Game 36: Battlestar (1979)

Quite some time ago I played through a text adventure called Aldebaran III, which has a pretty good claim on being the first adventure game to be explicitly based on an existing property. Today I'm writing about another of those, although exactly what property it's adapting is up for debate because... well, there are a few of them.

Before I get into all of that though, I have to get this out of the way: the author of this game is given as His Lordship, the honorable Admiral David W. Riggle. A bit of googling has turned up nothing on this supposed Lord/Admiral, so I feel like we might be dealing with a Richard Garriott/Lord British situation here. Regardless, the creation of the game started in 1979, written in C on a PDP-11 mainframe. The Admiral worked on it until 1984, but as with most of these games I'm taking it from the year the game was first available to play.

Obviously the mainframe version isn't available any more, but the source code is out there and it's been ported to DOS and Amiga. The DOS version has a lot of problems with the starfighting sequences in the middle (yes, the starfighting sequences), so I opted to go for the Amiga version. Even with that I had problems with the same section, but I was able to blunder my way through. (Jason Dyer over at Renga in Blue apparently got the source code to compile in UNIX, but that's well beyond my capabilities; setting up an Amiga emulator was hassle enough.)

The source code comes with some instructions; I'm not sure if they were present with the original game, but I'll reproduce the little bit of flavour text that sets the whole thing up:

In the days before the darkness came, when battlestars ruled the

heavens...

Three He made and gave them to His daughters,

Beautiful nymphs, the goddesses of the waters.

One to bring good luck and simple feats of wonder,

Two to wash the lands and churn the waves asunder,

Three to rule the world and purge the skies with thunder.

In those times great wizards were known and their powers were beyond

belief.  They could take any object from thin air, and, uttering the

word `su' could disappear.

In those times men were known for their lust of gold and desire to

wear fine weapons.  Swords and coats of mail were fashioned that could

withstand a laser blast.

But when the darkness fell, the rightful reigns were toppled.  Swords

and helms and heads of state went rolling across the grass.  The entire

fleet of battlestars was reduced to a single ship.

It's a little cryptic to begin with, but it does all make sense eventually. Those who were alive in 1978 and/or 2004 will recognise that we're dealing with some elements from the sci-fi property Battlestar Galactica here. I'm not the best person to tell you how accurate any of this is, because I've never seen more than a few minutes of either show.

The start of the game

The game begins with you aboard the Battlestar mentioned above, a space station that is under attack. The situation seems grimmer the more you explore the ship: there are corpses everywhere, including the president, and the sick bay is overflowing with the wounded.

What also becomes apparent is that moving about in this game is hell, at least until you get used to it. Rather than the usual NESW cardinal directions, Battlestar goes for relative movement: Ahead, Left, Right and Back. I've played a few games like this now, and it's always annoying and frustrating to map. As I said, you get used to it eventually, but it seems like a needless complication. Unless the creator wanted to make the game difficult to navigate, I guess, in which case I say mission accomplished Admiral!

You have thirty moves until the space station blows up, so there's not a whole lot of time to explore. You can't even really interact with any of the people or the scenery, beyond filling your inventory with items. Speaking of, you begin the game with nothing but the pajamas you are wearing. Searching around the station (with many deaths by explosion interspersed throughout) I was able to find an ornate robe, a couple of knives, a laser pistol, some matches, a meat cleaver, some coins, a grenade, a nuclear warhead (!), and an amulet. Picking up the amulet gives the following message:

"Purl" is a real word that means "flow with a swirling motion and babbling sound".

Most of these items can be ignored, and it's impossible to get them all anyway. The only ones that are absolutely necessary are the pistol and the amulet, though I usually grabbed the knife, coins and matches as well. The game has an inventory limit, but it's a bit more complicated than restricting you to a set number of items. Each item has weight and encumbrance, and the items you are holding in your hands are tracked differently than those you are wearing. Wearing items is less encumbering than carrying them, but you can't use them unless they're in your hands. It's probably the most realistic encumbrance system I've seen in one of these games yet.

The goal of this section of the game is to get off the station alive, which you can do by finding a starfighter called a Viper and flying it off into space. Nobody stops you, so I guess you have some kind of authority on the station, if not any concern for your fellow man.

At this point you are flying in space, which still uses the same movement commands. Mostly this elicits a lot of "You are in space" room descriptions, with the odd "You are flying through an asteroid field". Inevitably, though, you will be attacked by another fighter and will have to engage it in combat.

Looks like a malfunction in my visual scanners...

As you might have guessed, this is not what it's meant to look like. I had the same problem with the DOS version as well. Here's the screen as it should appear, courtesy of Renga in Blue:

The goal is to maneuver the enemy ship into the center of the screen and shoot it with a torpedo. I don't think the ship fires back, but you are in danger of running out of fuel or torpedoes. Needless to say, I never got to properly experience this facet of the game. I managed my way around it by hitting Q, which ends the battle with a victory for the enemy. It also leaves you with a number of injuries, and on the DOS port it dumps you back onto the space station. Luckily the Amiga version leaves you still in space, so I was able to continue flying around.

Injuries like those above can stack up, and will kill you if you suffer enough of them. Mostly they affect your ability to carry things, and can render you stationary if you're carrying too much. If you're injured enough, you might find yourself unable to move even if your inventory is empty: there's nothing to do then but restart or return to a previous save. (The game does have a save feature, but with only save game file, so it requires some renaming of files whenever you want to have multiple saves.)

There are two planets that can be found in space. One is shrouded in fog, and if you descend into its atmosphere you will be hopelessly lost with no recourse but to restart. The other is a tropical planet, and when you descend you'll find an island paradise where you can land.

Before that, though, you can fly about just over the land and do a little scouting: doing that I saw beaches, jungles, a village, a house and gardens, a lagoon and an extensive fruit plantation. Eventually, I landed my Viper on the beach and set about exploring the island.

This was made difficult by the use of relative directions, but somewhat mitigated when I later got my hands on a compass. Not that the compass allows you to use NESW, as I would have liked, but it does let you know which direction is north, and I found that just enough of a help that I could make a decent map.

One of the first things that happened after I stepped into the woods was that I was attacked by an elf, wielding a halberd and a shield. The game has a melee combat system, with some wonderfully evocative descriptions of gore, but in practice it involves nothing more than typing KILL round after round until someone is dead. Looking at the code I can see that there are a lot of factors going on, mostly involving the weapon wielded and your encumbrance, but none of that's really evident to the player. Regardless, for most of the game you can ignore it by shooting your enemy with the laser pistol.

There are also hostile woodsmen who are similarly vulnerable to laser fire, but it's more satisfying to blow away elves.

Exploring further inland I found the native village, although it was deserted. Inside the house I found some Levis, though, and a diamond ring. North of the village were the fruit plantations where I found fields of pineapples, mangoes, coconuts, kiwis and other tropical fruit. You can eat these as long as you have a knife to cut them with (my knife was taken from the dead body of a maid, but you can find a less morbid one elsewhere).

Past the village I found a seaplane dock, where many people were milling about and enjoying the island lifestyle. None of them reacted to anything I had to say or do, though. At a nearby lagoon I found a friendly native woman, and I'm ashamed to say that the words FUCK WOMAN were pretty quickly typed into my keyboard. Hey, it worked!

North of that I found a house, which had a bulky two-handed sword in the drawing room, as well as a potion that healed all of my injuries when I drank it. Next to that was a garage, where I found the aforementioned compass as well as a Plymouth Volare with the keys in the ignition. With dreams of tearing across the island in that bad boy I turned the key, only for it to explode and leave me with crippling injuries. Time to reload!

In the same area was a stable with a horse inside. I rode the horse, but it just dumped me in a forest somewhere. There was also a clubhouse, which was crowded with dancing people and a one-eyed man with no money at the bar.

Behind the house was a garden, but like most of the areas in the game there was nothing there, at least not at the time I visited. You need to explore some areas more than once, because time passes from day to night in Battlestar, and certain events only happen at the right time. It also keeps track of your fatigue, and if you get tired enough you'll drop wherever you are and fall asleep. You can sleep voluntarily to regain strength, and eating food does the same.

The game isn't overwhelmingly large, but it still took me pretty much a whole afternoon to map. And although it has well written room descriptions, you can't interact with most of what's described. It's much more a game of walking about and seeing what's there than one of puzzle solving.

There is a score, though. The game tracks your Pleasure, Power and Ego. Power is increased by killing things. Pleasure is increased by performing uhhhhh certain activities. Like fucking natives. Your Ego goes up and down based on doing good deeds or fulfilling certain parts of the plot. Killing people generally lowers it, except for the elves and woodsmen. Burying dead bodies can earn you points, as can giving items to the right people. There doesn't seem to be a maximum score to aim for, although the game does give you a rank at the end based on which of your scores is higher. And it's possible that certain events only trigger when your scores are at a certain value, although I'm not sure about that.

I mentioned at the start that this game is adapting several properties. It's already a weird mash-up of elements, what with the space station, the starfighters, the elves, the natives, the Plymouth Volare, and the tropical resort holiday-makers. It all got  a little bit weirder when I went to the village at night.

A man in a white suit and a dwarf, eh? I have to admit that I was thrown off at first, because I was thinking of the dwarf in a traditional fantasy sense, what with the elves I'd already encountered. Still, I had my suspicions, and when I opened fire with my blaster those suspicions were confirmed.

This was a fantasy, but one of a whole different variety: a Fantasy Island! Those of you too young to know can find out here, but by this time I had realised that I was standing in front of Mr. Roarke and Tattoo from the TV show. I couldn't interact with them aside from doing a murder, though, and I never did find a use for them. They don't even factor into the plot, except to suggest that none of what's happening is real (the set-up of the show being that various guest stars would go to the island to have their fantasies fulfilled, usually in a way that taught them a lesson of some sort).

Speaking of the plot, I wasn't even sure there was one at the beginning. The first thing I accomplished was to give some coins to the old man at the bar - he gratefully provided me with a map to the catacombs.

I never was able to get the map to display completely, but the clue about the shoes was enough to find the place, an area of very thorny forest. Heading down from there uncovers a secret entrance into the catacombs, but there's not much to find unless you go at night because the tunnels are flooded at high tide. There's also a cave in the cliffs near the beach where I landed my Viper, and that also leads into the catacombs, so the map is not exactly necessary. It's dark in there as well, but there are plenty of kerosene lanterns scattered around the island.

In the catacombs I found some mines and a tomb, as well as some impassable tunnels, but of more interest was this:

A caped Dark Lord with a laser sword who can deflect laser blasts with his hand? Yes, it's our third mash-up property, Darth Vader from Star Wars. I suspect that certain elements of this encounter might be a later addition to the game; sure, Vader was in the 1977 movie, but he wasn't shown being able to deflect lasers with his hands until 1980's The Empire Strikes Back. Regardless of when he was added to the game, my laser pistol wasn't going to finish him off, and he made short work of me when I took him on with my knife. It looked like I'd need another weapon.

There are quite a few options. The first one I tried was a grenade, which actually did the trick - the area he was in was left scorched, and the Dark Lord was nowhere to be seen. It didn't feel all that satisfying though, so I tried some others. The elf's halberd and the woodsman's mallet were no good. I found a mace and a rusty broadsword in the forest, but they didn't work either. I found a fancy sword in a tomb, along with some armour and a helmet, and I was sure that those would work. Nope. There was one last weapon to try: the two-handed sword.

The two-handed sword was so bulky that I couldn't carry anything else in my hands. So I'd have no light source, and no laser pistol. The lack of a laser pistol made it a little difficult to get back to the catacomb unscathed, but I was able to manage it. Having no light source made things a little tricky in the catacombs, but with my map I was still able to navigate. The first blow I struck against the Dark Lord sheared his arm off, so I knew this was the right weapon, and sure enough I was able to kill him.

Vader was dead, but I had nothing to show for it except a lot of injuries. I wandered around the island for a while, seeing if any encounters would trigger, or if Mr. Roarke might congratulate me or something. Or if, I dunno, Captain Stubing from The Love Boat would show up for some reason. Nothing. I was either stuck, or I'd exhausted the possibilities of the game. It was time to delve... into the source code!

The first thing I discovered was that I could USE the amulet that I'd found back on the space station. Doing so took me to a hidden valley, where I met a goddess bathing in a stream. She led me into a cave to her throne, where I gave her a diamond ring and laid a little kissin' on her, and I finally got some exposition as to what the hell's going on with this game.

Okay, so I now had two of the amulets (one of them called a medallion so that the parser can differentiate them), and I had to get the third one from Vader.  I did a little more exploring, found my way out of the valley, and triggered another encounter at the Seaplane Dock: a woman took me aside and told me to meet her at midnight in the Garden. I went to the garden, waited around, and got the following scene.

I recognised the place she was describing: it was a canyon past a tunnel leading from the goddess's throne room. I took the rope back there and went to the edge of a chasm where it said I might be able to get down with a rope, but try as I might I wasn't able to find the right command to make it happen. With a little frustration, I jumped down, and survived albeit with many injuries (which I was able to heal with the potion I was carrying). At the bottom I found a pit with no exits. On the ground were a bar of gold, a block of diamond, and a pot of jewels. I took them all, but it made no difference to my score. Despite the lack of exits I was able to climb out with my rope, by typing THROW ROPE UP first. Alas, it doesn't work in reverse. I tried giving these treasures to the goddess, and it did raise my Ego a little bit, but nothing else happened.

After that I went back and killed Vader, but he didn't drop the third amulet, and the goddess didn't react to his death.  Diving back into the source code, I noticed that there's some text where Vader snatches the amulet and runs away from you. It's triggered when you try to retreat from him after weakening him a little. So I went back, chopped him up a bit, retreated, and sure enough the scene triggered and I was able to chase him through some secret passages into another area: the bottom of the pit where the treasure is. (You should make sure to do this while only holding the amulet. If you have the amulet and the medallion, Vader becomes all-powerful and kills you instantly.)

This time when I killed Vader (which is a little more difficult since you effectively have to fight him twice) he did indeed drop the third amulet - this one called a Talisman. Using my rope (which you can wear, meaning I was able to keep it with me while holding the two-handed sword) I went back up to the goddess and gave her all three of the amulets. Cue the victory screen!

So that's the ending of Battlestar, dubious gender politics and all. Piecing the plot together, it looks like this: the Island King made three amulets for his daughters. The Empire and Darth Vader came along, killed one goddess and took her talisman, and captured the other. That one escaped, somehow ended up aboard the Battlestar space station, and the Empire followed her there and attacked. That's where the game began, Our Wife-Murdering Hero found the amulet, and made his way to the island to defeat Vader and yada yada yada.  Oh, and all of this might be a dream, because Mr. Roarke is hanging around. To be honest, given the ending I kinda hope it is, though I'm not sure what lessons were learned here.

But wait! There's more! The source code also revealed to me that you can become a wizard if you have all three amulets. I'm not sure how it happened, but I wandered around for a bit after finding them and eventually got the following message.

Being a wizard is pretty cool. You can summon any object in the game into your hand, out of thin air. You can fly around over the island, just like when you're in your spaceship. You can even fly all the way up into outer space and survive. And when you use the magic word SU (mentioned in the game's backstory that I included above) you can teleport to any location in the game, as well as set a number of variables (time, encumbrance, fuel and torpedoes for your ship). The game keeps track of how many of its locations you've visited, and I used this ability to get 100%. Given the time limit at the start of the game before the station blows up, becoming a wizard is the only way to do it. I mean, there's no point to doing it aside from personal satisfaction, but I did it anyway.

So that's Battlestar in the can. It was disappointing that I had to do so much code-diving to beat it, and that I couldn't do the space battles, but for what it was I enjoyed it. I mean, a text adventure mashing up Battlestar Galactica, Star Wars and Fantasy Island? I wasn't expecting that. It's a little light on puzzles for my tastes, and the movement system grinds my gears, but I still had fun poking around in its various weird corners.

FINAL RATING

Story & Setting: Despite the very weird mash-up of elements, the story to this game hangs together pretty well for its vintage. I could actually describe it above, which is more than can be said for a lot of the text adventures I've played. And there was more to it than hunting for treasure! As for the setting, the weird mash-up of elements was kind of what made it for me. From an opulent space station to a tropical island, and yet somehow it works. Rating: 3 out of 7.

Characters & Monsters: With elves and woodsmen, Roarke and Tattoo, and Darth Vader as the final villain, it's tempting to give this game a higher rating than it deserves. It certainly has more well-written characters than most of the games I've played for the blog. That said, a lot of those characters are window-dressing, and any interaction with them is minimal at best. Rating: 2 out of 7.

Aesthetics: This game was written for a mainframe, and has less restrictions than those written for personal computers, and it shows: the writing for this is very good, with evocative room descriptions and scripted events. It's still a text adventure, with all the aesthetic limitations of the genre, but it's an atmospheric one with high quality prose. Only Zork rivals it to this point. Rating: 3 out of 7.

Mechanics: The parser works well enough, although I had a few places where I had to struggle for the right words (giving the coins to the old man in the bar being one, and using the rope to get out of the pit another). The day/night cycle is well done, and the realism of the encumbrance system is impressive (even though it can be frustrating to juggle at times). I can't really rate the space combat, because I couldn't get it to work, but that's a problem with the ports rather than the original game. Regular combat is tactically non-existent, and livened up only by the vivid descriptions. I was tempted to knock this down for using relative movement, but the room descriptions adapt impressively well to your positioning, so I couldn't do it. Rating: 4 out of 7.

Challenge: This is hard to rate, because there really aren't a lot of puzzles to solve. Most of the game is exploration, and the difficulty only comes when you're trying to figure out how to trigger the endgame. Most of those actions were things that players would stumble into eventually. So even though I had to delve into the source code, I wouldn't call it difficult exactly. Rating: 3 out of 7.

Innovation and Influence: With the day/night cycle, more realistic encumbrance and fatigue, this game is doing a lot of things that other games of its vintage weren't. That said, it's hard to say how many were innovations given the long creation period of the game, but I'll give it some points for those. It's not really a historically notable game, though, so I can't rate it too highly. Rating: 3 out of 7.

Fun: I like exploring game worlds, and I like game worlds that have loads of weird things in them. This game delivered on both of those counts, although the weird things were perhaps not as frequent as I'd like. The frustrations with movement drag this category down, not that it would have been super-high to begin with. There are things to see in this game, but perhaps not many to do. Rating: 2 out of 7.

The above scores total 20, which doubles to a surprisingly high score of 40. I doubt I'll play Battlestar again, so it doesn't get any bonus points. That gives it a Final Rating of 40, placing it equal 12th overall, and 6th counting just the adventure games. That's a pretty good showing for a game that I never quite loved, but I guess it didn't have any weaknesses either. It's just a solid, well written text adventure for its period.

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.  For CRPGs I'm using a Combat category.  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 game doesn't have all that many, and those it does have are pretty much directly related to defeating Darth Vader.  I had to delve into the code (or perhaps you could say I "used the Source"), but trial and error would probably have revealed them anyway.  I'll rate it low, but not at the very bottom. Rating: 2 out of 7.

Bonus Points: 0.

That gives Battlestar a RADNESS Index of 38. That puts it equal 7th, on a par with Colossal Cave Adventure and Acheton.  It's the equal 3rd highest rated adventure game, which is a damn good showing.

NEXT: Something called Burial Ground Adventure for the TRS-80, which looks to be another treasure hunting text adventure written by a 13 year old.

Game 35: Wilderness Campaign (1979)

The manual cover

Just under four years ago I posted about Dungeon Campaign, the first game from Robert Clardy. It was a decent (for 1978) maze exploration RPG, where the player controls a large party of adventurers trying to escape the dungeon alive while loading up with as much treasure as possible.  One year later, in 1979, Clardy and Synergistic Software released his follow-up, Wilderness Campaign. I'm playing this on an Apple II emulator, and as far as I can tell the Apple II was the only platform that this game was ever released on.

A look at the manual gives the following backstory: the once-great kingdom of Draconia has been reduced to poverty and decay due to the influence of the Great Necromancer, who seized power ten years ago. The goal of the game is to lead a small band of men to organise the Necromancer's overthrow. It's boilerplate stuff, but looking back at the CRPGs I've played for the blog, I was surprised to see that this is the first one with a "kill the wizard" plot. Literally every other game before this has been a treasure hunt of some sort (even the sci-fi game Space was about amassing wealth). So it's not just the adventure games that have been recycling the same goal over and over again.

While I'm on the topic of firsts, this is also the first CRPG on the blog that takes place in an expansive wilderness. Only two other CRPGs (of the thirteen I've played) before this even take place outside of a dungeon: Space and Sword & Sorcery. I'd hardly qualify the galaxy of Space as a wilderness, and while Sword & Sorcery takes place in a succession of forest arenas, those are randomised and quite restrictive. Wilderness Campaign has a map that remains the same every time you play, and Draconia has a decent claim on being the first "world" ("land" would probably be more accurate) depicted in a CRPG.

The title screen (a big step down from Dungeon Campaign's epic dragon)

As with Dungeon Campaign, you are in control of a band of adventurers rather than a single character. When the game begins, you have 10 fighters. All of them are unarmed and unarmored, but they're carrying around 1,000 gold coins and a small supply of food. The first goal is to make it to a village to buy some supplies, and after that to find enough treasure to hire and equip an army large enough to defeat the Great Necromancer's forces. The manual recommends that you have 50 to 75 well-armed fighters before tackling the end battle (although I was able to beat it with a smaller force than that).

Mercenaries can be hired at any of the villages dotted about the land, but you have to pay them on a regular basis, and they come with no weapons or armor.  The number of mercenaries you can hire varies depending on how much gold you offer to pay them. Offering them a high amount will attract more troops to your cause, but if you don't have enough money when payday rolls around they will abandon you instantly. Far more reliable are the soldiers that can be found at the castles. Sometimes when you visit a castle, the lord will give you some of his troops, as well as a donation of gold. These troops never abandon you, and come equipped with weapons and armour of the highest strength. Unfortunately, some castles are empty ruins, so you can't always rely on getting enough of these soldiers to beat the game.

In addition to your army, a magical weapon is required to penetrate the barrier around the Necromancer's fortress. This is also mentioned in the manual, which says that it can be found in the Sanctuary of the White Mage. You can stumble across the Sanctuary while exploring, or an agent of the White Mage known as the Oracle might show up and direct you. I never found it by accident, as the difficulties of wilderness travel and food consumption stopped me from doing much wandering at random. Eventually though, the Oracle appears, and the location of the Sanctuary will flash on the screen for a short time, giving you it's location.  Once you find the Sanctuary, the White Mage offers you a choice of two magic items. Two of those on offer (the Staff of Power and the Lightningrod) can destroy the barrier and allow you to attack the Necromancer's fortress.

The map of Draconia. The various villages, castles and dungeons are
placed randomly at the start of each game.

Getting about the wilderness presents a number of difficulties, depending upon the terrain.  Draconia has five distinct areas: the Plains to the south-east, the Swamp to the west, the Jungle north of those, the Mountains that cut across the map even further north, and the Desert beyond. (The Necromancer's fortress is in the far north-west.) The plains are the quickest to traverse, while the mountains, swamps and jungles take more time.  Each of these terrains has monsters that are unique to that area: Sand Serpents, Stingwings and Ghouls in the Desert; Orcs, Cyclops and Rocs in the Mountains; Gorgons, Dragons and Werewolves in the Jungle; and Allosaurs, Pterodactyls and Lycanthropes in the Swamp (the manual doesn't note any monsters unique to the Plains).

Combat involves trading attack and defense round after round, using a formula that I don't entirely understand. First strike is probably affected by your Speed score.  Weapon and armour types (each ranked from 1 to 5 in strength) are definitely factored in, as are your Strength score and experience (which goes up the more fights you win). Various other factors grant bonuses: positioning (one of your combat options involves getting into a more advantageous position), attack and defense spells, and using the appropriate weapon for your foe (bows and spears against flying enemies, crosses and holy water against Vampires, etc.). All of this is modified by a Luck roll which flashes on the screen until you stop it by hitting the Space bar. The numbers flash by too fast for any skill to come into it. Once I was decently equipped I found that combat was easy, with most rounds going by with no casualties, but occasionally the enemy would cast an Evil Spell that raised their attack total just high enough to kill one or two of my guys. The most annoying part was that I never seemed able to kill more than about half of my remaining foes, even when I overwhelmingly outnumbered the enemy.  It's all fairly simplistic, and tactically speaking there aren't any decisions to make except whether to reposition for advantage or flee when things start turning against you. Thankfully the combat isn't too difficult once you're well-equipped, and it goes by pretty quickly.

In addition to random encounters with monsters, there are environmental hazards that can block your path, such as gorges, bogs, cliffs, and overgrown areas. To get past these you require at least one of the necessary item (such as an inflatable raft to traverse the bog, a wooden plank to get over the crevasse, rope to climb the cliff, a machete to cut through trees, etc.). These can be purchased at the villages markets. If you don't have one, there's nothing else to do but backtrack and try to find a path around. A couple of times I got stuck in areas that I couldn't escape from (particularly when leaving a castle), so it's a good idea to load up with these items as early as possible. Each village only sell a limited selection of gear, so you have to visit a few before you can buy everything you need.

Blocked by some brambles. Note the pointless Yes/No question; you can
answer Y as often as you like, but you're not getting past
without the right gear.

There are also dangers such as avalanches and wildfires which can kill your men. Casualties are determined by a combination of your Dexterity score and a random roll. Most of the time I was able to get through these without losing anybody, but every now and then they would kill one or two of my men. For the most part this was merely an annoyance, but when I you're carrying a full load of equipment losing one or two men becomes one of the most infuriating parts of the game. More on encumbrance later.

Treasure is mostly found by exploring temples, tombs, ruins and abandoned castles. The type of structure being explored doesn't seem to make much of a difference, although I suspect that different types of monsters may be encountered in each.  A light source of some kind, such as a torch or a lantern, is required to enter most of these places.  Treasure is sometimes guarded by monsters, but can also be found unguarded.  Eventually you will explore all of the safe areas in the dungeon, and every round spent searching will have a chance that you are caught in some kind of a trap or hazard, which works much the same as those in the wilderness.  Once you leave one of these dungeons it closes up behind you, so you can't keep raiding the same one over and over again. This means that you can't keep raiding those dungeons that are close to the villages, forcing you to go further afield as the game progresses.

Treasure comes in gold, silver and copper coins. One gold coin is equal to 10 silver and 100 copper.  There are also magic items to be found. The most useful of these is the crystal ball, which warns you of nearby monsters and allows you to flee before entering combat. The magic rug is another great one, allowing you to move to anywhere on the map without worrying about hazards, obstacles or resources, but it can only be used once.  There's also a magic lamp and a magic ring, each of which allows you to choose one of three stats you'd like to raise (Strength, Dexterity, Speed, Charisma or Experience). All of these items can be destroyed by hazards such as wildfire or avalanches. You can also find Attack and Defense spells, which I think are always active once they're in your inventory, or at least that's what the game told me when I tried to use one before a combat.

Getting treasure is easy, but keeping it is another matter entirely. Not only do you have to use it to feed, pay and equip your troops, but you also need to be able to carry the stuff. Encumbrance is by far the most important, and irritating, factor in the game. Thankfully you can hire porters in any of the villages, in much the same manner that you hire mercenaries. They can still die in combat though, or from other various dangers.  And when you're loaded up after a dungeon expedition and trying to haul your treasure back to the nearest village, there's nothing more aggravating than losing a couple of guys in a skirmish, or a wildfire, or to starvation. Every single death means you have to drop some gear. Obviously the copper and silver coins will be the first to go, but I spent far too much time in this game staring at my inventory screen, agonising over what to leave behind.

The most hated screen in the game

I never was quite able to master the balance of resource management in this game. I was lucky enough, however, to fluke a win on my third attempt. There were three castles on the map, and all of them had friendly lords who bolstered me with loyal, well-equipped troops. With a mere 35 soldiers, I took my chances attacking the Necromancer's fortress, and was successful. Alas, I forgot to take a screenshot, so I only managed to grab the final victory screen.

I really should have typed a message at the prompt as
proof of a legitimate victory

Feeling a little unsatisfied I tried to win again, and I never managed it. Every time I found myself battling against the game's resource economy, never having quite enough gold to feed my troops, hire a large army, and get around the map without starving to death. I also had games where I had a lot of trouble finding the Great Sanctuary; you get a general sense of where it is when its location flashes up on the map, but finding the exact spot where it is can still be frustrating. In general I found getting around the map, and navigating the obstacles and hazards, to be a laborious process.

The Oracle shows me the location of the Sanctuary: in the mountains
east of the Necromancer's fortress

The Necromancer's fortress is situated in the far north-west, and once you have one of the items from the Sanctuary you can go there whenever you feel you're strong enough.  The final battle is with around 50 or 60 of the Necromancer's troops, who have decent weapons, but I've never seen them with weapons and armor of the highest level.  The first time I fought against them, with 35 soldiers equipped with the very best gear, I made very quick work of them.  The second time I got there with only nine guys, and did not go so well.

The combat screen, upon which the Necromancer's
army is about to kick my arse.

Once you've beaten these soldiers you get a screen telling you that you've killed the Necromancer, and then another that says you won before dumping you back to the prompt. It's all very perfunctory, but that was how all games ended in those days.

I nicked this screenshot from Chester.

Final Rating

Story and Setting: It's tempting to give this game some bonus points for originality here. The story is a simple "kill that evil wizard over yonder" plot, but at least in CRPGs there's a chance that it might be the first "kill that wizard" plot.  The land of Draconia is little more than a wilderness map, backed up by the scantest amount of lore, but it might the first wilderness map in a CRPG. In the end, I still had to go with the minimum score, as the content here is still very basic. There's a category for innovation down below, after all. Rating: 1 out of 7.

Characters and Monsters: There are no characters of note in this game; the Necromancer is little more than a name, and the lords of the various castles are also non-entities.  There's a good selection of monsters to be found, but none of them are appreciably different in combat.  Some of them are vulnerable to specific types of weapons (i.e. Vampires and holy water) but I never noticed that it made much of a difference. Rating: 2 out of 7.

Aesthetics: The Apple had some of the prettiest graphics of its day, but when you're talking about 1979 that doesn't count for much. The wilderness map is well drawn, but little more than serviceable, and the rest of the game is nothing more than drab grey and black menu screens. There's no music, and the sound effects are simple beeps that had me reaching for the mute key (although the squidgy noise when you destroy the Necromancer's barrier is pretty good). Rating: 1 out of 7.

Mechanics: The combat is rudimentary, and the process of exploration is frustrating, but those aren't the core of the game. The real core of Wilderness Campaign is all of those fiddly little things that most Dungeons & Dragons tabletop games ignore: encumbrance, rations, and equipment. Wilderness Campaign is a game of logistics, and on that score it does pretty well, with a decent number of systems that balance well against each other. Yes, it can be frustrating, but it's rarely unfair. I am going to dock it a point for those times when I got trapped in an inescapable part of the map, though. Rating: 3 out of 7.

Challenge: I've mentioned before that this game can be aggravating, but I think a lot of that comes down to the fact that I have little patience for these types of games. Give me a dungeon to map, and I'll be at it for painstaking hours. Give me logistics to manage, and my eyes glaze over. Checking over at The CRPG Addict, I see that Chester found this game to be pretty easy, confirming that as a gamer and a blogger I'll be forever in his shadow. Overall, I'd say that the game is pretty well balanced: combat becomes easy in short order, but the process of building up an army to take on the final boss is something I found pretty hard - in about ten attempts, I managed it once. Sounds about right to me. Rating: 5 out of 7.

Innovation and Influence: The plot and setting elements are innovative, albeit in a very minor way that probably shouldn't influence this score. The gameplay is moreso, being one of the earliest examples of a CRPG that gives you command of an army, and the logistical challenges that entails. As for influence, it's difficult to say. It bears little resemblance to what CRPGs will look like going forward, and any influence it might have had was probably more focused on strategy games. (I'll leave the question of whether Wilderness Campaign itself qualifies as a CRPG alone.)  Rating: 3 out of 7.

Fun: Despite finding various aspects of the game annoying, I've had more fun with this than some of the more recent games I've played. Just now I had another crack at it in the middle of writing this post, which ended when I assaulted the Necromancer's fortress with an army not quite strong enough to prevail. If only it was just a little more forgiving with encumbrance, and featured slightly fewer environmental obstacles, with one or two more ways to influence combat... It's almost there, but I can't in good conscience rate it higher that Temple of Apshai. Rating: 3 out of 7.

The above scores total 18, which doubled gives a score of 36. Normally this is where I would award the coveted Bonus Point, but I'm amending that as described below:

The Bonus Point (Amendment): The bonus point is for games that I would happily play again.  I've been awarding it before doubling the score (which I realise is a worthless conceit just so that I can have scores out of 100 rather than 50, but I'm still sticking with it because I like it better).  From now on, I'll be awarding the point after doubling the score.  A game will get 1 point if I can maybe see myself playing it again in the future.  It will get 2 points if I can definitely, absolutely, 100% see myself playing it again in the future.  This should give a little bit more variation in the scores on the list, and open it up to actually having odd numbers. I won't be going back to change any of the previous games I've rated; if I open up that floodgate I'll end up changing all of my ratings, and I'd rather not do that.  I'm aware that CRPGs in general have more replayability than adventure games, and are more likely to get the bonus point, but guess what? I don't care. CRPGs rule, you guys.

Anyway, Wilderness Campaign gets the double - 2 bonus points! I will absolutely give it another shot in the future, if only because I feel like I fluked the one win I got.  That gives it a Final Rating of 38 - equal 13th overall and 8th out of 14 CRPGs. It's sitting right on the line separating the games I enjoyed from the ones I didn't: Sword & Sorcery is just above it on 40 points, and Moria is just below it on 36.

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.  For CRPGs I'm using a Combat category.  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.

Combat: There are a number of factors influencing combat: weapons, armour, numbers, statistics, magic, items, and even positioning to a very minor extent.  Once battle begins, though, there's not a lot you can do to change the result, aside from running away. Rating: 2 out of 7.

Bonus Points: 1. I'll give it a point for being the first CRPG to present a proper overworld map, and to have an actual quest beyond finding treasure.

That gives Wilderness Campaign a RADNESS Index of 35, a full ten points higher than Dungeon Campaign. That puts it equal 13th overall, and 8th out of fourteen CRPGs.

NEXT: Something called Battlestar, which seems to be an adventure/exploration game based on the Battlestar Galactica TV show. Much to my dismay it's a mainframe game, which could make it a long one. Hopefully it's more Swords & Sorcery, and less Moria. I see that Renga in Blue knocked it off in four posts, which is somewhat heartening.

Game 34: The Atlantian Odyssey (1979)

I want to know more about Ultra-Mon, the Intelligent Monitor!

Today's game is The Atlantian Odyssey (spelled as the more aesthetically-pleasing Atlantean Odyssey in some places, but I'm going with what's on the title screen). It's not one I've ever heard of before, and I can't find anything about its origins except that it was created by someone called Teri-Li, with later help from a Mark Robinson. It's relative obscurity belies its possible historical significance, however, because it has a decent claim on being the first text adventure to feature graphics throughout the game (Zork and Stuga had some ASCII art, but it was very occasional). That accolade is usually given to Sierra's Mystery House, which was released in 1980, but if The Atlantian Odyssey was written in 1979 (as Renga in Blue believes likely) then it definitely came first. Even if it's a 1980 game (as the copyright screen shows), it still stands a good chance of being first. And even if it's not first, being the second ever graphical adventure game is still a pretty big deal.

Not every area of a game can be an innovation, however, as the plot of Atlantian Odyssey sees the player having sailed to an island in the Pacific Ocean in search of a number of treasures (six, in fact). The goal of the game is to find all of these treasures, sail back to Hawaii, go into the pawnshop and type SCORE. It doesn't have a points total like Colossal Cave Adventure and Zork, but the player does get ranked based on how many moves they took to finish the game.

So uhhhh I can see sand *and* a beach?

You begin the game on a beach, with your sailboat nearby. It's interesting to see just how much stuff the game says you can see: jetsam, sand, a roadway, the ocean, the beach, and your sailboat. Most of these are pointless, or can't be interacted with, which is a pretty rare case of wasted resources in a game of this vintage. All of those red herrings are using up precious memory! Similarly, the boat contains a number of mostly useless items: a speargun, a scuba diving suit, and a knapsack containing a flashlight. The flashlight has been rusted by seawater, and doesn't work. The speargun can be used to shoot a shark in the ocean nearby, but that only serves to provoke the beast into killing you. And while the scuba suit can be used to dive underwater, its air-tank runs out pretty quickly and is superseded by another item in short order.

From the beach you can swim into the ocean (which is thankfully restricted to a single area), or you can head east. The island itself consists of only three locations: the beach, a jungle clearing, and an ancient temple. Inside the temple is a crystal pyramid - the first of the treasures - and a mural, which depicts a man underwater, wearing a medallion with a glowing ruby.

At this point, I have to admit that I got stuck for a decent amount of time. Wearing the scuba gear I was able to swim down to another temple beneath the ocean, but I wasn't able to do anything there, and as mentioned before the air in the scuba tanks doesn't last long. The solution, which I eventually figured out through a lot of trial and error, was to DIG in the jungle clearing. This uncovers the medallion from the mural. It's described as a "flat hexagon with a ruby-sapphire-blue diamond around a green opal". Not only is it another of the treasures, but pressing the ruby grants the ability to breathe underwater.

Hanging out in an underwater temple. You can just make out part of the
hexagon on the floor.

With that ability, I was properly able to explore the underwater temple. This place had another mural, this one showing a man wearing a medallion with the opal glowing. I pressed the opal this time, and found myself transported to an area called the Gates of Hercules, with a sea cave and a path leading up a cliff.

A quick dip in the ocean showed me that I was now in the Mediterranean. I tried to swim down again, but this time it didn't work. The path up the cliff led to a rift, which was dark beyond. Instead I went into the cave, where I found a lamp hidden beneath some rocks. There was also a door disguised as a bas-relief sculpture, but I decided to explore the dark rift first. Inside were two rooms, and a cylinder inside a decayed box: the third treasure!

Back in the cave, I went through the disguised door, into another small room. There didn't appear to be anything of interest inside, but the graphics showed something on the floor, and when I typed LOOK FLOOR I was told that there was a hexagon painted on it. Taking the hint, I started pressing the stones on my medallion. The opal took me to another room, but it was underwater and I promptly drowned.

(More accurately, I was transported to Davy Jones' Locker, a maritime euphemism for being dead. I could still take actions, although only one had any effect: by pressing the sapphire on my medallion, I was transported back to the beach where I started the game, with my inventory fully intact.

I made my way back to the room with the hexagon, and this time I pushed the ruby before pushing the opal. The small underwater room I found myself had only one exit, which was locked, but an examination of the wall showed a pyramid-shaped depression. The crystal pyramid was the obvious key, but getting it in there was a struggle with the game's simple two-word parser. INSERT seemed the obvious command, but that wasn't recognised. I tried some others, like SLOT, but the eventual solution was PUT PYRAMID (testing it now, I discovered that PLACE also works). The game then gives a prompt that says IN WHAT?, to which the answer is WALL, but it's all a bit clumsy. Two word parsers can have their advantages, as they let you know there's a limit to how complex a puzzle can get, but on the other hand they can make even something as simple as putting a pyramid in a slot a trial.

A quality parser at work.

With the door opened, I was able to enter a large hall. To the east there was an "arcade", which in this case would be a covered passage with arches, not a building full of video game cabinets. The ante-chamber this led to had no seeming purpose, and I never did figure out what this room's deal was. It has a hexagon on the floor (although not pictured in the graphics) but pushing the gems in the medallion had no effect.

North of the hall was an alcove with a large wall sculpture, showing the same medallion-wearing man, this time with his medallion glowing. There was also some "cloth material", which on closer inspection is velvet. Underneath it is a gold dolphin, which is treasure number 4. Annoyingly, the game doesn't recognise CLOTH, only MATERIAL, which is a bit rough when it's written in the description as CLOTH MATERIAL. You're going to try the words in that order, you know?

Anyway, pushing the medallion's diamond opens a door, which leads to a long corridor and another door. It's locked, but has a metal plate to the side, and opens when you insert the cylinder. Beyond is a "gigantic underwater city" which sounds daunting but in actuality is like four locations. One of those involves getting lost, but you can always swim up (revealing that you're in the Atlantic Ocean) then swim down to return to the first area. The other two are an empty building, and a plaza full of debris. Hidden in the debris is an atlantean coin, the fifth treasure. That's the entire extent of the lost city of Atlantis folks!

Behold! The majesty of fabled Atlantis!

Unfortunately, I'd explored everywhere and only found five of the six treasures. Finding the elusive sixth took about half an hour of roaming around and searching every little thing I could think of. Eventually I discovered that the room beyond the rift where I had found the cylinder also had a hexagon painted on the floor (even though there was no sign of it in the graphics, like in the other hexagon rooms). A press of the opal took me to a palatial bedroom. Searching the drapes revealed a string of black pearls, the final treasure. There's a pointless balcony (which you can jump from if you feel like committing suicide), and a library full of books that crumble at the touch. The library has a hexagon on the floor, which is the only way to leave this area (by pushing the opal).

With the six treasures in hand, I set sail to Hawaii to get my final score. Not only did I score poorly, being ranked as a Novice, I was told that I was not being properly ranked because I had killed my "android" (by drowining, presumably). (I guess the term avatar hadn't yet been coined for the player's in-game proxy, and probably wouldn't be until Ultima IV.)  The Novice rank, I figured, had to do with how many moves it took me to beat the game.  So I played through again as efficiently as I could, and this time I got a slightly more satisfying victory screen.

A check of the source code showed that Professional is the highest rank, achieved by winning in under 95 moves. So, with The Atlantian Odyssey officially done and dusted, it's time for a Final Rating.

Story & Setting: Oh look, it's a treasure hunt! Look, I get it, it's an easy justification for an adventure, and it's a natural story type for gaming. It's never going to score highly in the category though. The underwater setting of Atlantis is slightly novel, although Greg Hassett's Voyage to Atlantis came out the same year with a similar premise; I don't know which was first. Either way, it's not fleshed out enough to elevate this game beyond the lowest score. Rating: 1 out of 7.

Characters & Monsters: The only living things that can be encountered in this game are a shark and some fish. The fish are simply there to remind you that you're underwater, and the shark is a hazard only if you provoke it with the spear. Otherwise, the game is conspicuously empty: even the pawn shop in Hawaii is devoid of life. Rating: 1 out of 7.

Aesthetics: The addition of graphics had the potential to elevate this game above it's contemporaries, but let's be real here: they're pretty ugly. The TSR-80, by and large, was not known for its visuals, and this game doesn't change that. Rating: 1 out of 7.

Mechanics: The parser for this game is a clunky two word affair that only recognises the first few letters of any word, and has to go to some awkward places just to facilitate something as simple as placing an item in a wall slot. Still, it's functional, and I only had a couple of instances where I had to struggle for the correct verb. Rating: 3 out of 7.

Challenge: The puzzles for this game are rudimentary, and for the most part make sense. The main sticking point for me was right at the beginning, where it wasn't clear exactly what I had to do; digging up the medallion was pure luck and persistence on my part. After that things progressed more smoothly, and I had cracked the game in about 2 hours. I'd say the game errs on the side of being too easy, with the only difficult parts being frustrating rather than clever or challenging. Rating: 2 out of 7.

Innovation & Influence: It's difficult to rate this one. It deserves a high score for being one of the first - if not the very first - graphical adventures. On the other hand, it doesn't appear to have had much of an influence or legacy. It doesn't even have a page on Mobygames as far as I can tell. Still, I'll be generous, and rate it high for what it achieves. Rating: 5 out of 7.

Fun: I didn't get a lot of enjoyment out of this, but it's hard for me to give a game this short the lowest score. There's a lot to be said for entertainment that doesn't overstay it's welcome. Rating: 2 out of 7.

No bonus point, as I won't be playing the game again. The above scores total 15, which doubled gives a Final Rating of 30. That puts it equal 23rd overall, and equal 12th out of 21 adventure games played. It's on a par with Mission Impossible, Colossal Cave Adventure II, and Voyage to Atlantis; all of those are slightly better games, but the graphical innovation edged The Atlantian Odyssey a bit higher than it strictly deserves.

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.  For CRPGs I'm using a Combat category.  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: Simple puzzles that make sense, although none of them are all that clever or interesting. Rating: 2 out of 7.

Bonus Points: 1. As the first graphical adventure game it gets a bonus, but because it's so obscure it doesn't get the full 2 points.

The Atlantian Odyssey gets a RADNESS Index of 25. That puts it equal 24th overall, and 15th out of 21 adventure games. That one bonus point just got it ahead of Greg Hassett's House of Seven Gables.

NEXT: It's back to the world of CRPGs as I tackle Wilderness Campaign, Robert Clardy's follow-up to Dungeon Campaign.

Game 33: Mission Impossible (1979)

The opening screen of Mission Impossible

The screen above shows the beginning of Mission Impossible, the third Scott Adams adventure, and it starts with a bang. Well, relatively speaking; we're not exactly at the fireworks factory, but by the standards of the era things are zipping along. You start in a briefing room, with someone running away (from you, presumably). There are three obvious courses of action suggested here: check out the mysterious object in your possession, listen to the tape recorder, or follow the person. From a modern perspective it doesn't seem all that special, but having spent the last few years playing adventure games from the 1970s, this feels propulsive. There's a sense of action that no game before this one has attempted, and it feels refreshing.

But before I get into the game proper, it's time to back up and talk about the history a little.  I've already covered Adams' previous two games on the blog: Adventureland and Pirate Adventure. I enjoyed them well enough, though both of them were standard affairs, being innovative only because they came so early in the life of home computing. Adventureland in particular was a valiant effort to get something resembling Colossal Cave Adventure onto the TRS-80. Regardless, both games sold well, and it's probable that by this point Adams was one of the most successful game designers around.

For his third game, he went with a spy theme, and in a blatant disregard for intellectual property rights called it Mission Impossible. In Adams' defense, the early gaming industry was full of such infringements, and the show was hardly a going concern by 1979.  Even so, somebody must have wised him up, because later ports were renamed: it was called Mission Impossible until around 1982, when it was briefly renamed Impossible Mission, until the name Secret Mission was finally settled upon. Also, it was called Atomic Mission on the Commodore 16 and Plus/4 for some reason. These name changes were fairly haphazard; I've read that while the title on the front was covered with a gold sticker featuring the new title, the spine remained unchanged, and the disks inside were still labelled as Mission Impossible. Regardless of any later names, in this post I'm going with the original title. The title screen for the TRS-80 version calls it Mission Impossible, so that's what I'm going with.

The original packaging is not entirely accurate;
the saboteur didn't have a key or a gun!

As I mentioned above, the game presents you with three obvious options from the outset. Checking your inventory reveals that you're carrying a surgically implanted bomb detector, which is currently glowing green to indicate that the bomb is safe. What bomb, you might ask? That riddle is solved by listening to the tape recorder, which plays the following message:

A little more of that good old IP violation. The recorder doesn't
self-destruct, though.

Okay, so a saboteur, presumably the fellow who just ran away, has set a time bomb to blow up a nuclear reactor. The security keys and map you'll need for the mission are contained in a provided manila envelope, but when you LOOK around the room the envelope is nowhere to be seen. The game doesn't draw your attention to this, but it leaves it up to you to draw your own conclusions, the obvious one being that the saboteur has made off with it. It's a very early example of environmental storytelling, and the game has a little more of that to offer later on.

The area that can be explored outside of the briefing room is small, but it actually comprises almost the whole game. It consists of a central hub, with a Maintenance Room to the west, a room with a strange apparatus to the south, and three colour-coded doors (white, blue and yellow) each monitored by a security camera that demanded I "show authorization" before I'd be able to get through.

All of the time I was exploring this area the saboteur was running about just out of my reach. At first I worried that catching him might be a time-sensitive puzzle (the kind I hate most in adventure games, just ahead of "all alike" mazes), but I was thankfully wrong. After a while I heard a thump, and found the saboteur's dead body slumped on the floor near the yellow door. An empty pill case on his body indicated that he had just committed suicide via cyanide capsule.

Also on his person was an empty envelope and a torn up map, no doubt the one I'd been looking for. There was no sign of the keys, but he was carrying the tape recorder, a piece of yarn, a photo of himself labelled "window maintenance", and a leaflet. The leaflet was nothing more than a cheap plug for Voodoo Castle, Adams' fourth game, and could safely be ignored, but the rest was sure to come in handy or provide clues to where he might have hidden the keys.

Finding the saboteur's body

Still unable to unlock the coloured doors, I went back to the other rooms. In the Maintenance Room I found a bucket, but of much more interest was the apparatus in the south room, a box pointing at a chair bolted to the floor. Sitting in the chair revealed a line of buttons: red, white, blue and yellow. The buttons had keyholes under them, but I figured I'd try pressing them anyway.

I went in order, and discovered that pressing the red button caused my bomb detector to buzz angrily and flash yellow: the bomb had been armed! Pressing the white button right after that activated the box pointing at the chair, which turned out to be a camera. It also disarmed the bomb, at least temporarily. I guess the saboteur had booby-trapped the camera? That's fair enough, but he really shouldn't have made it so easy to disarm right after. I'd guess that most people would press the buttons in order, and that's all I had to do to get this sequence right. If he was really committed, the bomb would have gone off as soon as I pressed that red button.

I left the room, now in possession of a photo of myself stamped "visitor". After some experimentation, I figured out that showing this photo to the camera on the white door would allow me to pass. (It didn't work for the blue or yellow doors.) Past the white door was a visitor's room, with a panel of buttons, a window connected to some red wires, and another camera monitoring the window.  Looking through the window (with the EXAMINE command) I could see that I was on the second floor, with the control room of the reactor core below. I could also see a ledge, just outside the window.

The panel had two buttons, one white and one green. The white one simply allowed me to leave the room, while the green one activated a movie projector that was currently empty.  Obviously the window and the ledge beyond were of more interest. I tried to BREAK GLASS, and the game prompted me as to what I'd like to try breaking it with. It's suggestion of my fist was ineffective, so I had a look at my inventory. A picture, an empty bucket and a piece of yarn didn't sound heavy enough, so I tried the tape recorder. Success! It smashed through the window, falling to the control room below. Unfortunately, the TV camera came to life, and my bomb detector starting flashing yellow again...

Ignoring the warning, I stepped out onto the ledge, where I found some broken glass and a yellow key. My bomb detector was wailing now, but I scooped up the key and tried my best to get it back to the room where I'd had my picture taken. Alas, the bomb exploded before I could get there, and it was back to the beginning.

This time, I figured that I should try to identify myself to the camera before breaking the window. The saboteur had a picture that identified him as "window maintenance", so I took that with me this time. The camera was powered down when I tried to show it though. So I broke the window and then tried it, getting a message that said "owner of badge is not present". Figuring that a dead face is still a face, I lugged the saboteur's body into the room and showed the picture again. This powered the camera down, and allowed me to get onto the window ledge without setting the bomb into a countdown mode. I was able to take the key out of the room, use it to unlock the yellow button, and take a picture of myself marked "maintenance". And once again, taking this picture set my bomb detector back to a safe green level.

Fooling the security system with a dead body.

The maintenance picture allowed me to pass through the yellow door, which led to another maintenance room. This one contained some wire cutters and an old yarn mop. I pocketed the wire cutters, because I figured I'd be defusing a bomb at some point. As for the mop... remember the piece of yarn I found on the saboteur's body? That was a hint, and a SEARCH through the mop caused the blue key to fall to the floor. Upstairs there was nothing but an empty movie projector, so there was nothing left to do but head back to unlock the blue button.

This time, unlocking the button and pressing the correct sequence got me a picture marked "security". The only door left that I hadn't been through was the blue one, and sure enough my new picture allowed me to pass. Inside was an anteroom, with a door labelled "control room", a room to the west, and stairs leading up. For some reason I couldn't open the door, so I looked in the room to the west. In this storage room I found a radiation suit (which I put on) and a vat full of heavy water, which is generally used for cooling nuclear reactors. I figured I'd have to fill my bucket with this stuff for later.

The stairs up lead to a viewing room, with a small window. Looking through, I could see that the control room door was blocked by some debris. Heading back down, I tried a bunch of ways to get the door open. HIT, BASH and PUSH were all ineffective, and I didn't have anything in my inventory that looked useful. At this point I was stuck, but also pretty eager to get this game over and done with, so I looked up the solution: PUSH HARD was the answer to my problem, and I later discovered that KICK would have worked as well. So I had the right idea, but ran afoul of the parser. Stepping through, I saw that the debris that had been blocking the door was the tape recorder that I had earlier thrown through the window. It's a nice bit of continuity, but when I read "debris" I was picturing a pretty sizable blockage. I doubt it affected my ability to solve the problem, but it was a bit of a disconnect from what the game described.

The control room had stairs leading down to the core, and a break room off to the east. There was also a sign: "No beverages, please use Break Room". A seemingly superfluous detail, but those are few when you're dealing with games with such tight memory restrictions. There was also a film cartridge, which I took back to the empty movie projector to watch. It showed me a safety film about the core, with two relevant bits of information: 1) Plastic deforms strangely in radiation, and 2) Even short exposure to high radiation is lethal, so suit up. I'd already done the latter, so all I had to remember was to not take my bucket into a high radiation area.

There was nothing left to do except head down into the core. I found a time bomb attached to the reactor by a red wire. I snipped it with my wire cutters, causing my bomb detector to buzz angrily. Taking the bomb, I carried it to where I had left my pail, in the break room. There I put down the bomb, poured heavy water all over it, and it was defused. I had, apparently, beaten an "impossible mission".

No, it was actually very possible.

Going into the core without a radiation suit on is lethal, of course, and results in you falling over and retching as the bomb explodes. Taking the bucket into the core is also a bad idea, because it deforms and spills your heavy water. Finally, you can't defuse the bomb in any other room except for the break room. You can't actually take the bomb back out through the control room door, so there are only three rooms to choose from anyway, but the break room is the only one that has a floor that doesn't absorb the water when you pour it.

So that's Mission Impossible, a pretty simple, small game that nonetheless did some interesting things with the adventure game genre.  Firstly, it completely discards the treasure hunt format so popular at the time for something with a more narrative focus. It's not necessarily the first game to do this, but it's definitely among the earliest. Of more significance is its use of environmental storytelling: the missing envelope at the beginning, the various items on the saboteur's body, and the piece of yarn from the mop in particular, are examples of this kind of thing. I'm not playing the games from 1979 in a strict chronological order, but regardless of whether another game got there first, Mission Impossible is still doing it in 1979, and that has to count for something.

That said, the story it's telling, aside from being a complete knock-off of a popular TV show, doesn't exactly hang together. The saboteur's plan is the main culprit here, as his various booby traps are pretty nonsensical, obviously designed to be puzzles from an adventure game rather than actual traps a real saboteur might set. Yes, I get that criticising a game for having unrealistic puzzles is a little absurd, but the closer to the real world a game's setting tries to be, the more it invites this kind of criticism.

And now, to the Final Rating.

Story & Setting: The setting for this is a novel one, but it's not all that convincingly realised, being little more than a series of coloured doors to get through. That's no doubt a consequence of the hardware, but I gotta rank what's there. As for the story, it gets some extra points for novelty and environmental storytelling, but it's still too simplistic to rank high. Rating: 2 out of 7.

Characters & Monsters: There are none, aside from the saboteur who commits suicide right at the start of the game. You're never able to occupy the same area as him until he's dead, and his body is even used to solve a puzzle, so he's much more of an inventory object than a person. Rating: 1 out of 7.

Aesthetics: It's a sparsely-written text adventure on the TRS-80, what did you think it was going to get? Rating: 1 out of 7.

Mechanics: It's the same two word parser that Adams has been using since his first game, and even at this point it's starting to feel a little long in the tooth. I had one "guess the verb" problem, which I probably shouldn't dock it for, but I'm feeling ever-so-slightly uncharitable right now. Rating: 3 out of 7.

Challenge: I'd say this game is a little too easy, even though I consulted a walkthrough to beat it.  That took me about an hour, and I'm pretty confident that I would have sussed out the answer without too much time on top of that. It's certainly Adams' easiest game yet, so I can't rank it high. Rating: 3 out of 7.

Innovation & Influence: This should get some points for being an early Scott Adams game, as well as for its storytelling innovations. It might seem simplistic now, but I haven't played anything else for the blog that had done this kind of thing before. Rating: 4 out of 7.

Fun: The main advantage this game has in this category is that I finished it really quickly. On the other hand, I consulted a walkthrough so that I could finish it more quickly, which I think says something. It didn't elicit any negative feelings in me, but I wasn't exactly having a blast with it either. Rating: 2 out of 7.

I won't play Mission Impossible again, so it doesn't get the bonus point. The above scores total 15, which doubled gives a Final Rating of 30. That put's it 23rd out of 33 games played, and 12th out of 19 adventure games. It's equal on points with Greg Hassett's Voyage to Atlantis as well as Colossal Cave Adventure II. Both of those are better games, but the former lacks Mission Impossible's interesting points, and the latter is full of hella annoying puzzles.

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.  For CRPGs I'm using a Combat category.  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 here aren't too difficult, and most of them make some kind of sense. I wasn't thrilled with the description of the debris blocking the final door, but getting through still wasn't super difficult to figure out.  Rating: 2 out of 7.

Bonus Points: 0.

This gives Mission Impossible a RADNESS Index of 26, placing it equal 22nd overall, and 14th out of twenty adventure games.  It's the lowest rated of the three Scott Adams adventures I've played.

NEXT: I'm sticking with the TRS-80 to play Atlantean Odyssey, which has a decent claim to being the first ever fully graphical adventure game. Eat that, Roberta Williams!