Ratings and Reviews by End Master

And once again I will be doing this next group of reviews like a mini-series since I got them all packaged together in a box called “The Thriller Series” from CodeWriter. Not quite an ominous black box with “Terror” written in big capital letters, but it had an interesting (and misleading) picture on the cover.

As I remember my mom got this from a local corner store of all places off a rack. I have no idea if these were ever sold separately, but they were small enough to all fit on one disk (Unlike the Terror games) so it’s just as well there were three.

It looks like some of these were re-released later in the 90s with different games bundled in MS-DOS, but the collection I had was for the C64 in the 80s.

One interesting side bit with all three games is they have a note you can find somewhere near the beginning of them that acts as a minor advertisement. It basically asks if you need help beating the game and gives you a mailing address of where you can send money to get a hint sheet, map or complete solution (One dollar for the first two and three or five dollars for the last). In game relic of a time when you couldn’t just look things up on the internet!

This first review will focus on Perils of Darkest Africa. The goal is to get the treasure of King Solomon’s Mines.

This one was my least favorite of the three mainly because it had a survival element that made the game longer and more annoying than it really needed to be. You had a thirst meter of sorts and the game would mention when you needed water and to take a drink.

Some problems. First, you don’t even start with a canteen of any sort. So you have to get something to gather water with first, granted it’s pretty close by, but it’s still annoying and the plastic bag you find and end up using throughout the game is your “canteen.”

Really? I prepared for a trip to Africa to seek King Solomon’s Mines and I’m drinking water out of a ziplock bag? It’s pretty silly that it wasn’t just a regular canteen.

Oh and you have to keep refilling this bag of water from time to time from various sources. So be prepared for a lot of backtracking. Granted a lot of early text adventures involve backtracking to a degree, but in this case it’s really just a time waster. Though you’ll be using the plastic bag for stuff other than water in places, but that just makes this even sillier.

If it seems like I’m complaining about this aspect a lot, well it’s because it really annoyed the hell out of me. Never mind the fact you really need to carry this vital item with you most of the time and your inventory space is limited as it is.

In fact you’ll be doing a lot of dropping and picking up items due to the limited inventory space.

As for the puzzles and parser, they’re probably fine for a game of this era. It’s the above issues mentioned that are the problem to the point where I would have rated the game higher otherwise.

The final terror box entry is Jack the Ripper. While this one was published by the same company, it wasn’t created by the same person as the other three. Though the style certainly feels like it was one of Rod’s works. (This one came out after Drac and Frank, but before Wolf)

Interestingly this one was created by a short lived religious movement at the time called the Silver Sisterhood. (It created a school called St. Brides which is listed as the creator of Jack the Ripper) They mainly believed God was female and returning to matriarchy which they said was true norm. Despite these beliefs or perhaps because of them, they did a game about one of the most infamous serial killers of all time that went around killing women.

The game is also divided into three parts and with this one you really do have to play them in sequence because you have to get a name at the end of each part to proceed at the beginning of the next one. Much more structured in that regard which isn’t a bad thing.

This one out of all the games is probably the bloodiest and for the time I can certain see why this one got the warning on the box. At least one of the pictures not only has a bloody body, but the dead girl also has her breasts exposed. I applaud the ladies of St. Brides for going all out.

The main concept is you’ve been framed as Jack the Ripper and you’re trying to clear your name and find the real Jack. Funny enough this isn’t the only game I’ve played with this theme. A game that would come out later in the 90s called Waxworks had a section like this except it wasn’t a text game of course. Still, can’t help wonder if this game hadn’t influenced a designer on that game.

As far as the descriptiveness and feel, it follows the Dracula style a bit more in that you get a lot of colorful descriptions but it feels like you’re a bit confined. Some of the parts are on a pretty unforgiving timer to solve the puzzles which detracted from what I thought might be the best of the lot.

I’d rank it better than Dracula, but not as good as Wolfman. It’s certainly not as dull as Frankenstein, but it’s about on par with that one for some of the already mentioned reasons.

The third entry in this series is Wolfman. Once again this game has been divided into three parts. Parts one and three deal with you playing as the man infected with lycanthropy. Fighting the curse and eventually finding the cure. The second involves playing as a woman that falls in love with him.

First, I’ll say that out of the three games involving the classic monsters, I found this one to be the best one. It did come out after the other two, so again there is more polish all around, but I just liked playing as the protagonists better. It might have been because unlike Dracula or Frankenstein, there isn’t a proper “werewolf novel” to draw off of and it had to be a little more creative just using the traditional folklore.

This one also has the infamous bloody pictures from time to time that the box warned everyone about. These seem a bit more gruesome in that they’re in the beginning stages of approaching one of the Elvria games (Most notably Personal Nightmare). Still, nothing to shriek in terror about.

The second part of the game is probably the most unusual mainly because the female protagonist’s motivations since it seems a little silly. She takes home some stranger who’s already a bit suspicious and her goal is to spend a night with him without getting ripped apart, but also fall in love (and bed) with him. Oh wait, that’s the plot of 90% of today’s urban horror romance novels. Inserting a romantic angle wasn’t very common in IFs at the time either, now they’re over saturated with the stuff.

Never mind, this game was obviously ahead of its time!

Still, as I said, this one feels a lot more engaging as it dipped into multiple genres, a bit of mystery, drama, the already mentioned romance, and even some action as you even fight another monster in werewolf form and deal with hunters chasing you.

Third time was definitely the charm.

Moving on to the next game in the Terror box, Frankenstein has the same lay out as Dracula in that it’s divided into three parts, however unlike Dracula, you can’t just immediately jump to part three until you beat the first two parts. You basically have to learn the monster’s name in order to proceed at the start of the third chapter.

The first two parts involve you playing as Dr. Frankenstein. In these you’re basically involved in creating the monster and then later on hunting it down to destroy it. The third part has you playing as the monster, which is a nice change of pace. Starts you off when you are first created and the goal in that one is to raise your IQ and do the whole self discovery thing. This is probably the best part of the game.

Like Dracula there’s pictures from time to time, but nothing really that bad. This one feels a bit more polished with the puzzles and slightly less confining than Dracula did, but you’ll still be fighting with the parser more than necessary.

Other than the third part though, this one is just sort of meh. Something about playing as Dr. Frankenstein just wasn’t really engaging to me. Still, I spent more time with it than I did Dracula.

Okay, so this review is going to be done like part of a greater series. One reason is because I bought this game packaged with three other horror related games.

This boxed compilation was just called “Terror” in white text and came in a jet black box with no picture and more white text on the back saying how these games had been restricted or outright banned in other countries (UK, Australia and Germany I believe were the three mentioned) due to all the graphic bloody content.

Well sounded pretty metal to me and combined with ominous black box, there was no reason to not add these to the C64 collection.

I’m guessing these games came out seperately in those countries and eventually were repackaged in the Terror box for US release. All of the games were originally from the company CRL. Dracula, Frankenstein, Wolfman and Jack the Ripper. I’m guessing they specialized in horror games because I don’t think they did anything else. I’ll be doing reviews on those as well, but for this one I’ll focus on Dracula.

Though I’m not sure what more I can add given the one very thorough review of it already up here! I guess I’ll just add some general thoughts.

One thing I’ll agree with is the font isn’t fun to look at. I mean sure it’s fitting for the setting, but it’s hard to read at times.

Also this is yet another case of the sensation being much greater than the actual content. Sure there’s some bloody pictures at times, but really nothing worse than your average Friday the 13th movie. Much tamer in fact. Hell, the old Cosmi game Forbidden Forest would have been considered a torture porn blood bath in comparison to this one. I guess all the shock warnings might have improved sales though so can’t fault them for that. The extended music that plays for these pictures though gets old.

The game is divided into three parts. First two parts you’re playing as Harker and your travels to the castle and what you do when you get there. The third part has you playing as Dr. Seward. You don’t even need to play these parts in sequence if you don’t like being a slave to order.

There’s more fighting with the parser than there needed to be, timed actions are annoying, but it’s pretty descriptive with the rooms and atmosphere overall. It’s obvious it was going more for trying to capture the feel of literally “playing the book.”

I still didn’t care for it that much, just wasn’t really that into playing as Harker or Seward. However, I can see if you were a big fan of the book, you might get into this game a bit more.

I sometimes wonder if I missed out on a lot of IFs that actually use an amnesia suffering protagonist in their game as a plot device. I know there’s a whole amnesia cliche trope that people tend to groan about whenever it comes up, but it’s just never come up enough in anything I’ve played for me to rage about.

Of course maybe I have played a lot of such games and just forgot about them.(Planescape Torment and Sanitarium come to mind, but I greatly enjoyed those games and those weren't text adventure anyway)

Well like the review title says, I certainly didn’t forget this game. It is literally called Amnesia, so it would be pretty strange if it didn’t have it as the main focus.

This one was written by science fiction writer Thomas Disch and published by EA (Back when they published cool and unique games as opposed to the mess they churn out for profit now). Can’t say I’m too familiar with Thomas’ writing in general, but the game really showed the high quality of writing that a professional in that field would produce. Especially during the time it came out when only Infocom was really doing the bigger text adventures.

From some of what I read about the author and his involvement in the game besides the writing, it was sort of his idea to have practically minute details of the entirety of freaking Manhattan. I can just imagine the programmers tearing their hair out at his demands. Sort of impressive they could even fit all of that on 5 1/4 floppies, but it was probably a waste of space that could have been spent on better things like other characters to interact with and less but much better detailed locations you could visit and actually interact with as opposed to “Oh you can’t go in there.”

The parser is pretty complex and understands a lot of commands though you just can’t do a lot of things without something bad happening. It’s an illusion of freedom I suppose, but it’s at least somewhat better implemented than most games today where you get four choices worded slightly differently and picking one just leads to the same result anyway.

Again, this wouldn’t have needed to be the case though if all of Manhattan hadn’t been shoved into it. Speaking of which the game came with a map which you definitely needed because you were going to get hopelessly lost. Descriptions of the hundreds of boring streets and buildings were practically all the same.

There was also a survival element involved later on in the game when you had access to Manhattan. You had to eat and sleep regularly. So now you’re wandering around a huge map with streets that all look the same AND now you have to eat and sleep too.

Failing to do either resulted in collapsing and bad things happening.
You can only sleep in certain areas or else bad things happen.
You get caught outside after midnight, bad things happen.

Oh and how exactly are getting this food? You’ll need money. Except you don’t exactly have a job in this game and you’re just literally bumming around town. You can beg, but if you get caught by the cops (Which is a roll of the dice at anytime) doing that twice? You guessed it. Bad things happen.

Now I’m all for survival elements in a lot of games. I actually enjoy the survival genre, but in this regard it just really gets in the way of things. I don’t think the survival aspect really works well in text games or at least it didn’t in this one.

One of the descriptions at the top is “surreal” and that’s an understatement at times. The game might be set in the real world 80s era, but there is a lot of weirdness going on. Which was a point in its favor since it kept me coming back to it despite all the other things that would have made me shut it off. (Like most of the stuff I just mentioned above)

This game was one of the few text adventures back then that allowed a degree of character appearance. In the beginning the game asks you what your eye color is, facial hair, hair color, etc. After you answer though, the game basically gives you the exact opposite of what your character in the game looks like in the mirror. Gotta love how it’s trolling you right from the start.

And that’s how it starts, you waking up naked in a hotel room. Honestly the beginning part sort of lures you into thinking about “Wow, I have so much freedom of what to do!” at first. You can do quite a bit of things. Of course it doesn’t mention you’re on a timer. Linger about too long enjoying your hotel room and bad things happen.

I’m not going to get into too much about the actual game since it is supposed to be a mystery. So going on about anything at great length is going to give away stuff, however I’m going to say there’s a pretty early way to “win” which after everything else you have had to deal with so far at that point in the game, I’m not sure why you just wouldn’t go with it and call it a day.

I’ll also mention some of the other odd bits that stuck out that gave me more reason to like it.

First off, there are interactive “death scenes.” I mean in one instance after a series of long trial descriptions (due to bad things happening) you actually get the option to choose how to die, your last meal and later on last words. In another instance, you go on some odd trip to the underworld.

It’s completely meaningless, but I like it. I’ve always felt more games in general should do stuff like this. I’ve often said about how much cooler it would have been in a game like Dragon Age to have your character turn down the Wardens and then rather than railroading you into becoming one anyway, it just continued on with your character inevitably getting killed in an impossible battle later on. (Or whatever your origin character’s fate was at the time)

I do also remember encountering a very strange bit involving entering a church. It doesn’t happen right away to you, but you can get a non-standard ending this way as well (not death) and it’s very weird and unexpected.

Later on as you’re making progress in the game, you’ll see Thomas’ scifi writing background coming a bit into play. As I’ve seen some other say, I do agree that the plot is pretty convoluted. The situation could have been solved a lot easier.

The game has a lot of problems, but it’s mainly due to ambition that couldn’t be reached with the level of technology at the time. It’s definitely still worth a look.

In my ongoing quest to collect more C64 games to play, I’m almost certain that getting this one was not my idea. Probably was my parents that thought it looked a little unusual from the typical selection of game themes and so got it for me. It worked many times before (Like with Tass Times) after all.

Yeah, didn’t really work this time, though this really isn’t the game’s fault. The theme and setting is what it is. I just learned early that I typically preferred less realistic settings.

The game actually came with a cassette tape which had some of the characters having a conversation on it. This provided a little more back story I suppose if you were interested in listening to it. Also contained a blue chip which I believe had a number on it. Not sure what that was for. Just a feelie they threw in I guess. Old games in general were good for those.

So the setting was going for that Wall Street style crime thriller what with all the double dealing, set ups, and well corruption going on. Only difference was this was taking it was place in the UK rather than having the usual US background.

I should point out that this game was technically a graphic adventure, but you could turn off the pictures and if you actually wanted to play a few turns without wasting an hour, I’d highly suggest doing so because the load times were horrible. If the game had to load up a new area with a different picture, you were in for a long wait. Even back in those days when we were more patient about that sort of thing, it made the whole process unfun.

As for the graphics themselves, they were certainly a much higher caliber than most graphic text adventures had back then, but weren’t really necessary in the first place. Honestly I found even with the graphics turned off, the game’s load times could still be on the long side.

Okay so that’s another thing that isn’t really the game’s fault. That’s a software/hardware issue that just happened back then, what about the actual game itself?

Well yeah, I didn’t care for that either. I kept dying a lot and not really knowing what the hell I was supposed to be doing. Someone mentioned that the game is pretty unforgiving and that would be a correct statement. The timer on this one of the more ruthless ones. You could have missed doing something obscure within the first fifteen turns of the game and lose later. You really did need to lose a lot to gather an idea of how to proceed

I could chalk some of this up to youthful impatience and not being into the setting, but there’s other games where the setting wasn’t really grabbing me (and dying just as much) and I still stuck with them longer.

The version I got even came with a mini hint book complete with solutions. (Don’t know if this book came with all of them) The book had questions to certain things and an alphabetical code. You had to type in a code and after a long load time, you got an answer to the question.

Guess what? Even with all the answers readily available to me, I still couldn’t be motivated to finish this one. The load time, the setting, just everything bored the hell out of me about it.

Still, it would be unfair to just give the game one star and throw it in the trash. Obviously by other ratings other people liked it quite a bit, and the one good thing I can say is you can type in a lot of different commands in the parser and the game understands which is probably one of the most important things for the IF genre.

I can see why others liked it, but it just wasn't for me.

While Sierra was a major player in the late 80s to mid 90s with their adventure games (along with a few traditional action video games) everyone has to start somewhere and this game was an example of one of their first attempts in the genre.

Like with all these old games I played this on the C64 and got it because hey it was about Greek mythology and I liked Greek mythology and it was pretty cheap. Never realized it was part of a series of these adventure games, not that it matters since they look like they were self contained.

The graphics in this are sort of amusing due to their REALLY bad kindergarten quality to them. This isn’t like the “simple” graphics like say found in Transylvania. It really looks like a grade school kid drew everything. (The “hurricane” looks like pre-school scribble) I’d have to say even their minimalist vector like graphics for their Mystery House game look better.

Again though, I’m looking at it now with today’s eyes. Back then… well I still thought the graphics were goofy, but it didn’t matter too much since back then you played the game you bought and you liked it (Or didn’t, but played it anyway)

Start of the game involves a lot of running about the first town and nearby wilderness to get the stuff you need for the journey. Eventually when you get everything you think you’ll need, you have to get sailing where upon you will have to deal with various challenges involving sirens, skeletons, cyclops, y’know all the usual Greek mythology stuff.

Besides the usual fighting with the parser of this era, the game really liked screwing you over to create walking dead scenarios. Such as going to certain areas with certain items and losing them, making it impossible to complete the game. In one instance if you buy a certain item, you won’t be able to complete the game.

It wasn’t one that really kept my attention for too long, but I did come back to it every now and then.

I suppose one main question is, wasn’t Jason the hero that got the Fleece? Whoops, guess with the mixed up mythology, this one could have been a predecessor to Sierra’s Mixed Up Fairy Tales game.

Another graphic text adventure I played on the C64 back in the day. I remember just picking it up out of a sake of not really finding anything else that caught my attention in the store that day and something about an adventure in Transylvania seemed as good as any setting to waste time in.

As far as the plot of the game is concerned, you have to save a princess, which is pretty common in video games in general and even more common in this era. It’s a simple game with a simple parser so it really doesn’t need to be complex in terms of plot anyway. The game came with a newspaper mentioning Princess Sabrina and some other related things about Transylvania.

While the graphics at the time probably helped in keeping my attention since there isn’t much in the way of text description, but the game also kept me alert in the sense that it’s actively trying to kill you nearly right from the start.

I don’t mean in the sense of “Go left and die.” but as you’re traveling around outside, you’re going to inevitably bump into a werewolf from time to time and unless you’ve got the right weapon (Take a guess) you need to immediately get the hell out of the location or he kills you.

Something similar happens when you enter a castle. You’re safe from the werewolf, but now you’ve got a vampire running around trying to kill you, unless you’ve got the right item to fend him off.

To top it all off, the game has a timer on it, (A note says: “Sabrina dies at Dawn!”) so you only have so many turns to find the princess or you lose.

There’s other monsters besides the vampire and werewolf too, but not quite as pro-active in doing you in.

Apparently this was the first in a series, but I never got around to playing the other two. I don’t remember ever seeing them for the C64, though I probably wouldn’t have bothered since the first one didn’t exactly wow me enough to buy the other two.

Still I do remember coming back to it more than a few times so it wasn’t a complete waste.

So I actually stumbled on this game by pure random chance years after it had long been out already. I remember when I played it, it was in a browser and it was called by the whole name, “I-0 Jailbait on the Interstate.”

Seems like I-69 Jailbait on the Interstate would have been an even better name, but I guess Adam, erm, I mean Anonymous wanted to keep it subtle.

Anyway as I said in the title, I’m fairly certain I played this “wrong” the first time around in the sense that I was playing it like I would a “normal” IF of just trying to get home without getting killed or worse. It never even occurred to me to do anything sexual like say take off my top to get a ride or something similar. So I missed out on all the sexual stuff during my first attempts at beating the game.

About the only time I actually encountered something to that degree during my first play through was when I got in the car with the creepy dude. I figured attempts at aggressive breeding strategies with my character were going to occur given the name of game. In fact I figured most of the game was going to be me trying to actually keep my virtue while trying to get home rather than acting like a common thot. (Guess I succeed in staying pure in that first playthrough)

Later, I went back and played through a couple times and appreciated that there were multiple paths to victory even if they weren’t readily apparent. Fighting with the parser on some things was a bit annoying (I’m just trying to leave the damn car and the game is already putting up a fight with the wording, sheesh!), but such is the way with these games.

I didn’t mind the game, but it’s no Farmer’s Daughter.