Missed Classic 116: Castle Adventure - Introduction (1984)

Written by Michael


Many radio call-in shows had an oft-repeated, somewhat cliched line: "Hi! I'm a long-time listener, first-time caller." I suppose that describes me. I've been reading and commenting on the blog for a handful of years, and finally got around to writing my story and threatening planning to write a missed classic review about a memorable childhood game. The game I'll be talking about is somewhat special to me, because it was my first game of any form I played on a computer that I know of. I hadn't even played Lemonade Stand at school yet, it would be another year before they installed a row of Apple IIe systems in the elementary school library.

Around 1985, when I was about 7, my grandfather showed me this new toy he had. In the family room of his house, he had set up his new IBM Model 5160 computer (known as the PC/XT), complete with an amber monochrome screen and a daisy-wheel printer. It had the latest in cyber-security: that round key that would lock the keyboard. And along with some software programmed "borrowed" from the engineering firm he worked at, he also had some shareware and freeware programs, obtained from mail-order shareware vendors like PC-SIG.

The keyboard and printer were in a constant battle, over which one could make enough noise to drive my grandmother crazy.

Among these was a game that we wished us to play together. So each time I would visit, we would, perhaps, advance a little bit, and then promptly be interrupted by Grandma, calling us off to dinner, the movies, or something much less engrossing. He would print out the screen of each new room we visited, taping the printouts together (although they sometimes weren't quite to the same scale) and the table in that room showed our progress along the way. (Those under the age of, say, 35 may have wondered what the function of the "PrtScn" button on a keyboard was. Once upon a time, it actually functioned as advertised.)

The game was Castle Adventure, by Kevin Bales.

Another game would soon steal this title screen, adding a moat and playing Greensleeves.

I don't think we ever did finish the game, and while I tried to look at it again 15 years later, it was too much of a fight to get it to play properly. So, as I come to play this game now, it's with fresh eyes. I don't remember any puzzles. I've gone a few screens in before writing this introduction, and it seems vaguely familiar, but fresh enough that I'm glad I waited all this time.

It appears that Kevin Bales was just 14 years old when he wrote this game, and that seems appropriate to me, as I also had a popular program in the shareware world when I was that age. I learned this from a fan site for the game, and there was even an unofficial Windows remake of the game in the early 2000s.

So, let's take a look at the game, shall we?

Well, this seems simple enough.

We start the game just inside the castle, the gate firmly locked behind you.

I wonder If the Random capitalization Of Words means anything Special? Or is It Just the poor english Skills of a Fourteen year-old?

You can move your player around the old fashioned way -- the 8 directional keys on the numeric keypad. For me, this is always how I played keyboard games, and even when later systems added separate arrow keys, I would always just turn NumLock off so that I could use the original ones. I'm actually impressed that the diagonal keys were programmed, as many commercial games neglected this in the later years.

The game was designed using the ASCII character set, which many games afterwards would expertly improve upon.

Scott Miller programmed this gem of a game, and then later published Wolfenstein 3D.

So, time to test the instructions.
one hint: be sure to look at everything carefully!

So, the description mentions there is a gate.
? LOOK GATE

I'm feeling somewhat inferior to a castle gate.

Of course, I cannot OPEN GATE, as somehow, I doubt I could win the game that easily. I suppose I'll need to go on a treasure hunt.

Never, never, ever, eat Noontonyt Nectarines....

Well, there's nowhere to go but North, so perhaps I'll head that way.

"I'm the butler, sir." "What do you do?" "I buttle, sir."

I choose to go left. In this room, there's a stairway, a couple of exits, and... an ugly ogre. The instructions for the game advise me that I will need a weapon to fight such a creature, but I've forgotten how insulted I was by the Very Strong gate at the entrance to the castle, and I'll attempt this battle bare-handed.

I suspect this screen sounds like this.

Maybe I should think about looking for a weapon.

So, this seems like a great time to pause, and let everyone guess how well this game will fare. After all, there's 83 rooms, and we've only seen 4 of them so far, and not one of the 13 treasures, so it's an open playing field. It's black and white, having been designed at a time when many users might not have had a CGA monitor yet. It predates King's Quest I with an animated character and a parser, so let's see how entertaining it is, or if I'm just looking back on childhood with rose-colored glasses.

In 1984, a monochrome monitor was around the price of Zork I, II, and III combined.

Want to check it out yourself? The game can be played on the Internet Archive, or downloaded from the fan site. I'm using a downloaded copy in DOSBox, with the CPU cycles set rather low (200) and it seems to be a fair emulation for me.