Missed Classic 49: Return to Eden - Introduction (1984)

By Ilmari

It's time for our annual change of the year game, played through the final week of 2017 until New Year. This time, I shall take a look at Return to Eden, a sequel to Snowball by British text adventure company Level 9. Since Snowball has been the most intriguing game of the company, I have high expectations of this one. Sure, the previous Level 9 game I played, Lords of Time, wasn’t really my cup of tea, but I’m blaming the rookie game developer. Now, the Austin brothers, who founded Level 9, are back in charge and hopefully will beat their previous high score of 31.

Is that a futuristic guitar? If so, is he a space hippy?

   

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Missed Classic: Cyborg - Feeding the Machine

Written by Voltgloss

Apologies to all for the delay in continuing our Cyborgian adventures. Rather than dwell on the issues driving those delays, let’s dive back in where we left off:

 

Our map from last time.

With light source (matches) in hand, we head off to our clearest lead: that dark area in the northwest corner of the map. This brings us to a “detoxification chamber,” where a sign informs us to “press the touchplate” in order to “cycle detoxification procedure.” But trying to do so has no effect; our computer half suggests we are lacking “the proper ID.” There’s also a partition to the north, but we can’t seem to walk through it or open it. And then when we go to leave, apparently our match went out without my noticing and we unceremoniously die in the dark. Well, that’s an auspicious start.

Missed Classic 48: Elves ‘87 (aka The Elf’s Christmas Adventure) (1987)

Written by Joe Pranevich

Merry Christmas! Can you believe this is our fourth Christmas since the relaunch? It’s also our fourth look at classic Christmas adventure games. Thus far we have looked at 1984’s Merry Christmas from Melbourne House and A Spell of Christmas Ice, plus 1986’s Crisis at Christmas. Holiday games are a special bunch; except Merry Christmas, they have all been produced by smaller developers. They have also been a global bunch, having been produced in Australia, England, and Scotland. Our next game will continue both of those traditions: Elves ‘87 (subtitled God Bless Frosty the Snowman!), a fantastic Christmas tale written in Nova Scotia by independent software designers Bruce MacKay and Marlene Abriel and distributed on their short-lived Atari ST BBS, “Burned Out Adventurers!” (or “BOA!” for short).

This is also a game with a unique history, pulled along by the friendly competition between adventure authoring systems. Although Bruce and Marlene did not intend the game to be commercial (instead a springboard to subsequent game ideas that they were brewing), it was unofficially ported and re-released as an advertisement (and sample code) for David Malmberg’s “Adventure Game Toolkit”, a rival development system. That release, retitled The Elf’s Christmas Adventure, is the one that I suspect most players are familiar with.

This Christmas marks the 30th anniversary of Elves ‘87 and I can think of no more fitting time to dig in and explore this piece of holiday cheer. So, spike some eggnog and pull up a chair by the fire, it’s time for a Christmas adventure!

The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes - The Secret of the Old Smock

Written by Joe Pranevich

Welcome back! I ended last week stuck: I confirmed that Ms. Carroway’s “secret admirer” wasn’t directly connected to the murder, although it is still suspicious that he and the murderer hung out at the same pub. The tavern keeper at the Moongate pointed me in the direction of the man I believe to be the real killer, a taxidermist named Blackwood, but he didn’t know where the man’s office was and there appears to be no 19th century equivalent of the Yellow Pages that we can search. (Kids, ask your parents.) My only lead was a single taxidermied head hanging in the local tobacco shop.

I’ll spare you all of the random wandering as I found the solution right where I expected it to be. I had been imagining something overly-complicated like mounting a mirror on a stick, but the solution was actually just to move some packing crates across the room and stand on them. Obvious, right? It was not quite that easy because the store clerk initially refused to let us, but Holmes is very persistent and we talk him into it eventually. That doesn’t quite get me what I wanted since the plaque just says that the head was given to John Bradley, the store owner, in 1885. It was a let down, but not a permanent one as we can use the “move” command to look behind the head and find a label on the back of the mount: Oxford Taxidermy, 188 Oxford St. We have a new map location!

Quest For Glory I - Practice Makes Perfect

I played a lot in this section but have surprisingly little to show for it puzzle-solving wise. I do have a lot to show for it statistic wise though, so let's see what I've been up to while trying to increase my characters' attributes.

Trevor the Thief Journal Entry #3: I found the thieves guild, where I bought a license in order to be able to steal in town without the sheriff being tipped off. Is now a good time to tell the guild master I've already stolen everything there is to steal in town? Can I get my license fee back now that I don't need it? Oh well. I'm still not sure how to make my way to the bandits using my special skills but I'm sure I'll either come up with something or temporarily become a fighter if I have to. I hope I won't have to become a fighter...







It's been a while since we've seen what our thief has been up to, so here's the list of quests I had to complete last time we met him,

Thief:

• Find thieves' guild password (perhaps in cemetery)
• Get Fairy Dust from mushroom ring without dancing to death
• Get flying water (after buying an empty flask from the provisioner)
• Get mandrake root (after buying Undead potion from healer)
• Do something about the antwerp – it's not bothering anyone, but I hate that it exists and want it dead!
• Get better at fighting/thieving

and when I add to them other quests I'll need to complete...

• Deal with troll cave
• Deal with Ogre/Bear/Kobold cave
• Deal with Bandits

Having done much of this with the other characters, we know we'll be able to get the fairy dust, flying water and mandrake root easily – and something I didn't know at the time but now do, is that after using the undead potion at the cemetery in order to get the mandrake, we'll have an empty flask in our inventory, so don't need to buy one – it's easily affordable, but if I can get one for free I'm sure as hell not paying for one.

Let's start at the beginning and try to get the thieves' guild password.