Missed Classics 6: Wonderland - Introduction (1990)

Written by Mad Welshman

Between interactive fiction and first person graphical adventure games, there were some interesting experiments in the genre: What I like to call Graphical Parser games. We've already seen at least one style of this subgenre played by Trickster (ICOM's Deja Vu), but there were at least two more, from two other companies: Legend Entertainment (At least one of which, Frederik Pohl's Gateway, is on the list), and the Magnetic Scrolls games (Which are not.)

Magnetic Scrolls was founded in 1984 by Anita Sinclair, Ken Gordon, and Hugh Steers, originally wanting to develop games for the Sinclair QL (A computer many won't have heard of outside of the UK), but moving quite quickly to the Commodore and Atari line of computers on seeing their utility. Their first four games were well received, for the most part, but it is the fifth I'm going to be looking at, because it is the first game that received the Magnetic Windows treatment that made them somewhat different: Wonderland (1990), published for the Atari ST, PC, the Acorn Archimedes, and the Amiga line of computers by Virgin Interactive, and written by David Bishop.

I'm specifically going to be using the Atari ST version for this Missed Classics review, because it highlights how much hard work was put into the technical end of things. Let's begin with a shot of the Atari ST Operating System, CRYSTAL (Precursor to GEM), also affectionately known as The Little Green Desktop.

And now, Wonderland as it would look when you first get past the title screen.

Looks similar, doesn't it? But this is all in game, and looks pretty much the same no matter what platform you play it on. It's not using CRYSTAL, it's creating these windows in program. With that said, let's introduce the game itself.

Wonderland is, as you might have guessed from the title, loosely based on Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, and, if it weren't for these bells and whistles, would firmly be placed in the “Text Adventure” portion of Interactive Fiction. But its features are quite powerful: A map, drawn as you explore. A window each for your own inventory, and all the items you can see (More on that when we get there). A graphical window (Sometimes animated, and always drawn from a preliminary description of the scene by many different pixel artists), and finally, the parser window itself. All of them are resizable, movable, and can be closed or opened at will. I'll try not to keep things too cluttered for the screenshots, however, generally keeping only the graphics and text windows open at the same time.

I'll be working from memory, as I have played this before, but the game also has a hint system... So, apart from an example or two to highlight the use of the hint system, I'll be comparing your inputs to the game's, and the usual hint rules apply.

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There's a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no CAPs will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. As this is an introduction post, it's your chance to predict what the final rating will be for the game. Voters can predict whatever score they want, regardless of whether someone else has already chosen it. All correct (or nearest) votes will go into a draw.

Game 47: Spellcasting 101: Sorcerers Get All the Girls - Have Surfboard, Will Travel

Written by Aperama

Ernie Eaglebeak's Journal #5: I managed not to get myself killed by being the preferred chewtoy of an entire island of Amazons after all. I, er.. through my cunning use of what little they had to offer, I managed to find myself back to my trusty surfboard (it's pretty much mine now. I mean technically I'm just borrowing it. But after all I'm doing for the Professor I'm pretty sure he'll let me keep it!) and head off to.. somewhere else. My map had a picture of an hourglass, and.. I had a backwards game of chess, a mudbath, found another.. god, I don't even remember exactly what happened. After the director told me to drop a BUNDEROT spellbox, I ended up with it in my hands, and I was back on the Amazon island again! Of course, I had to get away pretty quick before any of them realised their precious man was missing, so I headed down to the Restaurant at the End of the Ocean. Minus side? My tutor was right, restaurants fall apart really quick. On the plus side, I got about two bites of some pygmy shark and a MAJJELLO spell box. Turns out that 'BOA' was just hidden on the surfboard by a spell! Guess I know where I'm headed to now...

Our last puzzle was simpler than I'd thought!

As I've written a few posts up for this blog now, I can't help but think about the obvious comparisons to the way in which Trickster always wrote his posts up as against Chester's at the CRPG Addict. There's a few reasons why I always preferred Trickster's style, but I can't help but feel that I'd be benefited by following Chester's today. The following post was almost under half an hour of gameplay, but seemed like I made my way through enough significant bits and pieces to actually warrant a gameplay post. Were this the CRPG Addict, however, it'd be time to talk about the combat interface or anything other than what I'd just seen – two extremely railroaded series of puzzles that in my humble opinion just weren't fun at all. It's not like they were nonsensical, and they didn't grate on my nerves – they just weren't very good! I played through them, frowned and then just hoped that the game will come back to the fun of sitting in class writing notes and taking in the game's lore. Anyhow, enough whining. On with the show!

Escaaaape!

The last suggestion I had given to me in the comments was that I had to prove that I had the same 'gigantic spoilers' as an Amazon. I'm quite glad that I didn't choose to pay attention to Kenny's suggestion, however, as they really weren't looking for the shapely curves of a fellow Amazonian woman – they're used to having other, non-Amazonian women around the island. It's just 'not looking like a man' that was the key here. After giving up on attempting to bribe the shopkeeper or hide in things (I figured maybe hiding underneath the bed might help), I realised something – we're playing a game with a spellbook! I didn't see any obvious things that could come out of BLUBBAing in the Amazonian Queendom, though, and ZEM proved rather futile even with the lead-plated sword in tow – so I started to FRIMP random objects, starting with my cloak as I was sure that it had something to do with the outcome – but as it turns out.. there was a bonnet hidden underneath the bed in the VIP room. Oops. Cross-dressing away, and we're outta there!

That's a strange name for an island..

But I can think of a reason or two as to why

This is really not a series of puzzles to come. It feels sorta like Mr. Meretzky was a little lost as to how to make the gameplay stretch out and just looked for very simple puzzles. The series of name-based puns weren't the worst the game has to throw! Indeed, after the seemingly largely useless Amazonian island (the only potential items I can think of that might come in handy from there are the pomegranate and the lead-plated sword I left there) I ended up in the Island where.. time.. runs.. backwards. This is the equivalent of a running quick-time event. Instead of telling us to push X at a contextually sensitive point, though, it tells us to reverse every single command. I'd be okay by this series of puzzles if it allowed for failure! Instead of doing so, it continually lists a command or a thing that has been done and has us react to it. So, after 'GET ON THE SURFBOARD' pops up, you need to type 'GET ON THE SURFBOARD'. (Well, this particular example isn't truthful – we actually get told that some waybread falls into our hands and we need to drop it.) However. Say, for instance, you want to look at the waterfall instead?

Evidently, wanting to not follow the path is cause for DEATH

As such, there's no actual 'gameplay' within this section. Repeating each command leads Ernie through a faux Goldilocks-styled scene, complete with a director on the beach sending him off to do so. Sending him out (well, sending him in) by having him pick up (drop) an object from the beach, he ends up launching himself from the ground to the second floor of the roof – well, he was thrown out of it, in truth. So, by 'heading south' (moving from the north), it leaves Ernie suddenly feeling an awful lot less beaten up from the rapid smacking he received directly prior to. The three steaming mud baths he tried (one too cold, one too hot and one just right) led him to have a nap in the baby.. mud devil's home. Mud devils, I remember from Ernie's classes, were one of the nasties that we have no real defense against. The advice given was 'Avoid, avoid, avoid!' Of course, technically, we're not doing anything.. we're just resting to have the previous action take effect. Confused? Good. Returning downstairs after the mud devils discover us, we find a chess set, three meals of waybread and three concubines...

The notion of Ernie having his excitement return BACK into him made me turn to the 'nice' mode. Instead of concubines? Nuns. Nuns who want to play chess with Ernie.

Sampling the waybread (uneating the small piece, finding one of the other hard and the other too soft) and the.. nun chess matches? Ernie un-enters the cabin in the woods, ending up in front of one of the Great Attachment pedestals, the 'Nozzle of Blather'. He even looked at it for us to actually let us get some more information on it! This is my real problem, honestly – were the game to allow us to actually take in the surroundings even if it wouldn't let us do things without time undoing itself, I'd be okay by this puzzle – it'd be fun and quirky instead of quite annoying. Undoing everything he does, we end up un-dropping a BUNDEROT box ('decomposition'), setting the surfboard we got on back to the co-ordinates we started by going to, riding our surfboard backwards and ending up back on the island of Amazons once more. With an extra spell box. Woohoo! So now, we're stuck with only one location – the 'EATS' sign on the map. Not only was the quote from the previous chapter from Douglas Adams..

But the next isle was quite reminiscent of him too

As Kenny and Ilmari both alluded, the rather large degree of 'steps in restauranteering' training taken back in class at SU comes out to make some sense. Well, it does now, anyhow. There's not an awful lot to this island – if the last we were on was to be considered short, this is amazingly so. There are quite literally two screens to it. That said, simple isn't necessarily terrible. I'm not entirely sure, but I think I may have been forced to play it in this order – it turns out that the BUNDEROT spell obtained in the last island is critical here. (I also found that I couldn't re-enter the restaurant after our first visit.) The opening screen has a harbour, a restaurant and a MAJJELLO spell box. Naturally, I go to claim MAJJELLO for our own – but things don't quite go the way I'd expected..

They SCREW you at the sail-thru. They know you're gonna be miles away before you find out...

As soon as we go to pick up the MAJJELLO box, the restaurant we're standing out the front of happens to decide to open rather abruptly. It turns out our SU professors really knew what they were talking about! The six steps of restaurant evolution take place before our very eyes. We walk in to a restaurant that, having just opened, has great customer service, good and cheap food – everything is good! As we're seated and read the menu (one of which just happens to list 'freshly caught pygmy shark'), the place gets extremely crowded. As we receive our meal (given that it came in five minutes, I've got to admit that this is pretty impressive), people start grumbling about the prices and portion sizes. (We received our portion sizes early enough for this not to be a problem, though.) As we BUNDEROT our meal (I found it wasn't really a choice – having a bite of the apparently rather tasty food makes it impossible to finish off the 'puzzle' within) we receive an under-digested spell box, leading us to the MAJJELLO from the beach. The restaurant remains closed afterwards, so we're stuck with what could be no clear direction – except for MAJJELLO, 'show hidden information'. As I alluded to in the previous post, there's a missing dial from the surfboard as it corresponds to the map. The 'BOA' I was missing, it turns out, is found with a MAJJELLO, and it then directs me to the one thing on the BOA line, the small pictograph of a thunder cloud...

And we have our destination for our next post!

As I say, there really wasn't much to these two chapters of gameplay – they're fine little bits of fun and all, but they're just not 'puzzling' – it's not like I was scratching my head and thinking over things. Instead, I was railroaded into the realms of not really getting to choose what happened. Six turns in the restaurant and it closes, even if you want to look around and do other things. If the game just allowed for a little more playing around instead of giving you limited to no opportunity to stuff up, these last two chapters could have been really enjoyable. Anyhow. The game can't have too much longer to go, and it still has every opportunity to finish up strong, now that my inventory has swelled to two extra spells..

Session Time: 30 min
Total Time: 6 hours

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There’s a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I've not made any requests for assistance. Thanks!

Game 49: Elvira - Practical Magic

By Deimar

Jake Spenser Journal Entry #5 "Elvira keeps insisting in her abilities as a cook. I hope she turns out better than the old one. As we don’t have anything better to do other than getting some keys, killing her grand grand grand grandmother and saving the world, I give it a try. I don’t know what she gave me, but with just a bit of honey and hay she made me see things. Things no man should know. Like the names of every single plant in the garden. It must also have boosted my courage, a side effect?, as I was able to tackle the werewolf, the gatekeeper and go down to the castle catacombs. It’s important not to mix them with the dungeons. The dungeons are grey, while the catacombs are blue. And my mind is blank."

And now, for the first time since forever, the incredible, the magnificent, the “not-very-adept-at-this-game” Deimar!!! (booing). Performing his legendary act!! (more booing). THE TRANSFORMATION OF HONEY AND HAY INTO SOMETHING A TAD MORE USEFUL!!! (tomatoes being thrown)

The magic system in this game is not very complex. Elvira is the one actually doing most of the work while we only act as kitchen help. Whenever she is in the kitchen with the spellbook we can select her and the “mix” option will light up on the menu. If we select it, a close up of the book comes up showing the list of spells. We can then select any spell and a new page will be open with a blank page on the left and the ingredients we are carrying on the right. Although in my screenshots you won’t see it because I prefer to use the ingredients directly from the floor. That’s the way I roll. Dangerously ignoring the five-second rule.

Nothing insightful to say. It’s a book. I bet you have seen photos of them in your tablets and phones.

The list of ingredients for each spell is part of the copy protection system. The spells come described in a small book accompanying the manual, needing a pair of those funny colored glasses to read them. Or it did until someone actually bothered to transcribe the book. God bless people with too much spare time!. In any case, at the moment we are just going to mix one spell that needs the hay from outside the stable and a jar of honey from the kitchen. Herbal Honey. This spell allows us to “gain knowledge of the true names of all plants”. A.K.A. it’s time for some gardening.

It’s a kind of magic!

After fighting my way through some blue soldiers and monks I got to the garden. Like the spells at the beginning of the game, this one presents itself as a green bottle. One sip and some carrying later and I was back at the kitchen with the floor totally covered in fruits, leaves, roots and any other form of green. However, I was still missing some key ingredients like thistle or nettle to make the other key spell. I suspect that there is the exact amount of ingredients in the game to allow you to craft every spell once, but since some spells share ingredients and not being able to make some of them is a sure way to get to a dead end, I opted to stop making spells and continue exploring.

And so I took the crucible from the forge, the silver cross from the gardener and a pair of kitchen mittens and proceeded to mercy kill a rabid dog. With the help of the mittens we can manage the crucible once we put it into the forge. Then, we can melt the silver cross and dip one of our bolts. Voilà, a silver tipped bolt. I really hope this is what the werewolf meant because if he was referring to any other silver tipped thing he is in for a nasty surprise.

I’m no dog whisperer, but my method certainly works

Such a waste of time. No key, no incredible treasure… The only thing I found there was a bit of horsehair. I was so mad I decided I had to let out my rage. Hence the only sensible thing was to pay a visit to the only other being who had mocked me and didn’t have a good pair of…shoes. The gatekeeper. As I didn’t have any interest in a fair fight, I simply used all of my fire dagger spells to kill him. Well deserved if I may. He was such a poser, reading a blank book. At least I got the “Primus” (first) key, which was hidden behind a notice on the board behind him. The note was a warning to the soldiers about not removing a crown. Useful advice if I ever see a crown, were I not the kind of guy who has a problem with authority figures.

Who is the slimy lizard now? I like my lizard meat medium rare! (comment approved by the Arnold Schwarzenegger committee for bad puns).

I went back to the kitchen, dropped everything and mixed the Alphabet Soup spell using some dandelyons, elderberries and rose petals. The spell is “essential before understanding of runes can be gained”. Basically, there was an inscription at the entrance of the main keep which I couldn’t read and this spell helps with that. The message is “Beware thy very soul lest it exist without flesh or bone”. Useful for pretending being cool at parties, but I don’t see how can it help us with our current predicament.

With nowhere to go now, I decided to start exploring the castle towers. Starting with the northwest one, with its complimentary green soldier. These guys are starting to look like the Power Rangers to me. Inside I was surprised to find that I could go up and down. Guessing that up meant the castle walls, I decided to see what lied in the tower basement. After a short animation of our character going down some spiral stairs, I reached the castle catacombs.

To be fair, considering the whole game is just 4 disks the graphics are impressive. And repetitive.

Another new zone, another new tune. This one a bit similar to the dungeons one, slow and tense. The catacombs are very… blue. Nothing fancy, just plain rock and darkness. Suddenly I remembered that you can put the soul of the torturer to rest here, so I ran back to the kitchen to take his bones and a shovel. Grave robbing ahoy!!

Navigating the catacombs is problematic. There are places where the turn arrows don’t just turn, but also move the character one square which is the reason my maps may not be very exact. I blame the graphics, and you can’t prove it’s just my bad orientation skills so I am right. In each hall there is a crypt. As happened in the dungeons, all the crypts are the same. First an elaborate door with two weird statues holding a skull. And inside you get two sarcophagi with bones.

And all day and all night and everything he sees is just blue like him inside and outside...

However, unlike the dungeons, these crypts are mostly empty. There is one that contains dragons blood inside the skull over the door. Seems a little unfair hiding an object inside an item that in the other occasions can’t be interacted with, but what do I know. Watching my footage from the session, I see I also missed something in the floor of one of the corridors. In any case, the only other crypt with something of interest has an empty sarcophagus and another one not so empty. I tried putting the torturer bones in the empty sarcophagus but I didn’t get any message so I don’t know if that worked. Specially because opening the other sarcophagus in the room kills you, so I didn’t try to leave the remains and go back to the torture chamber.

Not even another vampire or a mummy. These catacombs are no fun.

Yep. It’s the same image used for the bones in the torture chamber. I don’t know if it’s a clue or simply a way to reuse assets.

I left the best for the end. The enemies. Right after you go down to the catacombs, some skulls come flying at you. They are quite easy to dispatch, as they die in one hit. The only caveat is that you have to time your attack with theirs and attack the same side they are attacking. Soon after, you get to meet their flesh puppets… or something. It is better if you just see the picture, I can’t write any description worthy of such a magnificent monster. You kill them by cutting their arm, whose hand converts then into one of the flying skulls.

I have no words for what I’m seeing. But…

... I think it’s time for my first caption contest. Don’t be that guy with the phallic comments!!

And the final interesting thing here is a giant troll that kills you on sight. There is a specific crypt I have not been able to explore because whenever you get near its entrance, this bugger comes and stones you to death. Old testament style. The rock he uses seems to have something written on it, and the game warns you about needing the right weapon to kill him, so it’s a dead end at the moment.

That will be the end of the catacombs for now. We leave almost completely empty handed. Fun. Meet me in the next instalment where we will change the cold stone in the dark for the cold stone in the outside over the castle walls.

CATACOMBS MAP:

DEATH BONUS ROUND (TOTAL DEATHS: 9):

Those are some sharp teeth to make such a clean cut…

Look, I’m cold, I’m wet and I’m just plain scared

Could you bring that stone closer so I can read it? AAAH! NOT SO CLOSE!! NOT SO CLOSE!!

Session Time: 1 hours 10 minutes

Total Time: 3 hours 30 minutes

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There’s a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I've not made any requests for assistance. Thanks!

Missed Classic 5: Wizard and the Princess - Introduction (1980)

Written by Joe Pranevich

King’s Quest was not the first adventure game I played, or even an early favorite, but it shaped how I viewed adventure gaming. I was thirteen when I first played it, one of a handful that my girlfriend introduced me to on her Tandy when I would come visit. We played the first three together. I loved the whimsy of the series, the haphazard way that the they blended familiar stories, and the joy of exploration. As I got older, I continued to view Kings Quest as something of a bellwether for adventure gaming trends. I was awed by the sound and “multimedia” experience in King’s Quest 5, then by the challenge and depth of King’s Quest 6, and finally by the simplicity and cartoon-like experience of King’s Quest 7. Each game brought something new to the formula. I regret that I never played #8 —it came out while I was in college and what little I had heard about it was less than good— but perhaps I will look it up when the blog eventually gets that far.

It was a surprise to me, and it may also be a surprise to some of you, that Wizard and the Princess, “Hi-Res Adventure #2”, is actually a King’s Quest game —or rather, takes places in the same universe as the later games. Thus, two out of two games in the “Hi-Res Adventure” series inspired later Roberta Williams games! I look forward to finding out whether that trend continues with the subsequent games. I have not played this game before, both because the PC version is quite rare and because it is a bit before my time. I did have a large number of Commodore 64 games of uncertain origin that were provided by my parents, but this was not one of them. Either way, I look forward to playing it now!

Title screen from 1986 re-release. This is the version that I played for this review.
It may not be possible to have a more boring title screen.

But first, a little history: Earlier in 1980, Ken and Roberta Williams published the first game by their fledging software company, Mystery House. They had intended On-Line Systems, as it was then-known, to be a business software company, but they saw the way the wind was blowing and shifted to games instead. Mystery House was the first graphical adventure, in a time when text adventures were just hitting their stride. It was primitive, ugly, and short, but it was also successful, selling enough copies to convince the pair to keep going. Wizard and the Princess was their second attempt and was marketed as “Hi-Res Adventure #2”.

Why did Ken and Roberta call their series “Hi-Res Adventures”? The answer seems to be two-fold. The first part of the answer comes from Apple itself: they called their 280 x 192 pixel graphics mode “Hi-Res” to distinguish it from their pong-level 40 x 40 low-resolution graphics. This was a nearly 34x increase! It seems laughable now, but that must have been a big deal at the time. The second part of the answers comes from their competition: Scott Adams was marketing his “Adventure International” games as “Adventure #1”, “Adventure #2”, and so on. Whether this was a common way to market games or simply Ken and Roberta not being above a bit of consumer confusion, I cannot say, but it must have seemed like a good idea at the time. This nomenclature was kept for a further five games in the series before being retired in 1984. Scott Adams would later rebill his games as “S.A.G.A. #1” and so on during his graphical refresh in 1982. More on that later, if I get to cover some of his games for this blog.

Watch out! This WizArd is in camel case! Doesn’t this cover just scream “romance novel” to you?

Although I have not played the game yet, I know that Wizard and the Princess makes some technical innovations over its predecessor. First and most obviously: this game is in colour! In fact, Ken and Roberta moved straight past blocks of color and into dithering to provide a wider variety of colors than the Apple ][ was technically able to display. My emulator tends to show this as tight individual pixels, but I have heard that on the original systems, the pixels blended to provide a better color experience. They also added support for up to 15 save slots on a second dedicated save-game disk. Beyond that, I will find out as I play.

I know this game takes place in Serenia —the same setting as King’s Quest 5— but otherwise I am a bit rusty on connections with other King’s Quest games. It has been many years since I played any of the early KQ games and I encourage you to comment on any connections you see between this and the later games. Obviously, there is a downside to not being Trickster and having all of these games in my own recent memory.

No one could possibly buy this game twice by accident, could they? 

Before I get into playing, this game has one more curious bit of history. In 1982, IBM and On-Line Systems released a version of Wizard and the Princess for the PC. Although the game appears to be the same (at least through the first several screens), it was retitled as Adventure in Serenia. Why? I am not sure, but several sources suggest that Roberta Williams was unhappy with the port. While it is usually the practice of this blog to play the PC versions when available, I have decided to play the Apple version to ensure a more authentic play experience. I want to be fair to the game, especially if the PC version is a lower quality.

IBM PC version (above) and Apple ][ version (below).

Reading through the manual, the plot of the game seems simple enough: you are a “happy wanderer” just passing through Serenia when you hear a tragic tale. The king’s daughter, Princess Priscilla, has been kidnapped by the evil wizard Harlin and taken to his castle, far to the north. Being the completely clueless wanderer you are, you head off in that direction before buying any supplies. Time to play!

Happy Wanderer Travelogue #1: Man, I hate magic. I bought a copy of “Daventry on Five Gold Coins Per Day” from a quaint little shop in Llewdor and the gnome proprietor offered to throw in some “magic transportation” to speed up my journey. I said sure! Big mistake. Next thing I know, all my money is gone and I’m in Serenia of all places with a nasty headache. Serenia! The only thing Serenia is famous for is how much sand they put in the sandwiches. I tossed the book aside just as a crowd was gathering on the other end of the square. A royal crier was spreading the new: Princess Priscilla was kidnapped by an evil Wizard. My ears perked up when I heard that the reward would be half of the kingdom! Maybe the gnome did me a favor after all. I packed up what was left of my traveling supplies and marched off to the northern desert. Princess, here I come!

Argh, a snake!

And we’re off! I start the game in the “Village of Serenia”, and it takes me only 30 seconds to become disappointed. None of the town is explorable, there are no people or shops, and the buildings are just for show. It’s a complete facade of a town and just a lazy and disappointing way to start the game. Oh well! I know from the manual that the evil wizard is off to the north, so let’s start off in that direction first.

Just to the north of town, a snake is guarding the path. Despite the miles of desert in all directions, there seems to be no way to walk around the snake and the only way further north is through it. I check my inventory: water, knife, bread, and blanket. I try to use the knife, but it is not big enough to kill the snake, but even that failure gives me a clue. How else can I kill the snake? Can I get a bigger knife? Not having the answer, I head east to see what else is around.

Twisty little maze of cacti all alike?

A few seconds later and I realize what I have walked into: a maze. This game drops you into the middle of a maze as the very first puzzle of the game. We have the snake and the town, but all of the surrounding screens are identical, in the style of a classic adventure game maze. Going west in one screen does not mean you can get back by going east, for example. The only way forward is careful mapping. Yes, I do know what to do-- this is not my first adventure game after all-- but mazes are not my favorite kind of puzzle. I restart the game to get a fixed reference and start to build my map using the four items that I started the game with. As I explore, I realize that there is a small help as not all of the screens are exactly identical. Several of them have rocks which, on further observation, have scorpions hiding behind them. I cannot pick them up without dying, but they add a bit of variance to the terrain and makes mapping it somewhat easier.

But damn. No sooner do I think that than the game throws me a curveball: some of the rooms are almost identical. In fact, I only realized that they weren’t when my maps were coming out wrong. The only way I realized was with careful screenshots, which 1980s players would not have had access to. Take a look at this:

Oh yeah. Just try to figure this out without screenshots. I dare you.

That just does not seem fair! Still, I work it out and my mapping is coming along well until I run out of items. I only started with four and so I can only map rooms with rocks and four more and the maze is clearly bigger than that. But by luck, I think I found what the end of the maze is supposed to be: one of the rocks does NOT have a scorpion behind it! In fact, I can pick it up and take it with me. Hooray! I have found a rock. From there, it takes a couple of tries to work out a path that gets me to the rock and back without dropping any items, but I succeed and am back at the starting town with one new rock in my possession. What a victory!

I head north again and “use” the rock on the snake, thumping it until dead. I pick the rock back up in case there are more snakes, but I suspect this is just the beginning. Once I get more items, I will have to go back to the maze and make sure I found everything. I do not trust this game not to hide an important object there. Already, it has proven itself to be somewhat annoying.

Thus far, I admit to being rather unimpressed. After an hour of looking at nearly identical screenshots and mapping, I have managed to solve one puzzle, and I’m not 100% sure that is the right way to do it. (Can you get by without killing the snake?) I am also not sold on starting the game in a maze. Still, there must be a lot of the game left and I am eager to see what Mrs. Williams is going to throw at me next. If there is another maze, I am not going to be pleased.

On the bright side, at least it looks like a scorpion...

Since this IS a first post for a game, do not forget that you can make wagers and vote on the final score for the game. I am also eager to hear of what King’s Quest connections you see, if any!

Session time: 1 hr
Total time: 1 hr

Game 47: Spellcasting 101: Sorcerers Get All the Girls - Eaglebeak's Erotic Amazonian Adventures

Written by Aperama

Ernie Eaglebeak's Journal #4: Okay, so my problems aren't the ones that I'd expected. After infuriating myself around the Isle of Lost Soles, I managed to finally free all eighty of them. Silly guys, the lot of them – some of them were even in a human form.. I wonder why they didn't try to free themselves! Still, it seems like the Isle is pretty much a dead end. There's nothing much left to do here – honestly, I think I KABBULed all of the fun out of them, as they just ran off to attack their accountant. My trusty map came into play again as I pretty well picked a point at random and made my surfboard fly off there – it was strange, because the surfboard doesn't align with 'BOA', which is clearly half way down the map. Still, the next isle was easy enough to get to. I knew I was in for a little fun when I looked at the galleys out there – I know an Amazon design when I see one! Unfortunately, uh.. yeah, they're very.. willing to meet me. I'm not sure I can take much more of this.. oh great, another one. I'm just a piece of meat to these women!

Thanks, Ilmari! (I still say that 'bristly pad' is nigh-unsolvable...
 I've never heard of a doormat described as such)

Ever feel like you've wasted an hour of your life? I think of all of the things I could be doing other than traversing this stupid island. I was at least happy that I managed to find a different couple of screens (I seriously struggle to notice the 'down' arrow, and the long descriptions of the rooms only come up once) – but it goes without saying that this is the sort of thing that, were I not playing for the group, that would have turned me off of the game altogether. I can only imagine that this is true of a lot of people who played through these games. Given I don't have feeling that I need to finish something bought at retail for a considerable amount (even if it was purchased, I imagine it would have been quite cheap these days), it's not like there's a real impetus to keep going. Only two things have maintained my sanity. One, waiting about an hour and a half by repeatedly pushing 'z' or 'wait' gives a direct clue from a fairy (which I used incessantly). Two, all of the objects that correspond to a soul give the same message informing you that the KABBUL spell doesn't work by naming the object, but the person (so MATT, not 'bristly pad'.)

But that doesn't mean that I understand how 'Pierre' is a 'stuffed moose'...
Admin's explanation: Reading the will tells that the stuffed moose 
will inherit a small green round vegetable. So, the moose is a "PEA HEIR"

So, I left off last time around slightly over 40 of the 80 required and a small handful of the number that I had yet to solve. I did my best to actually make it through the puns as a puzzle as opposed to using the simple cheapness of repeatedly waiting for names to pop up. (It would have taken almost as much time to get through them unfairly as it did mostly fairly, to be completely truthful.) I managed to puzzle out some of the names in the outer screens already shown fairly – for instance, 'DAWN' was in the forested area in the description. LEIF was a pretty obvious jump from there, given I was just listing off every last 'forest-related' pun name I could think of. KNUTE was a fluke that popped up almost perfectly in time after looking at the first hint given by Ilmari in regards to the salamander I picked up (which makes me come up with all sorts of bad jokes about lizards being in pockets, naturally.) And then, after managing Pierre off of another fluke fairy namedrop (I simply ran the name in each screen until the moose jumped off of the wall). And then, I saw the 'down' arrow at the top left of the screen..

The room full of bad puns ending in 'e'.
I got half of the names before even looking at the descriptions

GABBY, the loudmouth. HARDY, the 'tough seeming e'. GOLDIE, the one 'made of a shiny yellow metal'. LUCY, the trampy letter. LACEY, the one with a 'fine white tatting'. ARCHIE, the one that 'forms a large curve across the room, like some improbable stone rainbow'. CONNIE was the one who was putting down bets on a gambling match on the phone. DUSTY I got again from a fairy later on (the description being 'covered with a thin layer of powdery substance' – I might have gotten this one fairly if it weren't for the terrible description used to intentionally make it difficult to follow this.) DAISY, similarly, the confused (or 'dazed') e.. I picked this up less from the description given than the desperate listing of names that seemed like they'd fit in with 'bad E puns'. There was also a 'conventiongoer E' – but when I tried to KABBUL that on its own, it came up with the 'guess this isn't a lost soul' prompt and led me to continue exploring the rooms..

I've never heard of anyone called 'Gaylord' before, but maybe I'm just ignorant like that

And from the 'room full of e's' to.. 'British Aisles', the room full of bad puns related to British names. There was only the one difficult name here (as listed above, GAYLORD) – the rest of them in here were really pretty easy. BOBBY is, of course, a British policeman's uniform. LULU, a pair of loos. (Okay, already having that one listed in the clues didn't hurt.) The broken toilet seal? A LUCILLE, of course. BILLY? A billy club. A 'truck' was almost a little difficult to work out, but after a quick think, a LAURIE (a lorry) and I was out of the room almost immediately. Now feels like a good point to state that the game has a sincere issue with the in-game script not being scrollable, given that an extra five minutes is taken every time you use the 'look' command – the fact that I've been using the 'script' command to keep a log of everything that happens is quite helpful for this, repeatedly opening up the log in notepad while playing to re-read.. but not giving the opportunity in-game is just silly, particularly as it comes to this area with writing all themed towards being obtuse in favour of bad puns often creating three screens of text to read.

I was already pretty deep into my list of eighty by this point,
but reading this immediately made me think of a (christmas) CAROL.

The vacuum tube that was bizarrely without noise, of course, was HUM PHREY. A MIKE was hanging over the recording room, and a MELODY was playing throughout the room. I'm not entirely sure why, but 'NOEL' worked in here – I'm still not sure exactly what it was in relation to as I had no interactive object to deal with. (I looked back through my log, and even ticking off each item in the room, I was able to tick off each.) Sure enough though Fry, it gave a little speech with the very predictable joke - "It's a peasure to meet you. I'm much obiged for heping restore our ost sous. Someday I wi repay your kindness..." I'm more than perfectly willing to admit that I'd lost count by this point and was just hoping not to get stuck at 79 or something similar. ADLAI popped up by fairy-gram in the room I walked downstairs in from an advertisement on the wall – it might have been easier if I'd ever heard the name 'ADLAI' before, indeed. WOODROW, a row of trees, and I'd KABBUL-ed almost everything I could find. CLIFFORD and SANDFORD in the valley area left me with just the following: “A wooden structure spans a dried-up stream bed. A pronoun stands atop the structure.” (I needed the clue to finish up this degree of hell and find BRIDGITTE and my way out of this god-awful place..)

My reward? A key!

The next closest island seemed to be on the 'BOA' line of the map
 – but that seems like it'll have to come another time..

So we go to the next best pla--

So, going from the island of horrible puns to.. an island with a slightly different view on things. I wasted most of my play-time in the previous area in truth – landing on the dock of the 'Island of Horny Women' was nearly as far as I managed to get after the severe burnout in trying to learn names like ADLAI and GAYLORD. The opening dock has a few 'large galleys' which 'indicate the boats to be of Amazon design, featuring all-women crews'. How Ernie manages to see this much from the distance of the dock is beyond me – but anyhow, we go on happily enough. Unfortunately, a gust of wind happens to shoot up over our cloak, covering our face from the impending horde of Amazonian VGA beauty. It's soon drawn down by the Amazon leader, Ursula Unquenchablefire, though.. and all of the Amazons then exclaim the same thing - “A Man!”

Ursula, in case you were all wondering, is the one in the red..

And has called first dibs on us. (And given our next destination, methinks!)

There's nothing wrong with this, and all – there's more than enough Ernie to go around! The first woman goes down without a problem.. and the next is kicking down our door before I even get to look around the room. There's obviously a key to pick out of Ursula's uniform, but she's far stronger than us – even a quick ZEM on ourselves isn't enough to give the additional vigour that we'd clearly need to wear her out and pinch the key. Turns out she's just locking up the door that leads to the no longer present Attachment to the Great Appliance, anyhow.. and she leaves rather quickly after joining us, given we're literally thrown down to the bed (or the ground) by each and every woman around here! Opening the 'Hope Chest' in the room produces a pair of high heels, and the idea of what we've clearly got to do now is quite clear as another woman jumps out and has their way with us. Ernie's beginning to find this painful, Kenny! Climbing 'up' leads to a different room with an armoire (or as the game so eloquently calls it, a 'whaddyacallit') for Somewhat Important People...

I'm not sure whether this is a joke, or if Mr. Meretzky just got lazy here

Another item pops up inside the closet – a gown. So, it seems pretty clear to me here that we're playing the old 'cross dress our way out of trouble' card. The last game I can think of with a similar theme was dressing up in a loaded bikini and a wig in Leisure Suit Larry 2 to get past the KGB – so it's been a little while since we of the adventure gaming clan were forced to pretend we were the opposite sex for the sake of escape. (Technically QFG2 with Zayishah, sure, but not as a main character doing so.) We're allowed out of our room regardless (though trying to move around within the Somewhat Important People's room just leads us to getting jumped at by a happy chambermaid who starts to apologise – then sees our masculine shape and decides she's less than sorry. Back out into the parade grounds and all we get is a healthy amount of groping, though sitting in public does at least allow us not to be sexually assaulted. Head south from there? We end up in a shop where it appears we're paying...

In enthusiasm, I suppose?

The store has a few items, and the game chooses now to mention that there's an item weight limit. The 'lead-plated sword' within (another atomic dragon to slay?) I can't pick up, but after a touch of re-jigging my inventory, I'm able to at least end up with most of the shop's items. Dropping my SU registration form and Gretchen's scribbled note in exchange for lipstick, a pomegranate and 'the current issue of "Amazon Monthly." The lead article is about a group of seamstresses from Fort Blackwand coming to the island to study the Amazons' collection of intriguing local etchings.' (Obviously, Fort Blackwand is where we're going to end up at the end of the game!) I've got to point out that the normal 'sexy music' on emulated Roland MT-32 is beginning to go weird by about the third time it plays, making a grating set of noises that makes me very glad for the 'MUSIC OFF' function. Still, after quite a bit of bumping around, I couldn't work out how to hide my masculinity fully, even wearing my gown, high heels and lipstick. I feel like I'm supposed to be doing something with the cowl of Ernie's cloak, but I'm a touch lost as to how to use both at once – attempting to leave in the cloak but not the gown leads to 'Look at that body! A man! Don't let him get away!' and the vice versa leads to 'Look at that hair! A man!'.. Oh well. Perhaps it's just time we give up and let fate set in..

Plus side? Ernie doesn't have to go through all of these smokes the Amazons are stealing off of him! Perhaps Sir Lancelot was right about all of the peril after all, though..

I'd list inventory here, but I am sensing it's going to become very redundant if the weight limits are truly of concern and I have to start jettisoning things to pick up lead-plated swords. Spells are all the same since last post, and all of the new items that I have access to are a key given to me by the Isle of Lost Souls, a pomegranate, a magazine, a gown, some lipstick, high heels and a lead plated sword.

Session Time: 1 hour 30 min
Total Time: 5 hours 30 min

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There’s a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I've not made any requests for assistance. Thanks!