Reviews by archcorenth

This is an extremely short and simple text adventure that you can play online in an authorized remake at adventuron.itch.io (which is why I tried it). I'm not saying it's not worth the 10-15 minutes it takes to complete it, but I don't think you'll remember you played it 10 minutes after that.

The manual has the back story. While the knights and Merlin were away from Camelot searching for the Holy Grail, a evil "she-wizard" (the manual's word, not mine) called Crania managed to steal Arthur's sword and trap him in a nightmare. Now, it's up to you to journey to Camelot, defeat Crania, and wake Arthur from his magic slumber.

One reason why I tell you the plot here is that the manual includes a list of words recognized by the game, and spoil the final puzzle in it. Not that any of the puzzles require much out of the box thinking. Honestly, you can probably complete this game by typing fewer words than I used to write this review. At least the Spectrum colors are fun and jazzy.

This was one of the first text adventures I ever played, maybe the first, and it taught me that text adventures were bad. I wanted to experience the world of Middle Earth, an enormous place with interesting, and often funny inhabitants. In this game you no more than step out the door than you're in Rivendell and you can cross the Misty Mountains in not much time more. As a kid I think I decided to quit it complete during the wood elf portion in Mirkwood. And decided not to play another text adventure again.

I guess my first question is, where's the text? Room descriptions are sparse, and there's nothing to stoke your imagination. I guess the horrible drawings were suppose to be a replacement for Tolkien's text, as though they could possibly do that.

My next question is, where are the characters? There sure are a lot of them. The game is constantly telling you which dwarves are in your vicinity and how they seem to move in and out of the room, but does it matter to you at all? Even as a kid, this portion of the game seemed artificial. It had no effect on anything.

As an adult, around the time Anchorhead and Cryptozoic Zookeeper came out, I gave text adventures another shot, and I'm glad I did, I found just how much they could do and even can do some things graphical games cannot. Some of the best I've played are new ones like Thaumistry by Bill Bates, but now, during the pandemic, I've had time to reach back farther, and there are just as good ones from the 80's like the Enchanter trilogy, the games by Magnetic Scrolls, and the "electronic novels" by Synapse, even the original Zork trilogy. This Hobbit game does not deserve a higher greater number of stars on this review site than its contemporaries. I'd love it if somebody could explain to me why it isn't sitting down near zero. And I hope people who might be interested in trying it, don't do so and then discount all the other wonderful adventure games out there, imagining them to be similar as I did. And if you want to try some early computer games set in Middle Earth, I would say the two RPG's by Interplay are perhaps still the best games made with the license. They do everything I'd hoped this game would, they make Middle Earth seem just as big as in the books and let you explore every cranny of it.

In The Wizard of Oz text adventure, you move through a story rather than explore an area, like in most interactive fiction games. I think more games should work like this, since it plays more to the genre's strengths. It's relatively good for kids because you don't have to map anything. Essentially, you move from scene to scene from the book, and solve little puzzles along the say. --That is until you get to the Emerald City, and that's why I want to review this unreviewed game. Once the Wizard sets you the task of killing the Wicked Witch of the West, the game starts bringing in characters and scenes from the book's first sequel, the Marvelous Land of Oz. I think this is a really good idea, and if they ever try to do a new adaptation of the book as a movie or TV show, this would be a good way to make the new version different enough from the original to not invite constant comparison, as well as to handle the problem of Dorothy not being in the second story if their planning to do a series. Also, the sequel tells you so much about the Land of Oz and its history and answers so many questions you might have from reading just the first book, it gives you a much fuller experience.

The graphics (in the C64 version) are quaint, and I enjoy the little tunes the game plays for you from time to time. The writing is appropriate for kids, but perhaps not as witty as the source material. I think this game doesn't receive the attention it deserves.

(As an aside, if you're playing this from a download, because, after all, magnetic disks don't last forever, don't play the DOS version, I'm pretty sure all the DOS versions available online are missing their second disks and your game will end when you get to Emerald City. C64 has better art and sound anyway.)