Reviews by jgerrie

The Secret of Flagstone Manor by Brian Betts of Mountain Valley Software is reportedly Australia's first text adventure from 1981. Or so reports Renga in Blue.

Renga in Blue suggested that the game had similarities Scott Adams early games, but I'm pretty sure it's not like the Adventureland parser. The BASIC version of that program is very complex (and slow) and uses lots of numeric arrays, probably because it is meant to be a generalized "engine" for multiple adventures. This one uses a more standard and simple cascade of IF/THENs to parse input for different verbs. It also doesn't read its locations into an array. There are only 18. So it just uses a sequence of IFs to print specific room info. Lot's of ELSE statements used that I had to disentangle. I'd say this game does not have a parser engine at its core. It just applies some common approaches to programing adventures that had developed from 1979-1981.

On the whole it is a very well debugged, basically elegantly written, BASIC text adventure program. Although the room count is small it is fairly complex. There is a timer aspect that can result in death, but it is basically fair. The puzzles make sense and there is a pretty interesting dynamic HELP command. So don't just accept the first responses of "LOOK AROUND" from that command. They eventually do change according to progress and context. The other sources of death are also fair, and there are clues to help avoid them too.

There is a text adventure program that I have been wanting to complete for a long time. It's by Jason Dyer. The name of the game, "The Night of the Vampire Bunnies" is what intrigued me.

The game has the feel of being a creation of someone deeply inspired by the the classic early 80's BASIC games but who was creating games in the later part of the 80s. Bunnies is interesting because it plays like an early Greg Hassett, Scott Adams or Tim Hartnell adventure.

That being said, the original GWBASIC version has a parser that aims to go beyond simple two-word input. It is clear that Jason did not simply use a standard existing two-word parser example program like "Tower of Mystery" from Compute's Guide to Text Adventures (1984). He created his own unique system for parsing command input. He had a complex system for removing extra article words like THE and ON and TO. He has ways of breaking the sentences input not just into VERB NOUN, but also supplemental words. I commend the author for the ambition to have his players type in more complete English sentences and then to try to parse the input into coherent instructions that could be handled by the program.

This ambition appears to have bitten in the buttocks when it came to the reception of his program in more recent years. The reviews found here and other places on the Net tend to complain about its departure from the standards of two word VERB-NOUN parsing. Some of the puzzles involved having to figure out 4 word command sequences. (Spoiler - click to show)For example JUMP OVER THE RIVER rather than JUMP RIVER. To be fair, in the context of 80s hobby BASIC programming, this convention was not sacrosanct.

It was with a little regret that I had to strip this unique parsing engine and put in its place an extremely simple 2-word parser in order to port the program to my little 8-bit home computer system.

I now have a working version of "The Night of the Vampire Bunnies." I spiffed up the title page a little by adding an ASCII text graphic of a Vampire Bunny. I also added some screen flickering using to evoke lightning flashes on the title screen, which I think is in keeping with the B-horror movie feel Jason was attempting to evoke (along with Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail).

I have played it through to the end. It is whimsical and atmospheric. I enjoyed playing it.

The Basic source code from the Sinclair Spectrum that I worked from to port this game to the TRS-80 MC-10 was very buggy and unwinnable. I used a scan from The Computer & Video Games Year Book (1984) of the original Dragon 32 version to help with the debugging. I got the impression this version might be unwinnable too. If that's the case, the MC-10 version might be the only working version available online.

There is a BBC micro version you can play online. I tried it using a playthrough I developed and discovered that it did not seem to recognize the command PUSH BUTTON in the hanger, which which would prevent the possibility of winning. There were also a number of minor annoying but non-catastrophic bugs shared with the Speccy version. For example, despite there being a REMOVE command, you can drop wearable items while wearing them, which results in them being listed as being (WORN) even after they are dropped. The interactions with the captain and the spy in the captain's cabin also don't work.

All the bugs and typos are probably why this program has no playthrough online and why it seems to be "missing" from so many games collections for various machines (See this thread: https://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=12062&start=30)?-- It might have been unwinnable all these years on all the systems it was ported to from the original Dragon 32 version. And maybe even that version is too buggy to complete?

If so, this is a real shame because it is an incredibly rich and subtle puzzle, with neat NPC interactions, good story and evocative mood created through many little flourishes. Definitely not something you could finish in an hour. It would have kept me occupied for many days, if not possibly a week or two back in the 80s. That being said, it is pretty brutal in it treatment of even the most minor mistakes on the player's part, such as forgetting to close a door behind yourself!

Despite its brutality, with careful attention to all the in-game story elements you can discover, you can obtain all the clues necessary to complete the game. Still, I added some additional instructions and story background to the MC-10 version just to help get players off on the right track, if there ever are any additional players. I hope there is because this is a lost classic 8-bit space adventure, which deserves to be played.

I stumbled upon a text adventure in a PDF of a book on the Color Computer Archive. I couldn't find any information about it on any of the text adventure databases and forums I know about. Asked folks on Facebook if they had ever played "The Bianco Mansion" by Clive Gifford and had one response by Gareth Pitchford that it seemed similar to another game by Gifford for the Commodore 64 called "The Nielson Papers." He felt that some of puzzles were the same. Unclear which version came first, although Gareth felt the Dragon version, published in More Games for Your Dragon 32 by Virgin Books, might be first. He noted about Gifford that:

He did a few "enter & retrieve" type-in adventures... I imagine the Nielson Papers is probably the recycled version, if anything... fleshed out a little for the C64... Seems a smart move to use the same premise multiple times and just tweak things for books for different machines.

Garry over on the CASA Solution Archive also typed in the code, using a TRS-80 Color Computer and found it to be a pretty standard adventure for the time. In other words, difficult, not overly impressive and annoying. He noted in the "Classics" forum:

It's really badly written. There are lots of bugs. There are lots of guess-the-verb scenarios, at least two situations where you have to use multi-word input with the two-word parser and at least one situation where you have to refer to an object that is not mentioned. The game has potential, but suffers from juvenile inexperience and lack of testing. (The author was still at school when the book was written.)

In my MC-10 version I have fixed many of the bugs that Garry mentions. In debugged form it is a pretty fun game to play. The deaths are not completely arbitrary and there is a coherent set of puzzles that have to be worked through to achieve final victory. If you can get past the confusing illogic of its map, it is really quite enjoyable. In fact the illogic adds something to its challenge and it classic 8-bit charm. You are not given directions for exits to rooms, except for locked doors, so you must try all directions. It's certainly worth the effort if you are into 8-bit computer adventures written in BASIC. And it might be a particular obscure one for those craving lost treasures from that era.

This program, written in BASIC for the TRS-80 Color Computer (Coco) and now ported by me to the Coco's little brother system, the MC-10, is extremely simple. It probably would only be interesting for very young children. The most appealing aspect is that it has some very simple graphic images that go with the text descriptions. This was relatively rare for simple BASIC text adventures on early 8-bit computer systems. It might also be of interest for adventurers who are looking only to spend 20-30 minutes gaming. The puzzle is not extremely challenging, but is coherent and does require some care in terms of ones search for clues and interpretation of messages. There are a few possibilities of arbitrary death, but they are no too vexing given the size of map. It's easy to restart and get back to where you were and try again. If you wanted to give a young child a taste of what early 1980s type-in gaming was like on an 8-bit computer, this game could fit the bill.

I have read the other reviews and can't but wonder whether some of the frustrations result from the versions they are playing. The parser is not so problematic in the TRS-80 versions of the program. These machines often ran in all caps mode (the original TRS-80 didn't have uppercase characters and the TRS-80 MC-10 never had them). Apparently there were also changes made to the puzzles in many of the unofficial versions. The TRS-80 version I ported remains entirely true to the original TRS-80 16K version.

There are some intentional inconsistencies to the movement in the game. I didn't find them all that bad (especially compared to some other games from the era). For the most part I think they were carefully chosen and meant to enhance the effect of being "lost in the jungles and savannas" of central Africa. To a large extent, I think this technique works successfully in this adventure, where the setting makes it appropriate to use. Once I had some mapping in place, it wasn't all that problematic and there is a kind of logic to the backs-and-forths.

There are some really charming aspects to the game. The quicksand graphic is a wonderful piece of TRS-80 chunky pixel 8-bit animation. (Spoiler - click to show)If you die the program simulates a return to the basic command prompt, before surprising you with a resurrection to a restore point part way into the game (preventing a need for a complete restart.

The game is challenging and doesn't have any of the totally arbitrary deaths that are so common in games from this genre. I found the plot to be a nice balance between slightly humorous almost fantastical whimsy and and an attempt to remain true to the Victorian mythology of the quest for Dr. Livingston.

For fans of 8-bit Basic adventuring I would highly recommend this game. But for less hardy souls, it might be better to stay away from venturing into the dark heart of the Victorian imaginary.

This is a little adventure for the VZ-200/300 8-bit computer and the TRS-80 MC-10. It is not hard. It has some random elements that will bring about your demise in arbitrary ways, but if you simply looking for a about 20 minutes of 8-bit two-word parser nostalgia, you could do worse. As with many games of this type, the world can appear much larger than it is, until you get down to the business of real mapping. There are some very subtle clues to help you make guesses about the quirks of the limited vocabulary, which can help get you out of trouble. Or you can simply peek at the listing...

Oh and there's a cute little graphic title page. Nice work unknown author, and the person who revised it for the VZ-200. There are few few errors in the programs handling of the tunnel and the carrying of items, that I fixed in the MC-10 Version, but they won't necessarily stop you from winning. You start each game at a random location. I have added a link to the Virtual MC-10 Emulator (VMC10.exe) on the main page. Enjoy!

In a review I did of the game "The Temple of Apshai." I argued that the early TRS-80 version of this classic RPG should also be considered as a kind of interactive fiction. The reason I argued this was that the TRS-80 version was really so slow and the graphics so spartan, that the main focus of the game really was on engaging with the narrative of the prologue and the detailed room descriptions of the printed manual. The computer program just provided a structure for bringing that narrative experience to a satisfactory conclusion. The Mystery of Silver Mountain is a lot like that. It is a pure text adventure program, but it really cannot be played without the aid of the original book by Osborne Computing in which the source code was published. The reason is that that book contains graphic images (containing visual clues) of the various locations and additional written materials (codes and clues) that are necessary for completing the adventure. The BASIC program does provide a bare bones set of descriptions and it handles and responds to the input (it's a simple 2-word parser). But there would be little point in attempting to solve the mystery using the program alone. So if you want to play this game on one of its various 8-bit platforms (Commmodore, Atari, TRS-80, etc), you should also find a PDF of the original book. Alternatively there are many copies available on the regular used book sites. The puzzles and clues are very challenging, especially due to the added visual nature of some of them. This is not a simple adventure to solve. That being said, it was meant as an introduction to computer adventuring for 8-bit home computers, so it is not diabolical. It was such a popular program in the mid 80's that I would certainly recommend that anyone interested in surveying some of the greats of 8-bit BASIC IF gaming from that period should probably try it.

My only critical comment is that the parsing engine is a little on the slow side. This might just be my TRS-80 version that I played, but I suspect it is due in part to the program being written in as generic a form of BASIC as possible so that it could easily be modified for a bunch of different systems. In other words, it contains many program remarks and no special programming shortcuts (unique to any particular 8-bit computer) to speed up execution. However, the delay is not too bad--I recall some Scott Adam's BASIC IF games being worse!

This 8-bit BASIC two-word parser provides a rich set of locations and a complex set of puzzles. It also avoids having (as far as I was able to determine) numerous completely arbitrary deaths, which is a common feature of games of this genre. However, it suffers from a typical fault of many 8-bit adventures. Many of the puzzles depend on the use of specific verb-noun phrases when what are essentially synonymous phrases fail to achieve the same result. I don't find this so glaring a fault when there is some way that this characteristic is clearly indicated, such as by the provision of extensive help/hints, humorous responses that indicate greater precision is required, etc., but these are largely lacking. It also suffers from the fault of inconsistent use of the SEARCH/LOOK/EXAMINE verbs, which means a lot of extra typing is required to make sure that all the clues are discovered. There also appear to be inconsistencies with the OPEN and UNLOCK verbs. The cassette label describes the game as "A Terrifyingly Difficult Adventure." I would describe it as "annoyingly difficult." However, if you are someone who doesn't mind typing and appreciates complex puzzles, especially one's that are informed by a rich understanding of the arcane folklore of European magic traditions, this adventure might be worth a try.

This simple adventure, written at a time when computers typically only had 16K of memory, is a classic. It was originally written for the tiny, ZX81 computer, a machine that many Brits got their first taste of computing from in the early 1980's, and was therefore one of the first experiences that many people in that country would have had of text adventuring. And because of the limitations of the machine, they would have had to endure a flickering black-and-white screen *every time* they typed something in. This fact when combined with the widely acknowledged fact that this program none-the-less initiated many Brits into a lifelong love of IF, stands as a testimony to the fundamental charms of this early adventure. The puzzles are not diabolical, and there are plenty of hints. If it may seem a little easy now, this is only because it had to blaze the trail in its own time of introducing people to the entire software genre. The outer space theme has a certain fantasy and even espionage tinge to it. None-the-less the story and world maintain a basic coherence, which is something that is often lacking from these early adventures. There is a nice mixture of the standard tropes (Maze of twisty passages) and some completely novel puzzles. I think this game deserves the honour of being considered the Adventure A" (much like Colossal Cave" is to the U.S.) of its country of origin.