I hadn't written that part yet.
And inversely, I used my cheesy disassembler on Zork II to figure out the "diamond" puzzle.
And inversely, I used my cheesy disassembler on Zork II to figure out the "diamond" puzzle.
skate323k137
Experienced Member
I grew up mostly on point and click adventure games. A couple years ago I replayed the original Monkey Island, and my wife was literally pleading with me to just take hints at certain points. I never did, I completed it without any hints or walkthroughs, but a couple of memories from a couple decades ago didn't hurt my cause.
I use walkthroughs more often than not with adventure games now, but mostly as an aid If I get stuck, and then I get back to exploring and trying to figure out the next stuff on my own. I can't imagine the free time I had as a kid to be playing the Indiana Jones games without walkthroughs.
I use walkthroughs more often than not with adventure games now, but mostly as an aid If I get stuck, and then I get back to exploring and trying to figure out the next stuff on my own. I can't imagine the free time I had as a kid to be playing the Indiana Jones games without walkthroughs.
SiriusHardware
Veteran Member
I've probably said it before but for me the deal breakers were non-linear mazes - those ones where moving east from A to B and then moving west from B didn't necessarily take you back to A. I found those exasperating, in fact, encountering a non-linear maze in a game was sometimes enough to stop me from playing it. I played these sorts of games to be entertained, not to be annoyed.
Probably the only non-linear maze I was able to tolerate was the one in Monkey Island 1 where you just went around in circles until you had managed, by more logical means, to procure the treasure map. That did make logical sense. Maybe someone should have had the brainwave of doing the same thing in the earlier purely text based games, so that when you located the "map" object, all the directions in 'the maze' reverted to being logical and consistent. That way you could hold the player up for a little while but then allow them to proceed more easily later.
The other thing I absolutely hated was sudden death in either text or graphic adventures, and - Sierra, I'm looking at you. You could get yourself killed for the crime of merely moving west or opening a door.
LucasArts never, ever did that to you. There was one memorable scenario in the original Monkey Island where you could die, but you had 10 minutes to try to escape, and even if you couldn't manage it within that time they managed to make Guybrush's death scene hilarious so you didn't really mind that you had been killed.
If there were times when I had to cheat it was often because the game just didn't anticipate the number of ways different players might try to express or attempt to state the action, so you'd try something and it wouldn't work and you go off on a long wild goose chase only to find that what you were trying to do in the first place was the right idea after all - you just hadn't chosen the right words / right input, as expected by the game.
There was some terrific humour in those old games, I remember in one of the Infocom 'Planetfall' games there was a spartan looking chapel with only two items of note, a star and an eternal flame, the symbols of the galactic religion. In the room next door there was a switch which could be turned on or off - it took me some time to work out that it was the on-off switch for the eternal flame...
One particularly good puzzle I remember from the Enchanter / Sorcerer / Spellbreaker series is a scene where a (Royal?) family had been turned into 'Angles' - inert angular objects. Among the items available were some 'Untangling Cream' and elsewhere a 'Tee Remover'. You had to use the 'Tee Remover' on the 'Untangling Cream to make it into 'Unangling Cream' and then apply it to the stricken family. A brilliant pun, but did anyone honestly ever manage to solve that problem themselves? (I didn't).
Text adventures are usually thought of as a solo activity, man against game, but actually I can remember quite a few times when a group of us sat around trying to brainstorm our way through a text game, with the person sat at the keyboard usually being the best / fastest typist.
Probably the only non-linear maze I was able to tolerate was the one in Monkey Island 1 where you just went around in circles until you had managed, by more logical means, to procure the treasure map. That did make logical sense. Maybe someone should have had the brainwave of doing the same thing in the earlier purely text based games, so that when you located the "map" object, all the directions in 'the maze' reverted to being logical and consistent. That way you could hold the player up for a little while but then allow them to proceed more easily later.
The other thing I absolutely hated was sudden death in either text or graphic adventures, and - Sierra, I'm looking at you. You could get yourself killed for the crime of merely moving west or opening a door.
LucasArts never, ever did that to you. There was one memorable scenario in the original Monkey Island where you could die, but you had 10 minutes to try to escape, and even if you couldn't manage it within that time they managed to make Guybrush's death scene hilarious so you didn't really mind that you had been killed.
If there were times when I had to cheat it was often because the game just didn't anticipate the number of ways different players might try to express or attempt to state the action, so you'd try something and it wouldn't work and you go off on a long wild goose chase only to find that what you were trying to do in the first place was the right idea after all - you just hadn't chosen the right words / right input, as expected by the game.
There was some terrific humour in those old games, I remember in one of the Infocom 'Planetfall' games there was a spartan looking chapel with only two items of note, a star and an eternal flame, the symbols of the galactic religion. In the room next door there was a switch which could be turned on or off - it took me some time to work out that it was the on-off switch for the eternal flame...
One particularly good puzzle I remember from the Enchanter / Sorcerer / Spellbreaker series is a scene where a (Royal?) family had been turned into 'Angles' - inert angular objects. Among the items available were some 'Untangling Cream' and elsewhere a 'Tee Remover'. You had to use the 'Tee Remover' on the 'Untangling Cream to make it into 'Unangling Cream' and then apply it to the stricken family. A brilliant pun, but did anyone honestly ever manage to solve that problem themselves? (I didn't).
Text adventures are usually thought of as a solo activity, man against game, but actually I can remember quite a few times when a group of us sat around trying to brainstorm our way through a text game, with the person sat at the keyboard usually being the best / fastest typist.
Last edited:
Abmvk
Experienced Member
I played Asylum on the TRS-80. Didn’t even get out of the first room, the one with the paper and the key on the outside, without help 
Later I tried The Hobbit on the ZX Spectrum. I knew the book very well, drew a map on paper, found out that it had actual errors in it (somewhere there is a road you can travel one way, but you cannot travel back for some reason, very dark magic!) This one I finished.
And my final attempt on the game type was Leisure Suit Larry on the PC. Didn’t stand a chance and finally decided I was just to stupid for adventure games
Later I tried The Hobbit on the ZX Spectrum. I knew the book very well, drew a map on paper, found out that it had actual errors in it (somewhere there is a road you can travel one way, but you cannot travel back for some reason, very dark magic!) This one I finished.
And my final attempt on the game type was Leisure Suit Larry on the PC. Didn’t stand a chance and finally decided I was just to stupid for adventure games
JAXVintagePC
Experienced Member
None. Too hard. Plus with Sierra especially they made the early games really challenging.
I began playing Adventures games in 1994 on the ZX-Spectrum, (cassette version).
Played to study the English language. Need to crack all Adventures games, for search words.
I played "The Hobbit". All Adventures games from Melbourne House, are very hard.
www.mobygames.com
Played to study the English language. Need to crack all Adventures games, for search words.
I played "The Hobbit". All Adventures games from Melbourne House, are very hard.
The Hobbit (1982) - MobyGames
Relive Tolkien's The Hobbit as Bilbo Baggins. A piece of Interactive fiction (with graphics to illustrate locations), you follow the plot of Tolkien's book (before the Lord of the Rings trilogy), starting with an encounter with Gandalf and Thorin. The...
www.mobygames.com