Back-Tracking: The Scott Adams Graphic Adventures - Adventureland, Pirate Adventure, and Mission Impossible

A while ago, when I was playing Dog Star Adventure, I had the bright idea to explore the different ports for the games that I played.  I still think it's a good idea, and one that helps my blog stand out a little by exploring some versions of games that don't get brought to light all that much. I'm also kind of fascinated by the minor differences that old games have between platforms, so it helps keep my interest up on the blogging side of things.  In the era that I'm currently in it's perfectly viable, as the games - particularly adventure games - are short, and can be blasted through in a matter of minutes once you know all of the solutions.  Later on it's going to be untenable, because the games will just get too big, but I plan to keep it up for as long as I can.

While I was playing through ports of Scott and Alexis Adams' Voodoo Castle, I stumbled across one for the Commodore 64 that had graphics.  Through that I discovered that all of the Scott Adams adventures were re-released with a graphical upgrade, which was something of a revelation for me.  I grew up with a Commodore 64, and amassed a sizable collection of ill-gotten games over the years, but I never encountered these.  I wasn't planning to go back and play through ports of the games I'd already covered, but for ones as significantly different as these I thought I'd make an exception.

SCOTT ADAMS' GRAPHIC ADVENTURE #1: ADVENTURELAND (1982)

The original cover was much more representative
of the game, but this one has it's good points.

This version of the game was released in 1982 for the Apple II, but because I found these games through playing a Commodore 64 port of Voodoo Castle, I decided to play the C64 version.  I just had a quick check, and my usual sources didn't have this for the Apple II anyway, so my options were limited.

For those who need a quick reminder, Adventureland was Scott Adams' first game, and his attempt to get a game similar to Colossal Cave Adventure onto a personal computer.  It's a treasure hunt with a loose fantasy theme: there are dragons but there are also references to Paul Bunyan, so the mythology is a hodge-podge. I liked it at the time, and I think I'd still rate it as the best of his games I've played so far.  My initial post on the game is here.

The opening screen of Adventureland.

I have to admit, I had a lot of trouble with this game at the beginning.  As I explored the opening wilderness, it appeared to me that the graphics had completely replaced the room descriptions.  Nothing was described, and none of the items you could take or interact with were even mentioned.  I was all set to come into this review with a scathing take-down, until I accidentally bumped the Enter key.  If you hit Enter without typing a command, it toggles between the graphics and the room descriptions.  You can actually play this game completely without the graphics, if you prefer, but you certainly can't do it the other way around.

Based on my hazy memories of Adventureland - which I jogged by making a Trizbort map of my old notes - the game hasn't been changed.  If there are any changes, they're almost certainly very minor ones.  I was able to play through this with little trouble (once I got past my initial issues), and even the random elements like the bees dying in the jar didn't give me any hassles.

This is meant to be a hollow tree stump.

For the RADNESS Index, I'd rate this a point higher in Aesthetics.  The graphics aren't spectacular, and there are definite points where they really don't give a good representation of what's meant to be in the room.  They're not all that interactive, either.  But despite all those issues, it's still an aesthetic step up from the all-text version.  As for Mechanics, I'm torn on it.  I found the constant toggling between graphics and room descriptions a chore, but you can actually play the game in its original form if you ignore the graphics.  I'll rate it about the same as I rated the original.  If I take away the game's bonus point for historical significance, that leaves it with a RADNESS Index of 38, just one point higher that the original version.  That seems about right.  It's exactly the same game, with just a dash of extra visual flair.

SCOTT ADAMS' GRAPHIC ADVENTURE #2: PIRATE ADVENTURE (1982)

I don't remember this from the original.

As with Adventureland, the graphical version if Pirate Adventure was released in 1982 for the Apple II.  Again, I'm playing the C64 version.  Adventure International were really trying to ramp up the sex appeal of their games with these covers.  I'm not against it, but it does make me wonder what their sales were looking like around this time.  It seems like a bit of a desperation move.

In this game, you have to explore an island to find some pirate treasure.  It's a lot thematically tighter than Adventureland, but I remember not quite enjoying it as much.  My original posts on it start here.

The opening screen of Pirate Adventure.

Pirate Adventure endears itself to me immediately by ditching the toggling between room descriptions and graphics.  The graphics window stays there at all times, the text is underneath, and it's much less annoying to play.  Unfortunately, that means that you can't choose to play it all text, in its original split-window format, but it's a fair trade-off.

Like Adventureland, this version has barely been changed in terms of its structure and puzzles.  It's major changes come from the addition of graphics, which are a fair bit more interactive than those of Adventureland were.  As the screenshot above shows, the items you can pick up are visually depicted.  When you take them they disappear, and they'll appear in any room where you drop them.  It's similar to Roberta Williams' Mystery House in that respect.

This game has very little in the way of random elements, so it was a simple matter to consult my old notes and get through it.

They had the chance, and they still never fixed "dubleons".

It's a little boring to show two screen-shots of the same place, so here's one from the island.

During lockdown, this is as close as I'm allowed to go to a beach.

The graphics for this are a little better than those in Adventureland in terms of accurately representing your surroundings, but they're still only worth one extra point in Aesthetics.  I'm tempted to ding this for not using the Adams split-window layout, but it earns a point back by allowing any inventory item to be depicted on-screen in any area.  It comes in with a RADNESS Index of 32, two points higher than the original game.

SCOTT ADAM'S GRAPHICAL ADVENTURE #3: MISSION IMPOSSIBLE aka SECRET MISSION (1982)

Who knew the enemy spy in this game was
a sexy lady? Dragging the corpse around to
solve a puzzle suddenly feels a lot more sordid.

Again, this was a 1982 release on the Apple II, but I'm playing the C64 version.  My original post on the game can be found here.

Adams' foray into the spy genre wasn't one of his finer efforts, but it had certain merits in terms of environmental storytelling.  The graphical adventure version, like the others, is fundamentally the same game with a visual overlay.

Starting Secret Mission.  It was still called Mission Impossible on the Apple II
version, though.

This one returns to the system used by Adventureland, where you could toggle the graphics on and off.  It also doesn't show your inventory items like Pirate Adventure.  It does have a cool death screen though.

Back when we were worried about clouds of radiation, not clouds of bacteria.

This game was still pretty fresh in my memory, and the puzzles are pretty simple, so I was able to get through it quickly without the need to resort to a walkthrough.

Defusing a bomb in the comfiest of settings.

As with the others, this one gets an extra point in Aesthetics, and it remains the same in every other respect. It get a RADNESS Index of 28, two points higher than the original.

NEXT: I'll be getting stuck into the 430 point version of Colossal Cave Adventure. As for my next back-tracking project, I have a quick post lined up for Colossal Cave Adventure II and Mystery Mansion, and I've been playing the original TRS-80 version of Temple of Apshai.

Pirate Adventure: Victory!

Well, that didn't take long.

At the end of my last post, I had just constructed a pirate ship and was ready to sail to Treasure Island.  I took a break there, because I had assumed that the bulk of the game lay ahead of me.  As it turned out, there were only a few locations left to explore, and just a couple of puzzles to deal with.

Treasure Island consisted of a mere four locations: the beach where my ship landed, a graveyard, a barren field, and a monastery.  (This was incorrectly spelled as "monastary" but I'm going to have to stop now when it comes to pointing out bad spelling in text adventure games.  I'll just say that there's a lot of it to come, and leave it at that for the sake of my own sanity.)

Before I took off for Treasure Island, I made a point of loading my ship with every inventory item I could find.  Everything from maps to tools to a parrot to a mongoose to a big pile of sand got shoved in the cargo hold.  I was convinced I would need it all.  The pirate from earlier in the game, who was now serving as my sole crew member, refused to take off so long as the magic book was aboard.  The book was the only way I had of returning to my flat in London, so I was reluctant to leave it behind.  I had no choice in the matter, so it became the sole item left on Pirate Isle as I set sail.

I disembarked on Treasure Island, and the pirate followed me into the beach.  He looked expectant, but at this point I had nothing for him, so I headed south.

He didn't follow me into the graveyard, which was full of broken glass for some reason.  I did a bit of digging with my shovel, and turned up some moldy bones, which I dutifully added to my inventory.  I considered trying to rebury them, but couldn't come up with any verbs that would work.  The upside of having a simple two-word parser is that you can rule out any actions that seem too complicated.

I headed east, into a barren field.  There was nothing here, and digging didn't help.  There was nothing for it but to head north.

There I found a monastery, and the first of the treasures I needed: a pile of "dubleons".  (Funnily enough, if you google this spelling of the word, a walkthrough for Pirate Adventure is one of the first hits.)  Alas, they were being guarded by some deadly mambas, and any attempt to get them resulted in my death.

My first instinct here was to release my mongoose; as soon as this guy showed up in the game I knew there would be snakes.  It was a red herring though.  My mongoose was actually a squirrel, and the snakes poisoned him to death.  This was a momentary head-scratcher, but then I remembered back to the snake in Colossal Cave Adventure, which was dispersed by a bird.  I threw my parrot at the snakes, and sure enough it drove them away.  The "dubleons" were mine, and I had just one more treasure to claim for success.

Swerve!

There weren't any places I hadn't explored, and there was no obvious location for the second treasure.  I tried digging everywhere.  I tried dying, and dropping the mouldy bones in Never Never Land.  Nothing worked.  It was only when I started examining my inventory that I remembered the treasure map, and the message scrawled on it: "30 paces then dig!"  I was in the graveyard at the time, and I typed GO 30.  Rather to my surprise, I got a positive response, but upon digging I found nothing.  When I tried the same thing in the barren field, though, I found the second treasure: a set of rare stamps.

I still can't quite believe this worked.

With both treasures in my possession, all I had left to do was to return to my flat in London.  For this, though, I would need the book, and the book was back on Pirate Isle.  I couldn't sail back, because the pirate was waiting around on the beach for some sort of payment.  The solution was actually quite simple: all I had to do was dig on the beach, which uncovered a cache of rum.  The pirate drank some, then went for a nap in the graveyard.  I woke him up, we sailed back to Pirate Isle, I used the book to return to London, and placed both treasures in my living room.

Totally worth it.

So that's the underwhelming ending to Pirate Adventure.  I shouldn't complain too much about it, as I only devoted about three hours to the game in total.  A short game can get away with a lackluster finish.

All in all, I feel like Pirate Adventure is a very slightly better effort than Scott Adams' first game, Adventureland.  The progressive structure makes it feel like it has a more in-depth story, even though it doesn't.  My only real complaint is that the game felt far too short, and too easy.  I was just gearing up for it, and it was over.  I'm interested to see where this falls in my ratings, so let's do it.

FINAL RATING:

Story & Setting: The progression of this game from London, to Pirate Isle, to Treasure Island made it feel like there was a story, but in retrospect it was just another treasure hunt.  The pirate vibe was refreshing, and the setting was much more cohesive than that of Adventureland.  I'm tempted to rate it higher than that game, but that would put it on equal footing with Colossal Cave Adventure, which doesn't feel quite right: the setting of Colossal Cave had a lot more atmosphere.  Rating: 1 out of 7.

Characters & Monsters: The annoying parrot and the wicked-looking pirate are the sole characters in this game, with some snakes and crocodiles serving as obstacles to victory.  The pirate shows a bit of personality, but his one character trait is "pirate", so I can't exactly award extra points for that.  Rating: 1 out of 7.

Aesthetics: It's a text adventure game with no sounds and minimal descriptions.  The pirate setting gives it a modicum of atmosphere, but not enough to elevate it.  Rating: 1 out of 7.

Mechanics: This has exactly the same parser and screen layout as Adventureland, but despite its simplicity it works very well at what it sets out to do.  I rarely had trouble figuring out which verb to use in a given situation, and that's always a bonus for me in any text adventure.  Rating: 4 out of 7.

Challenge: This game was short, and it was easy.  Perhaps I have an advantage in that I've played the only two text adventure games that precede this one, but none of the puzzles troubled me for more than about ten minutes.  I like my games to be a bit more challenging.  Rating: 3 out of 7.

Innovation & Influence: This one is a bit hard to gauge.  It's a very early game in the text adventure style, and it's the first such game in the pirate milieu.  That said, it's derivative of Adventureland, and doesn't offer much new aside from the setting and some structural flourishes.  I think I'll split this one right down the middle.  Rating: 4 out of 7.

Fun: Again, the brevity and ease of this game bring it down.  It started well, and never became frustrating, but it didn't last long enough to really engage me.  Rating: 3 out of 7.

I won't be returning to this one, so it doesn't get the bonus point.  The scores above add up to 17, which doubled gives a score of 34.

Final Rating: 34 out of 100.  This puts it significantly below Adventureland, which was unexpected.  I guess the areas in which it exceeded that game weren't improved enough to gain it extra points, and it lost out on innovation, challenge and fun.  At least it rated higher than Space.

ADDENDUM:

Somewhat later in this blog I made the decision to overhaul my Final Rating system, so I'm going back through and fixing all of the games I've already played as of March 2020.  I've ditched the Innovation and Influence category, and replaced it for adventure games with a category for Puzzles.  I've also changed the purpose of the bonus points, saving them for games that are important, innovative, influential, or have features that are otherwise not covered by my other categories.

Also, the Final Rating is a boring name.  The CRPG Addict has his GIMLET.  The Adventure Gamers have their PISSED rating.  Data Driven Gamer has his harpoons.  So I'm ditching the generic name and calling my new system the RADNESS Index: the Righteous Admirability Designation, Numerically Estimating Seven Scores. It's a pretentious mouthful, but I'm going with it.

Puzzles: The puzzles in this game were fair, but none of them were particularly clever or gave me all that much trouble.  Rating: 2 out of 7.

Bonus Points: 0.

Pirate Adventure's RADNESS Index is 30. So far that puts it 7th overall, and 3rd out of the three adventure games I've played so far.

NEXT: It's back to the world of proto-RPGs, with a look at Dungeon Campaign.

DND v8 Update: I'm still conservatively grinding away during the times I watch pro-wrestling.  Strider is level 22, and advanced enough that I can farm XP without any danger.  Only a lack of patience can stop me now.

Game 10: Pirate Adventure (1978)

It's a brand new year, and what better way to kick off 2016 than with a text adventure from 1978.  Pirate Adventure is the second game from Scott Adams.  I enjoyed his first effort, Adventureland, well enough.  It was short, not too difficult, and a fine diversion for a day or two.  It wasn't a classic, but nor was it the terrible game I'd expected based on Adams' reputation.

Pirate Adventure was released on all the major platforms of the late 70s and early 80s, and even a few not-so-major ones.  (What's an Exidy Sorcerer?)  Its original release was on the TRS-80, so that's the platform I'm emulating it with.  (Not that it really matters for text adventures, but I like to keep things as authentic as possible.)  Some sources cite Pirate Adventure as a 1979 game, and others have it in 1978.  I've gone with 1978, because that's what's in my database, and I can't remember why I chose it in the first place.  I'm not overly fussed about the dates at this point, because all of these games have an official date of "prehistoric".

Much like Adventureland (and its inspiration, Colossal Cave Adventure), the goal of Pirate Adventure is to find various treasures and return them to a set location (in this case, your flat in London).  Whereas Adventureland had thirteen treasures to gather, this game has a mere two.  That hasn't made the game any easier, though; I've yet to find either of the treasures I'm looking for.

As mentioned above, you begin the game in your London flat.  The time period is a bit ambiguous.  The game has all the trappings of the pirate genre, but a "flat in London" hardly feels authentic to the 1600s.  Nevertheless, that's where the game begins, and in said flat there is a sign that says: "Bring *TREASURES* here, say: SCORE".  That's it for setting up the plot.  There's a sign in your house, and by golly you're going to obey it.

The flat is pretty small, with only a few areas to explore: a downstairs room, and upstairs room with a bookcase, a window ledge and a secret passage that opens when you take a book from the bookcase

The downstairs room contains a bottle of rum, a sack full of crackers, a pair of sneakers, and a rug.  Adventure game veterans will be trying to lift that rug straight away, but for the moment it can't be done, as the rug is nailed down.

The upstairs room contains an open window and a bookcase.  As mentioned above, taking a book results in the opening of a secret passage.  The book, inevitably, is a copy of Treasure Island.  The word YOHO is written in blood in the flyleaf, and there is another message inside:"Long John Silver left 2 treasures on Treasure Island".

The secret room contains an unlit torch, a smashed rum bottle, and a pirate's duffel bag that contains a box of matches.  There's also a sign that tells you how to extinguish your torch, because UNLIGHT isn't the most intuitive command.  The torch and matches are the obligatory adventure game light source, and the smashed bottle is a mystery for now.

The goal in the flat is simply to gather all the items you can, and read the word YOHO from the book.  The first time you read the word it transports you to the window ledge, and this can be deadly.  If you aren't wearing the sneakers you can slip and fall, which results in death and a trip to Never Never Land.  This doesn't necessarily mean your game is over: you can use the book to escape from Never Never Land.  But if you hang around in there for too long, you are declared dead and that's that.

About to escape Never Never Land.

If you say YOHO while on the ledge, you are transported to a beach on Pirate's Isle, and that's where the adventure really begins.  There is a ship's mast and a keel on the beach, and it soon becomes apparent that your goal is to build a ship (The Jolly Roger, what else), and sail to Treasure Island.  There are a number of interesting locations on Pirate's Isle, which I'll list below.

• Near the beach is a lagoon, with a rusty anchor half-buried in the sand.  The tide goes in and out fairly frequently, and if you get caught here when the tide comes in it's off to Never Never Land.  A sign on the beach warns you about the tide, and you can even look at it from afar to see where the tide is before you enter.  The only way to be really safe here, though, is to carry a set of Water Wings.
• At the top of a hill there's a crack, and you can squeeze in here as long as you're not carrying too many items.  The cave beyond contains many of the items you'll need to build the ship: a set of sails, some lumber, and a tool shed where you'll find a hammer, a shovel and the above-mentioned water wings.  You can't fit the shovel or the lumber back through the crack, but there's a door here that they can fit through.  Unfortunately, it's locked from the other side...
• There's a wicked-looking pirate who lives in a shack with his parrot and a treasure chest.  The pirate won't let you take the chest, but he's easy enough to get rid of by giving him the bottle of rum.  You can take the parrot, and he'll stick around as long as you have crackers for him to eat.  Occasionally he speaks, but so far it hasn't been helpful, just messages like "Pieces of Eight!" and "Check the book!".  The chest is locked, and you can't open it without the key.
• At the base of the hill is a network of caves, and when I entered I felt a cold shiver of dread at the following room description: "I am in a maze of caves."  It wasn't as bad as I feared.  The maze only had four locations, and a pit full of crocodiles.  Beyond the crocodiles was a locked door, which presumably led into the tool cave, but first I had to distract the crocodiles.

The first task here was finding the key, and that wasn't too difficult.  With the claw hammer from the cave in my possession, I returned to my flat and pulled out the nails holding down my rug.  (The nails were also an inventory item, and needed to build the ship.)  Under the rug was a set of keys, but before I could return to the island I was distracted by a noise.  I decided to investigate the secret passage, and I found the pirate from the shack asleep there, with an empty bottle next to him.  (I guess this explains why there was a smashed bottle and a pirate's bag in the room earlier.)  I took the bottle and woke the pirate, who said that it would soon be time to set sail.  Then he vanished, which was weird.  A magical pirate?  Lazy writing?  Or just system limitations?  I guess we'll find out later.

Equipped with the keys I needed, I was able to open the chest.  Inside was a set of plans that told me what I needed to build the Jolly Roger: a hammer, nails, lumber, an anchor, sails, and a keel.  I knew where all this stuff was, I just needed to gather it together.  There was also a map in the chest that showed the location of Treasure Island.

Now it was time to deal with the crocodiles.  This was the trickiest puzzle so far.  I figured that I needed to feed the things, but giving them crackers did nothing.  When I threw the parrot at them, the bird actually tried to fight them off for me, but it wasn't successful.  (A call-back to Colossal Cave Adventure? Probably.)  Nothing I tried was working, so I wandered around just trying random things.  That was when I tried using the water wings in the lagoon, and discovered that they allow me to survive high tide.  From there I swam further out to sea, and found a fish.  This was obviously the solution, so I gathered some sea water in my empty bottle (the fish would dry out otherwise), took the fish, and fed it to the crocodiles.  Sure enough, the crocs let me past, my key unlocked the door, and I was able to retrieve the parts I needed to build the Jolly Roger.

Getting past the crocodiles.

With the ship assembled I climbed aboard, and was a little surprised to see the pirate waiting for me.  I wasn't entirely sure what to do next, but the pirate helpfully told me to WEIGH ANCHOR, and then to SET SAIL.  With the help of the map we sailed to Treasure Island, and that's where I left off.  With the final adventure location ahead of me, it felt like a good time to take a break.

Treasure Island awaits.

  

Pirate Adventure is a leap ahead for Scott Adams, and feels a lot more sophisticated than Adventureland.  Not that it's any better technologically speaking: the parser and interface are exactly the same.  But the structure of the game feels far more advanced.  I like the way it's separated into distinct areas, it gives the game a flow and a sense of progression that was lacking from Adventureland.  I'm actually rather looking forward to getting back to it, and unless a puzzle really stumps me I expect that I'll be done with it by next week.

DND v8 Update!

I was going to do a full post on DND, but instead I decided to forge ahead with my list.  Rather than devoting full psts to DND, I'm going to give a quick update on my progress at the bottom of my posts on other games, which could be amusing given how balls-hard this game is.  I wonder how many other games I'll get through before I finish this one?

As of New Year's Eve, I was doing very well.  Axebeard (a dwarf, naturally, and successor to his brother Beardaxe) was 53rd level, and I was exploring level 11 of all three dungeons.  The earlier version of DND had a twenty level dungeon, so I figured I was about halfway through.  Later on I used a potion of Astral Form to take a quick trip to the bottom of Whisenwood Dungeon, and discovered that the dungeons are 30 levels deep.  Bugger it.

Most of the chests in this game are trapped, but if you're on one of the easier dungeon levels it's not a problem.  I was doing most of my XP grinding on Level 3 of the Tomb of Doom, which has a nice spiral pattern conducive to random wandering without needing to consult my map.  (Incidentally, I've discovered that wrestling is the perfect thing to watch while XP grinding.  I watch a lot of wrestling every week, so it works out well.)  On the deeper dungeon levels the traps can kill you, but if you have a ring of protection or some sort of magical armour you will usually survive an otherwise fatal blast (albeit with the loss of said item).  I had gotten complacent, and while exploring level 11 of Whisenwood with no protective items I opened a chest and was obliterated instantly.  On New Years Eve!  On my bloody birthday!!!  That was fifty+ levels of grinding down the drain.

I had to go back to the start, but I've managed to get my new character Strider up to level 20 by grinding on the first level of Whisenwood.  It's slow going, but now I am taking no risks.  I'm not even going to touch chests when I'm deeper than level 3.  My plan is to grind myself to about level 100, then make a run for the three items at the bottom of the dungeons (the magic fountain, the grail, and the orb).  Before I tackle each item I'm going to buy a Revival Potion from the alchemy shop - this ensures that if I die my character won't be erased.  It's going to take a long time, but I have patience, and I'm determined to beat this bloody game.  All I have to do is resist the urge to take risks.