Missed Classic: Valhalla - Abandoned

Written by Morpheus Kitami

Welcome back to Valhalla, the game I started back in April and kept putting off continuing for other games because it wasn't quite the right time for this kind of mapping. Considering I was putting off starting this game for a while, that tracks. It's not quite the game that's taken me to the longest between starting and finishing as far as posting it on the internet goes, but it's getting close. This is feeling like a lot of effort for not a lot of content.

Death in the Caribbean - Lost! (with Final Rating)

Written by Michael

This is the only acceptable ghost this time of year.

There’s not much progress to report here.  I found a known bug in the game that prevents me from winning.  Apparently only the C64 version is finishable.  And I don’t feel like starting from scratch in a new system; this game just isn’t worth it.  There’s more important things in life, like waiting in line at the DMV, or getting your teeth pulled.

Still, let me tell you what I’ve done, and what could have been.

Death in the Caribbean - How Long, How Long to the Point of No Return?

Written by Michael

Well, this post won’t be as long.  I’ve given up on this session after reaching what was almost definitely a dead end.  And that’s after beating the darn ghost!

This will be less of a blow-by-blow of the steps I’ve taken, and more of just a list of failures and frustrations.

First, going back to the grave to dig up stuff that was stolen from me results in death, from what cause I can’t really figure out.  

Death in the Caribbean - Ghost Robbers in the Sky

Written by Michael

Hey, it’s almost Halloween!

Last time, I left a little grumpy and stuck.  I slept on it and was able to make some progress in the game.

That’s the good news.  The bad news is that I discovered one of the most annoying game mechanics ever, that, to the best of my knowledge so far, is only in the game to lengthen it.  Or, maybe just the author is a sadistic jerk.  I’m hoping it’s the first choice.  But we’ll get there soon enough.

Death in the Caribbean - I Believe this Motel Will Be Standing Until I Pay My Bill

Written by Michael

In the introduction, I started to explore the game world and landed in the afterworld.  So let’s start again.  I start out on the same path and go exploring.

Missed Classic 134: Death in the Caribbean (1983) - Introduction

 Written by Michael

I’m back to an Apple IIe game this time, from another short-lived company from the early days of adventure gaming.

In the early 80s, computer firm MicroLab created a gaming division, MicroFun.  Their role was to publish games created by others.  They made some interesting acquisitions, but were somewhat unfocused.  Arcade games, adventure games, sports games, but no specialty.  They published the ColecoVision port of Electronic Arts’ popular basketball game, One-on-One, the original of which would be the baseline upon which EA grew a sports game empire.  While today, we know them as leaders in the world of micropayments, in the 80s, they were generally the best sports game publishers in the industry.  This game was an officially licensed product, using the pixelated likenesses of Hall of Fame basketball players Dr. J (Julius Erving) and Larry Bird.

Missed Classic 129: Valhalla (1983) - Introduction

 Written by Morpheus Kitami

Its time for a marathon. Today's topic, Eldritch Games, the company behind The Hound of Shadow and Daughter of Serpents. Two horror adventure games that got missed the first time through, and seemingly ones that deserve the title Missed Classic. But an astute reader will have already noticed that this isn't The Hound of Shadow. Like all good stories, it does not start where you think.

Wait, what do you mean Vetinari started up Hound of Shadow? Serves me right for first writing this entry in 2022.

The principal team behind Eldritch Games consists of Chris Elliot, Richard Edwards, Mike Lewis and Carl Cropley. Mr. Elliot did not do anything before Hound of Shadow, at least that I know of. Lewis and Cropley were friends long before, and we'll get to them quickly. Today's title covers a game Richard Edwards had a hand in, the Norse mythology driven Valhalla...which is an adventure game with real-time gameplay. Can't I get a game without some annoying aspect like that?

And this game has combat. Not sure how extensive it is, but that is apparently part of the game. I remember someone once telling me adventure games were generally not violent. I can't help but feel like I've never seen one that was about non-violence...uh..Leisure Suit Larry...?

Missed Classic 118: Santa and the Goblins (1983)

Written by Joe Pranevich

Merry Christmas! I have a distinct memory as a kid of sitting at my grandparents’ home a few nights before Christmas and coloring in a Christmas-themed coloring book. It wasn’t a special book or a Christmas tradition, just a happy memory at their kitchen table with a box of crayons. Thirty-nine years ago this month, a different pair of young boys sat at their kitchen table in their small town of Tenterden in Kent, England. They, too, were coloring: a stack of cassette tape inserts each with a picture of Santa and a goblin, drawn by their father. The family business was computer games and this Christmas marked the end of their first full year as game developers. I get such a warm feeling just imagining that family coming together with felt-tipped markers to put the finishing touches on something they made together. 

The story of Santa and the Goblins, indeed the entire history of Intrigue Software, comes down to one thing: family, and especially the relationship between a father and son. Like all good Christmas stories, it has a happy ending, but the path to get to that ending was not a smooth one. Feelings were hurt, relationships were shattered, and art was born from adversity. Unless you were buying TI99 software from a mail-order catalog in 1983, this is not likely a game that you have played before, but it’s a great story and I am delighted for the chance to share it with you.

You’ve heard of Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, and Vixen… but did you know Santa was a skilled hand at vanquishing goblins? Read on for more.

Missed Classic 107 - Twin Kingdom Valley (1983) - Introduction

Written by Morpheus Kitami

There's a sort of empty space in the history of adventure games between 1982 and 1985. At least I feel that way. The '70s had the mainframe games, followed by Scott Adams and Infocom. Then Sierra came along and did graphical text adventures, and before King's Quest we have a handful of literary adaptations and text adventures with pictures. There's not really much discussion of this time period, even among people who like text adventures. Things sort of disappeared into the ether outside of Infocom. Let's see some of them.

Twin Kingdom Valley was not my first choice, but my first choice has about 1000 pages of backstory I feel I should read first. Twin Kingdom Valley is a fantasy text adventure, one I keep getting confused as Twin Valley Kingdom and now I'm not sure which way is up. The back does not describe much, just that its a fantasy game with 175 rooms. Its one of two games Trevor Hall developed and the only adventure. While he is mentioned as having made a few other games, only an obscure text strategy game seems to be credited to him on online databases.

Morpheus desperately trying to play The Hobbit, 2007, colorized

Twin Kingdom Valley's claim to fame is active NPCs, these having their own, hopefully complex personalities and move around. This gives me flashbacks to The Hobbit, where NPCs moved around while you slowly tried to figure out what to do. For me, that meant dying to the trolls before they would go on to killing and eating Gandalf, Gimli, the rest of the dwarves, Morgoth, Saruman, the Silmarils, uh, Cirith Ungol, Angband and the rest of the universe. So, let's hope it isn't one of those adventure games.

Missed Classic 79: A Christmas Adventure (1983)

Written by Joe Pranevich

Merry Christmas! Welcome back to another Christmas at “The Adventure Gamer” where we are looking at our sixth holiday adventure game! Time flies while we are having so much fun and I’m just amazed that we keep finding new holiday adventures to play. This time out will be 1983’s A Christmas Adventure, a “bitCard” (more on that in a bit) by Chartscan Data, Inc. This game has two notable distinctions: First, it is the earliest Christmas game that I have found so far. Merry Christmas from Melbourne House and A Spell of Christmas Ice were both 1984 games, but this one is a full year earlier. This may be the first commercially released Christmas adventure ever, but we’ll keep looking for more. Second, this game was brought to us by you! Last year, we ran a brief GoFundMe to purchase the only available-to-the-public copy of the game from Retrogames. Our community pitched in some funds and we purchased and sent the game off to the Internet Archive. Unfortunately, they were unable to get the game imaged for the holidays and we detoured to Humbug instead. The archivists uploaded our game in January and that gave us plenty of time to review it for this Christmas.

The Christmas Adventure story begins in Montreal, Quebec at the home of Frank Winstan. It was spring or early summer 1983 and he was working on an idea to design and sell personalized software as an electronic holiday or greeting card. You wouldn’t just play an adventure game, you’d play a game that knew your name and would have personalized messages and other features set by your friends or family. Even in the 1980s, the holiday card industry was hundreds of millions of dollars in yearly sales; if they could tap even a tiny portion, the upside would be huge. In part due to a fear that someone else could capitalize on a similar idea first, he set his sights on a Christmas release for his first electronic “bitCard”. Even for the fast development cycles of early games, the timing was incredibly tight and made all the more so due to a lack of marketing or distribution infrastructure. Winstan needed to bootstrap a startup and ship their first product in less than five months. Was that even possible?

Missed Classic 60: Adventure in the 5th Dimension (1983)

Written by Joe Pranevich

A funny thing happened on the way to Wishbringer… 

As we start into 1985 in our Infocom marathon, we need to bring one new and influential game designer into focus: Brian Moriarty. Mr. Moriarty is the designer behind Wishbringer, as well as Trinity (which I know nothing about) and Beyond Zork. After leaving Infocom, he was the designer on Loom for LucasArts, one of my all-time favorite titles, plus smaller roles in other games. The more I dug into his history, the less I wanted to cram it all into one post. So instead, we’re going to take a brief detour into Adventure in the 5th Dimension, Mr. Moriarty’s very first text adventure game.

One of the things I have tried to do as we introduced each new Implementor is to look at their past works wherever possible. For Mike Berlyn, I read his novel Crystal Phoenix while Voltgloss was kind enough to play Oo-topos (1981) and Cyborg (1981). For Jim Lawrence, this involved me reading his first Hardy Boys and Tom Swift novels. For Brian Moriarty, this means digging into the history of ANALOG Computing, an unofficial Atari enthusiasts magazine where he started as a freelance contributor but eventually rose to become the Technical Editor of the publication. Along the way, he wrote reviews, utility software, and even two games. I cannot think of a better place to start our look at Moriarty than the magazine that he helped to shape and that shaped him in return.

Missed Classic: Infidel - Won! (Lost!?) and Final Rating

Written by Joe Pranevich

A few days ago, I took my first deep dive into Infidel’s hidden pyramid. Powered by a flaming torch and a sense of narcissistic optimism, I discovered a long-buried burial barge, a hidden underground temple containing two chalices, a cube maze with a hidden door, and an Indiana Jones-style weight puzzle to recover four gem clusters. Thus far, after a disappointing start, I am coming to enjoy the game. Mike Berlyn has a good handle on puzzles and has managed to keep the game grounded in a sense of realism. The hieroglyphics have been fun to puzzle through, though a bit inscrutable. More importantly, they have been just understandable enough, with effort, that I could advance through a puzzle or two.

I am reluctant to admit this, but the solution to my “plaster wall” problem was embarrassingly simple: I just had to destroy the wall with my axe. I had avoided this solution in large part because no real archeologist would deliberately destroy priceless artifacts like that, but it appears to be the only way to advance. At least in my mind, I could imagine myself cataloging each of the rooms as I came to them, carefully labeling where I found this treasure or that. But take an ace to a wall? Not really how I’d approach it. It was bad enough that we broke the statue last time, but at least that was an accident...

Missed Classic: Infidel - Walk Like an Egyptian

Written by Joe Pranevich

It’s our special Zork Marathon Anniversary Week! We’re giving the regular reviewers the week off so that we can quickly sprint to the end of Infocom’s 1983. I had a dim hope that I might be able to start Sorcerer too, but that will likely be a bit much. With luck, we’ll get Infidel defeated before doing a special 1983 wrap-up and then a bonus post. It should be fun and I’ll just hope there are no unexpected distractions that blow-up the schedule.

Last week, I started Infidel and crossed the first major hurdle by discovering the location of a long lost pyramid. This was after my character pissed off his work crew so much that they left him for dead in the desert heat, but let’s put that in the past. Immediately after entering the pyramid, I fell to my death down a set of particularly steep stairs. We’re just getting started and I am looking forward to seeing how the game progresses. Since I died last time going north, I start this week by igniting my torch and heading east.

Missed Classic 45: Infidel - Introduction (1983)

Written by Joe Pranevich

Although I had originally planned to play only the Zork games, I somehow find myself eleven games into playing the entire Infocom canon. I still doubt I’ll be able to finish all of them before we get to Return to Zork, but I hope I will have at least hit the high points. And that’s why I’m sitting down to play Infidel, the first game on the list that I was completely unaware of. Every other game so far I’ve at least started and abandoned twenty or more years ago. This one, and many of the games that are coming up, are completely unknown to me. That is exciting but also a bit intimidating as I do not know what to expect or whether Infocom will continue to retain a high level of quality as we get closer to their inevitable decline and shut down.

I also want to take this time to announce that next week (the week of the 19th) will be a special “Zork Marathon Anniversary” week! Time flies but I’ve been playing Infocom (and pre-Infocom) games for an entire year now. To celebrate, we’ll try to finish Infidel and end with a 1983 wrap-up, including the first three Zork books, plus a special non-Zork bonus post. It’ll be fun and hopefully put me in the right mindset for Sorcerer and Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes.

Infidel is Mike Berlyn’s fourth adventure game overall and his second with Infocom after Suspended. This is also Mr. Berlyn’s first game created entirely while at Infocom; according to some design notes that were shared with me by Jason Scott (of Get Lamp fame), he had sketched out much of that game prior to joining the crew from Wheeler St. I do not have to much more to add about this part of Mr. Berlyn’s career at Infocom, but we will continue to track him through Cutthroats (1984) and potentially a brief look at non-adventure Fooblitzky (1985). I am excited to see how Mike’s science fiction / dystopian writing chops will translate to a game that seems quite far from his strengths.

Missed Classic: Enchanter - Won! and Final Rating

Written by Joe Pranevich

Last time out, I inched closer to discovering the Warlock’s inner sanctum and figuring out how to defeat him. In the process, I survived being sacrificed, watched a turtle be a ninja a full year before that would become a thing, and completely screwed up the Zork timeline by teleporting my character from the first games into an adventure that he wasn’t expecting. It’s been a great ride, if a bit frustrating at times. I’m not sure how I should think of a Warlock who leaves so many useful scrolls hidden all around his castle for a novice adventurer to come and defeat him with…

The first thing that I did in this session is to experiment with “melbor”, the protection from evil spell that I picked up at the end of last week. It doesn’t help one iota getting through the guarded door, but it does seem to prevent the cultists from finding me. With that, I have been finally able to access the eastern exit from the Junction… yay! This leads me to a landing and then a winding stairwell going infinitely up and down in both directions. I try to see if it repeats by dropping an object and seeing if I see it again later, but it really does seem to go on forever. With nothing up and nothing down and no spells that seem right for this occasion, I’ll have to come back later.

Missed Classic: Enchanter - The Terror that Flaps in the Night

Written by Joe Pranevich

Last week, I finished exploring nearly all of the Warlock’s castle but left many mysteries unsolved. We found a deathtrap with hammers and spears, a mysterious rainbow turtle, a man in a mirror, an excessively guarded door, and many other little mysteries. I’m going to have to put some of these puzzles to bed if I want to fight my way to the Warlock. You may have noticed that this isn’t a “Won!” post. Except for the original Dungeon (which was enormous), this is the first game in our marathon to require a fourth post. I’m still going to push to have each game done in three or less, but it seemed better to let this game breathe as much as it needed to. There are a lot of puzzles!

Just as with last week, my big break happened almost immediately after I stopped scrawling my notes for the last section. I put the game down, came back, and figured out a huge trick: napping. I have said this before, but when I write about these games, sometimes I sound smarter than I am. For every correct choice, I can spend enormous amounts of time wandering around or trying randomly stupid things which I do not always mention. Keep in mind that for every solved problem there is a strange man yelling at his computer screen about a thirty-four-year old game. Finding the clue I needed while napping was one example of said screaming.

Missed Classic: Enchanter - Magical Mystery Tour

Written by Joe Pranevich

Last week, I started my explorations of Enchanter by breaking into an ancient castle inhabited by an evil warlock. It seemed to be going well at first except I was too tired to memorize any spells, failed to find a safe place to sleep, and then was captured by cultists and sacrificed on an altar to a bloodthirsty god. I did manage to learn two new spells (one to open doors and another to repair damaged objects), found a mirror leading to the original Zork games, and encountered a door so heavily guarded that it’s defenses had defenses. Fort Knox would be easier to enter! The game is a ton of fun so far but I’ve barely cracked the surface. How am I going to find and defeat the Warlock? Will I win by opening a stuck door at him?

I will start this week by saying that I solved the sleeping issue immediately. Not really having any better ideas, I tried sleeping immediately after restoring from my trauma and that worked for some reason without any hassle. I have to assume that it’s a random event and I was just unlucky the last time, but I honestly have no idea. Did I just sleep in the wrong room? At the wrong time? Who knows but at least I can memorize some spells and start a less haphazard exploration of my environment.

Missed Classic 43: Enchanter - Introduction (1983)

Written by Joe Pranevich

It seems like forever since we played Zork III, but we are finally returning to the unambiguous portion of our Great Zork Marathon with Enchanter, the first game in the second trilogy. It seems a waste for Infocom not to have taken advantage of the well-established brand name, but I am sure the marketing team had their reasons for not wanting to do so. Zork IV: The Enchanter would have been a fantastic title! I enjoyed the Zorkisms that we found in Starcross and Planetfall, but it feels good to be back on the main road. Like many of the games in this series, I vaguely remember starting this game (or one of its sequels) more than twenty years ago. I know that it has a magician protagonist and that finding and casting spells will be a key component. I also know that at some point in this series you “meet” your player character from the first Zork trilogy, but it might not be this game. I look forward to finding out!

This game both starts and ends an era for Infocom. This is the final game jointly designed by the team of Marc Blank and Dave Lebling. Marc remained at Infocom until 1986 but did not have time to develop any other games; he would return to produce Battlefield and Journey in 1988 and 1989. Dave will write four more games but we aren’t quite done with him yet. We will be looking at his Spellbreaker, the third game in this trilogy, in a few months. (Steve Meretzky of Planetfall-fame will be given the helm of the second game, Sorcerer.) Enough introduction, let’s play!

Missed Classic: Planetfall - Leavin’ on a Midnight Train to Lawanda

Written by Joe Pranevich

Which bed to sleep in tonight?

Last week, I kicked off my explorations of Planetfall, the sixth stop on the “Great Zork Marathon.” The game opened with a brief on-rails sequence where I was taunted by a petty superior officer for not cleaning the floors properly, but quickly became something very different when our starship blew up. I fled in an escape pod and crash landed in an abandoned military base on an unknown planet with only a spare towel and some tasty goo to survive with. Don’t panic! As I explored the base, I discovered many locked doors and elevators, earthquake damage, and a new best front: Floyd, a helpful but childish robot who runs off at odd times and likes to write on walls with crayons. As I ended my last post, night had just fallen and I retreated to an empty dormitory to sleep. I’m running out of food but I had just discovered a key to the lower elevators. That’s where I’ll start today.

But before I go, a word of advice: if you haven’t played Planetfall before, you may want to stop reading and pick this up. I won’t have any of the best spoilers in this post, but this is a game that is worth experiencing for yourself unspoiled. Another challenge I have is properly communicating the tone of the game. Much of what I have glossed over, the mundane exploration of the alien base mixed and the slow realization that you will die without rescue, creates a tension that adds to the solving of typical adventure puzzles. It’s well-written in a way that I doubt I can capture very well. I’m having a ton of fun and I hope you do as well.

Missed Classic 40: Planetfall - Introduction (1983)

Written by Joe Pranevich

When I was a kid, one of the boxed sets of games that my family picked up for me was the Zork Anthology, a 1994 collection of the what someone at Activision considered the “Zork” games. This package included the original Zork trilogy, Zork Zero, Beyond Zork, and… surprisingly… Planetfall. Looking back on this now, it’s clear not a ton of thought was put into this: the set didn’t include either the Enchanter series nor the ZorkQuest games. They probably didn’t intend to imply that that Planetfall existed within the Zork universe, but it was enough to lodge this particular misapprehension firmly in my brain for decades. When the time came for my marathon here, I added Planetfall to the list even though I knew better. Who knows? It might be connected after all.

Last time out, I took a break from my marathon to play Suspended, a dystopian science-fiction game and Infocom’s sixth title. 1983 marked a huge year for Infocom, a company that had never released more than two games per year suddenly had five. After Suspended came The Witness, a game that Ilmari reviewed last year, and then Planetfall. Although Ilmari already looked at The Witness, I wanted to come to Planetfall with the full Infocom experience so I also played and then wrote about my experiences with that game. You can find it as a special bonus post here. Spoiler: I do not like it as much as Ilmari did.

Planetfall is the first game by adventure gaming legend Steve Meretzky. We’ve seen his work (in various roles) on the Spellcasting series and Gateway; we’ll also be seeing him soon in Leather Goddesses and Rex Nebular, not to mention at least three more stops on the Zork marathon. He came to Infocom as a game tester and, thanks in large part to Planetfall, became one of their top designers. I’m thrilled to be able to experience his first game once again.