Ratings and Reviews by jgerrie

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.