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Mission Asteroid

by Roberta Williams, Ken Williams, and Sierra On-line Systems

Episode 3 of Hi-Res Adventure
1981
Sci-fi

(based on 6 ratings)
1 review8 members have played this game.

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Average Rating: based on 6 ratings
Number of Reviews Written by IFDB Members: 1
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Maybe if it worked ... nah, not even then., October 28, 2024
by cgasquid (west of house)

For the record, I played this on a real Apple ][+ in the 1980s. It was my second text adventure ever, after Scott Adams' Adventureland and before Zork II.

An asteroid is speeding towards Earth on a collision course. (Never mind that in the 1980s our first warning of an approaching asteroid would be its impact.) Your goal is to qualify as an astronaut, fly your shuttle out to the asteroid, set charges to blow it up, and return safely to Earth.

No, Bruce Willis is not included. And this game came out 18 years before Armageddon anyway.

Despite how it might sound, this is actually a fairly simple task. There are a handful of puzzles with self-evident answers, mostly consisting of getting information in one place and using it in another. You'll probably want to take some notes.

The game's difficulty -- ALL of its difficulty -- comes from the tight time limit. Every action you take uses up a certain amount of time, so there is no time for any distractions or any mistakes. The "puzzle" is therefore to write a walkthrough so efficient that not even one move is missed.

This, I am afraid to tell you, is NOT FUN.

It's not even like this is an efficiency puzzle. Mission: Asteroid is ludicrously linear -- there are no alternate solutions to puzzles, no multiple routes, no optional areas, nothing. You're more likely to die from a typo or because you accidentally used a synonym than anything else.

Oh, and if you DO die, the game simply continues like it didn't happen. You can "win" just by ignoring it and continuing to play.

Compared to Mystery House, this isn't that significant a piece of IF history, and it's buggy, poorly designed, and hopelessly linear. I've played better adventure games programmed by fourteen-year-olds.

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Page 6
Mission: Asteroid
Roberta Williams is a country girl whose childhood revolved around fairy tales, magic and fantasy. She read a lot, fantasized a lot and told stories to her friends. Some years later, after getting married and moving to Los Angeles, her husband introduced her to an entirely new form of story telling – computer Adventures.

Ken Williams was a programmer on an IBM mainframe and used to bring a terminal home every night. As it happens, the computer had some games on it including the classic Crowther and Woods original Adventure! After playing it at home, Roberta said to herself "Gee, I could do that!". So she designed an Adventure called "Mystery House" and Ken did the programming. It was a fairly simple game inspired by the Agatha Christie novel "Ten Little Indians". It had black and white line drawings and was only available for the Apple, but it was a start.

They formed On-Line Systems (which later became Sierra On-Line) so that they could distribute the game. Before long they released a second game called "Wizard and the Princess". It had full screen, high resolution colour graphics and was heralded as a major breakthrough in Adventures. On-Line's success was now assured.
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