Priority CRPG 4: Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (1981)

The Apple II cover of Wizardry

Aaahhh, that's much better.  I'm happy to be playing pretty much anything other than Balrog Sampler, but it's even nicer that the next game is a stone-cold classic from my CRPG priority list.  This is one I've been looking forward to for years.

I've been playing CRPGs almost since I first got my Commodore 64, way back in the mid-80s.  I've at least dabbled in most of the major games and franchises, but I've never played a Wizardry game before.  I've certainly read plenty about them, and I spent most of my teen years obsessively playing the Bard's Tale trilogy, which I gather is very similar.  So I'm not unfamiliar with the series and how it works, but I have no firsthand experience.  This is a big one for me.  If it's as much like Bard's Tale as it seems I think I'm going to enjoy it a lot.

As usual, I'll be trying to play this game in its original version.  Wizardry was initially released for the Apple II, which is a huge relief.  Balrog Sampler had me struggling manfully with TRS-80 emulators for weeks on end, and the simplicity of Apple II emulators is wonderful in comparison.  I'm also going to be attempting to play this game at its legitimate difficulty.  Wizardry is yet another early CRPG that will permanently delete your characters without allowing you the luxury of returning to a prior save.  I figure that if I was able to beat Rogue properly, I should be able to do the same with Wizardry.  Hopefully I'll be happy with that decision a month from now.

Wizardry was initially developed by Andrew Greenberg (then a student at Cornell University) and Robert Woodhead, starting in 1978.  A version written in BASIC was apparently playable as early as 1979, but wasn't released because it was really, really slow.  I can attest to that as far as BASIC games go, as the ones I've played for the blog have been really sluggish.  (It gets especially bad for games with graphics.)  There are claims in the Wizardry documentation that the game is the "largest single micro-computer game ever created", so I shudder to think just how slow it might have been.  The game was rewritten in Pascal in 1979, but because Greenberg and Woodhead didn't have access to a run-time system the game couldn't be released until 1981. This meant that Wizardry got two years of solid playtesting.  So now I know that when my party gets wiped out by monsters without a chance to retaliate, that was a deliberate decision, and a not an oversight.

I played the PLATO game Oubliette some years ago, and Wizardry draws heavily from that game.  There have been accusations of plagiarism over the years, although from what I've played of both I'd say that it's no more egregious than what had already been going on in gaming up to that point.  If Wizardry has ripped off Oubliette, then just about every adventure game I've played - including Zork - has ripped off Colossal Cave Adventure.  There's no denying the influence, though: in many ways, Wizardry is an attempt to bring Oubliette to home computers as a single player experience.

Of course, Wizardry is massively successful, important, and influential in its own right.  It sold over 200,000 copies in its first two years, outselling Ultima at the time.  It inspired the aforementioned Bard's Tale series, not to mention just about every first-person dungeon-crawler that's ever been made.  And then there's its influence on Japanese RPGs, where its combat system was lifted for hugely successful games like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy.  The Wizardry series actually continued in Japan long after it was dead in the west, with the last game having been published in 2014.  Wizardry is a milestone, possibly the most important CRPG that I've never played.  I really want to dig into this one, even though there's probably very little new that I can say about it.

Wizardry's Apple II manual

The first thing I like to do with a game is check out the box and the manual.  This is especially important with games of this vintage, because often the story is almost entirely contained in the supplemental material.  There's no story in Wizardry's manual, but the box apparently did contain a slip of paper called a "briefing", which says that the evil wizard Werdna stole something valuable from King Trebor, and has hidden it in the dungeons below Trebor's castle with monsters to guard it.  Apparently there's a "control room" somewhere that will allow me to access the deeper dungeon levels more easily, but that's something for me to worry about later.  ("Werdna" and "Trebor", as I'm sure everyone reading this already knows, are the names of the developers written backwards.  I've seen this dismissed as lame on many occasions, but it is fully in keeping with the game's roots in Dungeons & Dragons, in which Gary Gygax happily named his wizard alter-ego Zagyg.  This is just the sort of thing that RPG players were doing at the time, and I kind of admire that ability to not take the fantasy too seriously.  Besides, it's not nearly as pretentious as inserting yourself into your game as "Lord British".)

The manual sets the tone pretty early.

While the manual doesn't have any story details, it's chockers with information on how to play the game.  Character creation, combat, exploration, shopping, and pretty much every other aspect of the game are described pretty thoroughly (or at least it seems so from my inexperienced perspective).  The illustrations are of a humorous nature, which is in keeping with the tone of a lot of RPG material of the era: more proof that the creators of D&D and CRPGs didn't take this stuff very seriously back then.  The back half of the manual is taken up by spell descriptions: there are fifty spells in all, and I gather that mastering their use will be vital to beating the game.  I'm not a huge fan of the way the spells are named in Wizardry, though. Yes, it's cool that the names are built using a system of syllables with meanings, and that the meanings are consistent across the spell names.  But when I'm trying to figure out what the fuck LATUMOFIS and LAKANITO do, it's not that helpful.  There's something to be said for D&D's use of prosaic names such as fireball and magic missile.

After booting up the game, it begins with an impressive title screen depicting a wizard summoning a demon from a bubbling cauldron.  Yes, it's primitive by modern standards, but this level of colour and animation are a real eye-opener when seen in the context of the day.  (That said, I'm playing Wizardry somewhat out of sequence, so maybe it's on par with some other stuff out there. I'll find out for sure eventually, I suppose.)

Impressive in its day.

The title page says that I'm playing version 2.1 from 1982, which I gather makes some minor improvements from the original.  It's probably not a major enough shift to warrant me tracking down an earlier version, and besides that I'm using the disks made available by Ahab at Data Driven Gamer, which are apparently the only ones out there that are in the same state that the game would be in when newly purchased.  So I doubt I'm going to get a more authentic experience than the one I'm going with.

The game starts in King Trebor's Castle, but your options are limited because you don't have any party members yet. The only thing to do is go to the (E)dge of town, where you can head to the (T)raining grounds to create some characters.  I could see this all being a little baffling to a first-timer, but the manual lays it out clearly enough.

At Trebor's Castle, with no party members

You begin character creation by assigning your character a name, which feels a little backwards to me: I like to know my character's stats, race and class before I name them.  The game then asks you to assign the character a password.  It will ask you for that password whenever you try to use the character.  It's an odd touch, but it is borrowed from Oubliette, where it was used to prevent other people using your character in a multiplayer environment.  It's included here to stop your little brother from mucking up your best guys, I guess.

The second step is to assign a race, using the standard D&D choices of Human, Elf, Dwarf, Gnome and Hobbit.  Each race has its own affect on your stats, as well as resistances to certain attacks, but the manual is uncharacteristically vague about this.  At this point I'll resist the urge to look them up, and assume that they conform to the stereotypes (i.e. Hobbits have high Agility and low Strength, Dwarves have high Vitality, etc.).

Choosing a race.

After choosing a race, you need to pick an alignment: Good, Neutral or Evil.  This affects which classes you can qualify for in the next step.  It should also be noted that Good and Evil characters can never be in the same party together, which means that there are certain classes I won't be able to use.

The next step is to determine your stats. Each character has six of these attributes (which range from 3-18 in standard D&D fashion): Strength, I.Q., Piety, Vitality, Agility, and Luck.  Strength affects your ability in melee combat, I.Q. and Piety affect your ability to cast and learn mage and priest spells (respectively), Vitality affects your health and hit points, Agility affects your speed in combat, and Luck affects your ability to avoid traps, spells and other attacks.  Again, I'm being vaguer than I'd like to be here, but I can't find where this is explained in the manual. I'm sure I read it in there yesterday, but it's escaping me right now and I'm wondering if I imagined it.  Anyway, if you've ever played an RPG, these stats do the things they always do.  You know how it works.

Assigning stats and choosing a class.

Aside from their usual effects, certain stats are required to qualify for a character class.  There are eight classes in Wizardry, four basic classes and four elite classes.

• Fighters, your standard warrior type with high hit points and the best access to weapons and armour. They require a Strength of 11.
• Mages, your spellcasters.  They get the most effective combat spells, but they can't wear armour and can only wield a dagger or a staff.  They require an IQ of 11.
• Priests, your holy men who can fight a bit and use healing and defensive magic. They can also "dispell" undead monsters, allowing you to avoid fighting them. They require a Piety of 11, and can't be Neutral in alignment.
• Thieves, who are primarily there to disarm traps. They can only use daggers and short swords, and wear leather armour. They require an Agility of 11.
• Bishops, which are a kind of cross between Priests and Mages. They also get the ability to identify magical items, which seems handy. Like priests, they can't be Neutral in alignment.
• Samurai, which are fighters that eventually get access to Mage spells. They can't be Evil.
• Lords, which are combination Fighter-Priests. They must be Good.
• Ninja, which are described as "inhuman fighting machines". Their Armor Class gets better as they reach higher levels, and they also have a chance to kill enemies with a single blow. They have to be Evil though, which puts them at odds with Lords.

The last four classes listed above are harder to qualify for, requiring high scores in multiple attributes. At higher levels you can also switch classes, retaining your hit points and spells while gaining the abilities of the new class.  To be honest, I feel like the ability to switch class kind of negates the benefits of the "elite" classes. Only the Ninja and the Bishop seem to have unique abilities.  Perhaps there's something I'm missing.

The manual recommends starting with two Fighters, a Priest, a Thief and two Mages.  I suspect that I might eventually swap out that Thief for another healer, but it's hard to argue with the balance here.  The scan of the manual that I'm using also has some hand-written notes, with the names of the player's party scrawled on the inside front cover.  In recognition of that player so considerately making his manual available, I'm going to use the names of his characters.  So my first party will consist of fighters Bubba and Mean Joe, thief Chico, priest Father Fred, and mages Misto and Merlin.  I decided to make Bubba and Father Fred human, Mean Joe a dwarf, Chico a hobbit, Misto a gnome and Merlin an elf.  I've covered all of my racial bases there, striking a blow for diversity.

The inspiration for my first party

I hemmed and hawed about whether to go with a good or an evil party, but in the end my basic CRPG instincts won over.  I made Bubba, Father Fred and Merlin good, and the rest of the party neutral.  I guess I'm not going to have a ninja in the party (unless all of these guys gets slaughtered and I have to start over).

My stats were disappointingly low: most of them begin in the 5-11 range, and you only get around seven points to distribute amongst them.  This number is variable, though, and occasionally you hit the jackpot.  This happened to me with Mean Joe, who got a whopping 19 points to spend.  He ended up with a Strength of 18, and a high Vitality as well, and expect he'll be the MVP of the party in the early going.

Once your characters are created, you need to go to Gilgamesh's Tavern to add them to the party. This is kind of irritating, to be honest, as you can only see the roster of characters at the training ground, and you can only add them to your party at the tavern. It's not so bad now, but I can see it being a potential problem down the line if I have a bigger roster and I'm more likely to forget their names.

While I was at the tavern I took the time to inspect my characters and look at what spells my priest and mages got.  Father Fred got Dios (heal) and Badios (harm).  Misto and Merlin both ended up with Halito (little fire) and Katino (bad air, basically a sleep spell).  I'm not sure if beginning casters all start with the same spells or not, but the ones I got are pretty good.  I wouldn't want to tackle the dungeon without some healing and a sleep spell.

Next it was time to head to Boltac's Trading Post to buy some gear.  Most of what's sold here is standard weapons and armour, but I was surprised to see some magical items (+1 weapons and armor, another D&Dism), as well as some potions and scrolls.  All of the magical gear was out of my price range, but it's something for me to work towards.

Bubba, who started with 170 gold, bought a longsword, a large shield, and some chain mail.  Merlin,  with 110 gold, bought a staff and some robes. Misto, with 135 gold, bought a dagger and some robes. Chico, with 163 gold, bought a short sword, small shield, and leather armour.  Father Fred and Mean Joe were a little lacking in funds (100 gold and 91 gold respectively), so I went back to the tavern and had some of my other characters trade their leftover gold to them. (This was pretty tedious, as I had to do it one character at a time; there's no "pool" function where the party can just spend money from one collective pile.  It's hard to criticise games for not using functions that had never been thought of at the time, though, so I'll try to shut up about it.)  Upon returning to Boltac's, I was able to buy Father Fred an anointed mace, a large shield, and some chainmail.  Mean Joe was able to buy a longsword, a large shield, some chainmail, and a helm.  So not only does Mean Joe have the best stats, but he has the best gear as well.  Life just works out like that for some people, I guess.

I decided to take a quick foray into the maze, just so that there's some actual gameplay in this post.  I was pleasantly surprised that the game doesn't dump you straight into the dungeon: instead you are in camp, and have the opportunity to review your characters and equip their gear.  It's a nice little reminder to be prepared.  Equipping weapons and armour is also very user-friendly, as it runs through each character and asks what you want to use in each category.

The party begins at the stairs (which I assume are at the bottom left of the map), with a tunnel leading ahead and another to the right. I chose to take the right tunnel, which led to a room through a door.  Movement uses the W-A-D cluster, with W being forward, A turning left, and D turning right.  Going through a door has its own separate command - K - which is another minor irritant.  Trying to walk forward into a door using W brings up a message that says OUCH.  I'm not sure if this can hurt the party, but in this case my characters emerged unscathed.

I didn't find anything there, so I went back to the stairs and headed north.  As soon as I turned a corner I was attacked by 5 Scruffy Men.  Sometimes in Wizardry you don't know exactly which monsters you're facing, only their general type.  As the battle progresses the monsters will be identified.  In this case, I was soon to learn that I was fighting 5 Bushwackers.

The battle begins with mysterious enemies.

I decided to kick off with my full arsenal, as I was planning on heading right back to the castle after my first fight.  I had my first three characters attack, while Chico parried and my mages both cast Katino (sleep).  It did not go well.  Bubba went down in a single blow, and was dead.  Mean Joe retaliated, wounding one of the Bushwackers, but my Katinos were not all that effective: only two of the enemy were put to sleep.

Bubba nooooooo!

I probably should have fled, but I decided to stick it out for another round, attacking with everything and casting two more Katinos.  Mean Joe, Chico and Father Fred all killed a Bushwacker, and of the two remaining one was asleep.  The cost was dire though: both Mean Joe and Chico were killed.  With only a single foe I decided to chance another round, but nobody on either side landed a blow.  The second Bushwacker woke up, and I knew that I was overmatched.  It was time to run, which I was able to do successfully.  Back at the stairs, my party dragged the corpses of their friends back to the castle, with nothing to show for their foray.

This game's going to be a tough one, isn't it?

I get the feeling I'm going to be seeing this kind of thing a lot.

Balrog Sampler: Near Victory

Yes, I know, it's taken me ages to get around to writing this post.  There hasn't been anything going on in my life to prevent me from writing it up, and I haven't been dealing with any particular personal problems that might affect my desire to write.  This delay has come down to one thing, and one thing only: I really didn't want to spend time replaying this game.

It's a problem of my own making, really. If I'd just taken some screenshots when I played through it the first time I might have been able to knock up a post from memory.  I say might, but that's debatable: my memory of this game is hazier than pretty much anything else I've played for the blog, and I only went through it about six months ago.  That's one of the benefits I've found with keeping the blog: the games I've written about stand out sharply in my memory.

Anyway, I've now replayed Balrog Sampler, and the pain is all in the past.  I'm very keen to knock this post out so that I can move on to something (literally anything) else.  Last time around I went through the basics of the game, and played through the wilderness area. This post will deal with the dungeon, which is the meat of the game, and where things get much more difficult (as you'd expect).

Early on, the thing that always stymied my progress was the combat, specifically the random encounters.  They're not overwhelmingly common, but they happen often enough to be annoying, and my starting characters invariably got killed by them.  There's supposedly a way to balance things by choosing the correct combination of weapons and armor based on your character's Strength and Dexterity scores, but I never figured it out. I didn't try every combination of course; there are far too many weapons for that. I tried quite a few though, and nothing seemed to work.

What I found was that the trick to surviving is in raising your character's Strength.  One way to do that is with the Personality Change Machine in a room to the north of the dungeon entrance.  When you use it, it rolls up completely new stats for your character.  It's a little random though, and doesn't really raise your Strength beyond the normal limits.  The better method is to head south and west from the entrance, and find the library.  There are a number of books to read, one of which is about physical fitness.  Reading it summons a drill instructor, who forces you to do push-ups that raise your Strength by two points.  Unlike many of the other stat boosts in the game this one can be done repeatedly, and the only limit to how high you can get your Strength score is your gold, as each reading costs 10gp.  Eventually you'll get it to a point where none of the monsters can threaten you, but the trick is to get there before a random encounter wipes you out.  I'd also recommend not boosting your Strength too high; this game is fragile, and any numbers outside of the usual range can cause it to cack itself.

There's a third method of getting through combat that I haven't mentioned yet, because it's definitely a bug.  After I played for a while, the monsters suddenly all had Strength ratings of 0, and were incapable of doing any damage.  Having suffered through the early stages of the game, being killed repeatedly by every random encounter that came along, I seized on this immediately when it happened.  Most of my exploration of the game was done with this glitch in effect.  Once I'd solved most of the puzzles playing this way I went back and fought my way through legitimately (or as legitimately as I could in my probably-cracked version of the game that starts me with 30,000+ gold pieces).

Fighting nothing in a bugged combat.

Adventure games like this are a little unfocused, so I sometimes struggle to figure out which areas to write about first.  This is why my adventure game posts often resort to point form, as it helps me to organise my thoughts.  The goal of Balrog Sampler is to find various treasures and take them back to the bank vault on the surface.  I'll break this one down by the treasures to be found, and hopefully that will cover everything important.

• Necklace:
• South of the dungeon entrance is a room with a dwarf, who tries to charge you for passage through doors to the south and east.  He'll let you go back to the north for free, though, and when you come back into the room he's gone. Quite a number of encounters in the game are like this: you get one crack at them, and then they disappear forever.
• South of the dwarf is a room containing four boxes: one marked "poof", one marked "fizz", one marked "skull" and one marked "flower".  The "skull" box contains the necklace.  The "poof" box contains a genie, which can be asked for a number of wishes (none of which end up benefitting the player).  I think the "fizz" box has a strength potion, and I can't remember what the "flower" box has inside.  I also can't remember what happens if you try to open more than one box, I just know it's not good.

• Witch Protect Cross
• This can be found a few areas south of the box room. It's sitting in an alcove, and there's nothing special that needs to be done to obtain it.
• The cross, as the name says, will protect you from witches.  There's a witch in the secret room east of the dwarf, but there's not much of a reason to go and see her (although you can apparently get her to transform into Helen of Troy and have sex with her if you choose the right options; I never figured out how).
• Silver Tiger
• North from the entrance is a room guarded by a snake. To get past this snake, you need a stone mongoose.
• The mongoose can be found in a room with six statues just north of where you find the cross.  The statues are of various historical, mythical and fictional warriors, ranging from Attila the Hun to Conan of Cimmeria.  Pressing the button on Alexander the Great's statue reveals a secret compartment containing the stone mongoose.

• The Silver Tiger is just lying on the ground in a passage about a half-dozen-or-so rooms beyond the snake. There are some encounters along the way, including a crazed doctor and a mummy, but those can be easily avoided.
• Ruby
• Past the hallway with the Silver Tiger is an Oracle, who will give you some clues if you stick around to listen.  The oracle doesn't always oblige; I assume that your stats determine whether you get the clue or not, but I'm not sure how. It doesn't really matter, because you can just keep trying until it works.
• Further along there's a fight with a thief, and after that the path splits in two. There's only one exit to the west, but it leads to two different locations. As far as I can tell, the place you end up is totally random.
• One of those locations has a lion with a thorn in it's paw. Unlike the well-known story, if you take the thorn out the lion will kill you.
• The other location has two doors, one marked "Lady" and the other marked "Tiger".  (I've heard the phrase "the lady or the tiger" before, it's apparently from a short story published in 1882.)  The door marked "lady" leads to a tiger named Lady, and the door marked "tiger" leads to a lady named Tiger. It's amusing enough, but neither this encounter or the one with the lion are important beyond your own survival.
• The path then leads to a wizard's laboratory, where you can fight a wizard and take his wand.  I have vague memories that you can bribe this guy, or trick him somehow.
• The room beyond the laboratory is dark, but you can light it with a torch. At the end of the room is an alcove with a keyhole.  The key from the shack will unlock it, but there are a number of lethal traps to avoid through trial-and-error. Inside is a ruby.
• Emerald Orb
• East of the entrance room is a "spaghetti maze".  There's no trick to this one, you just have to keep picking an exit until it randomly spits you out on the other side.  Once there you'll find the emerald orb.
• Bag of Jewels
• South of this and down a ravine is a river that leads to a lake, where there's a woman sleeping on the shore.  There's also an island in the middle of the lake. You can get her to show you where a boat is buried, and if you use it to get to the island you'll find a bag of jewels. If you try to swim, you'll be attacked by the island's "guardian".
• Diamonds
• South of the river is the "Monster Maze", which I had to map using the time-honoured method of dropping inventory items. It's a pretty big maze, but being able to drop different amounts of gold coins really helped to speed the process. The diamonds are found at a shrine deep in the maze.
• Chalice
• On the far size of the Monster Maze is a rusted door. To open this door you need to fill a jug with oil.  The jug is found really close to the dungeon entrance, but it's through a tight tunnel that can cause a lot of problems. If you try to get through with too much inventory, you'll get stuck and eventually die.  I've gotten stuck even with no inventory, so I think it might be based on a die roll of some sort.  You have to get through twice, and I've had more characters die to this tunnel than pretty much anything else in the game.

• The oil is found in an area north of the spaghetti maze. It's past a bridge with a troll who demands treasure; I killed the troll rather than bother to find the right treasure to give to it. Beyond that is an oasis, with some stereotypical arabian trappings, and you can fill your jug with oil there.
• With the oil you can open the rusted door, and the chalice is in an alcove on the other side.
• God of Waterfalls
• If you follow the river from the lake, you'll come to a waterfall. Climbing the waterfall can be difficult, but each time you fall you get a boost to IQ so it's actually pretty helpful.  If you keep trying you'll eventually make it to the top, where you'll find an idol called the God of Waterfalls.

• Golden Eggs
• There's a secret area behind the waterfall that can be accessed by pulling a lever. Whether it opens or not is random, and probably based on your stats (again, the game isn't great at letting you know when this is happening, and I don't have the motivation to go trawling through the code to find out).  Usually it takes me a few minutes of repeatedly pulling the lever until it opens, which can get really annoying.
• Beyond is a room with two pits, reminiscent of the Twopit Room from Colossal Cave Adventure.  The east pit contains a rusty sword, and the west pit has a tiny beanstalk calling out for water.  You can collect water in a flask to make the plant grow, which allows you to climb up to another area.
• Singing Harp
• Clock
• Both of the items above are found at the top of the beanstalk, but I can't remember the details.  The game I have currently saved shows that I have a flask filled with water in my inventory, but when I go to water the plant it doesn't acknowledge that I have the item.  My patience with Balrog Sampler is wearing really thin, so I'm not going to bother going to the effort of starting a new game so I can get back to this area.
• Collar
• I have a collar written down in my list of treasures, but it's not anywhere on my map, so I have no idea where it came from. Again, I'm leaving this one as a mystery (assuming it's actually there at all).
• Pearls
• North-east from the dungeon entrance is a large door. This door can only be opened with the correct password. There are a number of clues to this password scattered around the dungeon (one is in the library, one is deep in the Monster Maze, and I think the other is given by the oracle).

• For some reason, I always have to say the password twice.  I'm not sure if this is deliberate, or a glitch.
• North of the door is a room with an oyster in a pool of water. If you burn some coal the water will boil and the oyster will open, revealing the pearls.
• Ruby Skull
• Silver Pirate Ship
• Chest of Jewels
• The three treasures above are found past the door, but there are a lot of deadly obstacles in the way before you can reach them.
• The first of these is a Fire Lizard, that will immediately attack if you enter its lair. A new Fire Lizard attacks every time you stumble into this room, but you can skirt around the lair once you know where it is.
• Further along is the lair of a Phase Spider, which is similarly hostile. Again, you can avoid this lair if you know where you're going.
• Next up is the final gauntlet of encounters, which begins with an unavoidable battle with a Baby Chromatic Dragon.  (For those who don't know, a Chromatic Dragon has five heads, one of each type from Dungeons & Dragons; it's one of the deadliest monsters in early D&D. For those who watched the D&D cartoon, think Tiamat.)

• Deeper into the lair is the "Daddy Dragon", which is a Chromatic Dragon so large that you can't possible fight it.  The only way to defeat the dragon is to release a mouse in its presence.

• After the battle you find a secret door, which leads to the lair of the Pirate.  I don't think I've mentioned him before: he shows up occasionally to knock you out with sleep powder and steal your treasure. He's pretty much an exact copy of the pirate from Colossal Cave Adventure, except that you have to fight and kill this guy in order to claim his treasures.  These treasures consist of the three listed above, plus anything else that he's stolen from you.

Finding the treasures above got me to 1871 points out of a possible 1951. Those missing points will haunt me, but not enough to ever want to go back and try this game again (unless I find a complete walkthrough, or someone just tells me what I'm missing).  I think I know where the missing points might be: there's a high alcove in the library that can be reached with a ladder, but lurking in the alcove is a creature that bites my arm off or eats my weapon when I try to reach inside.  I've tried all sorts of things: throwing pretty much my entire inventory, waving a magic wand at it, trying to wedge its jaws open with an iron bar.  I'd have tried more, but the game frustratingly tells you that you're wasting time after a few ineffective usages of your inventory. You then have to leave the area and go back, which isn't that bad, but it's pretty grating when you add it to the many other inconveniences that the game piles on you.

The 80 points that will haunt me until I die.

I think that's about where I'm going to wrap things up with Balrog Sampler.  There's some interesting stuff in it, even if the adventure game elements are a bit simplistic.  None of the good elements are able to get past how horrible this game is to play, though.  Just getting the thing running is nightmare enough, but once that's done there's no shortage of errors and bugs.  Sometimes the game won't let me buy weapons when I start a new character.  Sometimes it doesn't acknowledge items in my inventory. There's the bug with the monsters in combat that I mentioned above (a blessing in disguise, really).  And to top it all off, the save game system doesn't always work, so I was constantly having to restart.  I really wasn't kidding when I said that I didn't want to play this game ever again.  I dread the sequels.

RADNESS INDEX:

Story & Setting: The story is yet another treasure hunt, with little to distinguish it's plot from the multitude of other games inspired by Colossal Cave Adventure.  The dungeon setting has no rhyme or reason, with nothing to connect its various areas.  And now that I think of it, it doesn't contain a balrog of any sort, which makes the name quite nonsensical.  Rating: 1 out of 7.

Characters & Monsters: Although there's not much in the way of interaction, there are a number of characters scattered through the dungeon, and a good variety of monsters.  The monsters aren't differentiated by anything more than their strength, but at least some effort has been made.  Rating 2 out of 7.

Puzzles: I wavered on whether to use the Puzzles or Combat category here, and ultimately I went with puzzles because I spent most of my time playing the game with the combat horribly bugged.  The puzzles are rudimentary, and almost entirely inventory-based. Those that aren't rely heavily on random chance, or multiple choice options with little in the way of clues to guide you.  What puzzles are there are either simple or frustrating, with nothing in-between. Rating: 1 out of 7.

Aesthetics: The writing for this text adventure is good for the time, and it often displays a warped sense of humour that is by far the game's best feature.  It's not enough to elevate it very far, though. Rating: 2 out of 7.

Mechanics: As an RPG/adventure hybrid there are some interesting things going on in this game: the multiple-choice interface might be simplistic, but the inventory system is quite involved, and the combat seems to be trying to emulate the tabletop RPG Tunnels & Trolls.  Unfortunately, this is probably the most broken game I've played for the blog, not counting those that are incomplete, such as Library.  Between the effort it took me to get running, the many crashes and bugs, the unreliable saves, and the general clunkiness of the interface, I can't give it anything but the minimum score. Rating: 1 out of 7.

Challenge: Although the puzzle aspect is not too hard, I never was able to reach a balance where I could survive the combat without ramping up my Strength score to absurd levels.  I found this game difficult, and not at all in an enjoyable way. Rating: 1 out of 7.

Fun: This is easily the most painful game to play in the history of the blog. It would be nice to find a stable version that works the way it's supposed to, but the version I played was very far from that ideal scenario. Rating: 1 out of 7.

Bonus Points: 0.

The above scores total 9, which doubled gives a RADNESS Index of 18.  If the game worked the way it was supposed to it would have scored a lot higher, perhaps somewhere around a 30, but the sheer volume of technical problems has placed it as my lowest-rated game so far.  That's the curse of playing games chronologically: you have to take the terrible games alongside the gems.

NEXT: It's back to the priority list for a CRPG classic: Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord.  I've never played any Wizardry games for any great length of time, so I'm looking forward to ticking this one off my bucket list.

Game 53: Maces & Magic - Balrog Sampler (1979)

Nothing this rad appears in the game.

Of all the games I've played for the blog, this has been one of the most difficult.  Not difficult in terms of completion: that nod probably goes to The Game of Dungeons v8, Moria, or Rogue. But in terms of getting the game running, and researching the history? Balrog Sampler has caused me all sorts of problems in those regards, and refreshing myself on the game - which I played through back in November - has been somewhat less than pleasant.

Balrog Sampler was originally called Dungeon (undoubtedly the most over-used word in titles in the CRPG genre so far), and published by Adventure International for the TRS-80. For an early game by such a famous developer there's surprisingly little written about it: I got pretty much all of this history from the CRPG Addict, who interviewed one of the creators a while back. That creator was one Richard Bumgarner, an x-ray technician who was one of three medical professionals that formed Chameleon Software to create CRPGs in their spare time. We still don't know who the other two were, as far as I know. Poor sales and some legal threats from TSR, the highly litigious publisher of Dungeons & Dragons, forced them out of the gaming industry after a few years.

Despite the short tenure and the obscurity of their creation, there is some historical significance to what they did.  Balrog Sampler is the first installment in the Maces & Magic series, one of the earliest attempts at a CRPG franchise.  It's also possible that it might be the first true text adventure/CRPG hybrid: to the best of my knowledge it seems that Eamon was released around the same time, but it's not known which of them came first.  There are sources that place both games in 1980 rather than 1979, so really it's all very uncertain.

Before I get started, I'm going to give some instructions on how to get this thing running. I don't normally bother with this sort of thing, but if any of you want to play this game I'd like to save you the arse-ache that I had to go through. Here it is, step-by-step:

1. First, download the trs80gp emulator. You can find it here.  Normally I use trs32, but that one wasn't cutting it for this game.
2. You also need to download trsdos13 to run the emulator. You can find it at this link, as trsdos13.zip. When you run the emulator, set the trsdos13 file to drive 0 (under the Diskette menu at the top). That should get it going, but I am a little rusty on this early TRS-80 set-up, so I can't guarantee that there won't be some extra steps required.
3. Set the emulator to run as a Model III in the File menu. (It might be set as that by default, I'm not sure.)
4. Download these Balrog Sampler disks that I made. I had to split the files across two disks, because I noticed that the versions of the game that I was finding didn't include all of the required files. In fact, the size of all those files was too large to fit on one side of a TRS-80 disk, so I downloaded them all separately and split them in two. They can be found here.
5. Load up the emulator. Put Balrog Sampler A in disk drive 1.
6. Type BASIC at the prompt.
7. You should see a prompt asking "How Many Files?" Type 8.
8. When prompted for Memory Size, don't type anything. Just hit enter.
9. At the Ready prompt, type RUN"START"
10. You'll get a prompt that says "INTRODUCTION (Y/N)?" Hit whichever you like, though I do recommend watching the intro at least once.
11. After the intro, you'll be told to put Disk B in Drive 0. Do exactly that, by putting the Balrog Sampler B file in disk drive 0 (replacing trsdos13.dsk.
12. Hit enter after replacing the disk, and you should be good to go.

This title screen is relatively impressive in motion.

The first notable thing about this game is the Adventure International intro, which is a real production. It includes a rotating globe of the Earth, the AI logo turning into a train, and a little guy running after the train trying to catch up. It's fairly impressive for a system that technically doesn't have any graphics capabilities, but it does seem a bit wasteful. How much memory is this thing eating up?  All of the relevant files probably would have fit on one disk without it, which would have made things a lot easier for me.

The Woody Allen quote at the start points towards the
humourous tone that parts of the game display.

After the title screen, some stats are given for how many adventurers have died in this adventure. You're then asked if you want to load a saved game or use an experienced adventurer; I technically have a character that's finished the game already, and it's pretty tempting to use him to make going back through the game easier, but I can't remember things well enough to skip over them. If I'm going to write about this stuff, I'm going to have to slog my way through it all over again.

If you're making a new character, you get the option of buying some weapons.  The game actually asks if you want to see the list or not, which seems like an odd question until you get a look at how many weapons there are in the game.  The complete list of weapons comes to 80, with a lot of the usual selections as well as really odd stuff like war fans, crowbars and arbalests, and things I've never heard of like the oxtongue, jambiya, bich'hwa and bagh nakh. Every weapon has numbers indicating damage dealt, as well as a minimum Strength and Dexterity score required to effectively wield it. Unfortunately, you have to choose your weapons before you know what your stats will be, which seems like something of an oversight.

This might be the first CRPG that's gone beyond the
AD&D Player's Handbook for its weapon list.

After that you are asked to buy some armor, which doesn't have stat limitations, but each piece comes with a limit as to how many you can wear at a time. Every item has a weight score as well, so the amount of stuff you can carry is limited by your Strength score.

I'm not sure how much gold a character is meant to start with in this game, but on the version I have you are given well over 30,000 gold pieces to play with. I suspect that it's been cracked somewhere along the way, but given how much trouble I had getting it running I'm not going out and looking for a more authentic version. It's not actually that much of a help, to be honest, as you're only allowed a few weapons, and the armor you can use is limited as well.

A suspiciously large amount of gold for a starting character.

After you've bought your gear, you get a look at your character's attributes. The character is always called Ceron, and as far as I can tell there's no way to change it or select a different name. The six attributes are Strength, Intelligence, Luck, Constitution, Dexterity, and Charisma.

• Strength determines how much stuff you can carry, and which weapons you can use without getting tired. If your Strength ever drops below 5 due to fatigue, you'll pass out and be easy pickings for whichever monsters are nearby.
• Intelligence apparently determines whether you find secret doors, correctly identify potions, or notice other warning signs.
• Luck is simply used to determine if certain situations go in your favour, which mostly happens in the background without you noticing.
• Constitution functions like hit points.
• Dexterity is used for things like climbing and balancing, and also determines which weapons you can use effectively. If you use a weapon for which you lack the required Dexterity, there's a chance you'll hurt yourself.
• Charisma affects how some NPCs will react to you.

In addition there are experience points, which I'm pretty sure are awarded for solving puzzles and finding treasures, just like the points in loads of other adventure games. Language Level is also something I'm not sure about, though it may factor into NPC interaction and whether you can read certain messages.

The game proper begins with the exaggerated creaking of a door as you exit the general store (represented by large text), followed by a bit of set-up. Apparently the protagonist is an adventurer who has come to this place following a map, without any particular goal in mind (except, presumably, the accumulation of treasure).  With nothing better to do, the adventurer decides to head off in the direction of a castle in the distance, and the game begins.

Very little of this is relevant to the adventure to come.

I described the game above as a CRPG/text adventure hybrid, but the text adventure part is rather simplified. Rather than using a full parser, it works more like a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book, presenting a number of options for you to pick from. There are a number of commands you can execute at any time: you can (g)et or (l)eave objects, use an item from your (p)ack, look at your (s)tatus, (w)ait, or look at your (i)nventory.  Looking at your status at this point reveals that there are 1951 points required to fully complete the game.

The initial area is a forest that's bisected by a turbulent river. Trying to swim across the river at any point results in an instant death, There's not a lot to find on the west side where you start, just a cave where you can find some junk (a shackle chain, some mice, an iron rod), and a hill where you can meet a hermit. Sometimes you can't get anything out of him (presumably based on your Charisma), but if you're able to talk to him he'll tell you there's an entrance to "the underground world" on the other side of the river.

There are two ways across the river: a toll bridge and a fallen tree. Crossing the bridge is safe, but will cost you 5 gold pieces. You can try to cross by force, but the young man who collects the toll is apparently the "dungeon master's" nephew, and will blast you with lightning. The fallen tree is free to cross, but requires a roll against your Dexterity. Failure means you fall in the river to your death. It's risky, but in the dozens of times I tried it, it only happened once, so it's worth a shot if you happen to be poor.

There's a shack on the east side of the river that contains a ladder, some keys, a torch, a wooden wheel, and a shovel.  Further east is a building marked as the "Woodland Hills Bank". Inside, you can deposit gold pieces, or make a withdrawal. You can also do the same for inventory items, which - in the grand tradition of Colossal Cave Adventure and almost all of its offspring - is what you need to do with the treasures you'll find.  As in those games, you get points for finding treasures, and points for depositing them. The bank also has the game exit, which you can use when you're done playing.

I'm pretty sure trying to rob the bank is an instant death,
but I didn't try it this time.

Just north of the bank is an area of redwood forest. A gap in one of the trees leads down into the main dungeon, which is where the bulk of the game takes place. So much for that castle on the horizon...

I could probably knock this out in one very long post, but I think I'll take a break here.  The next post will cover the dungeon, and if I'm lucky I might be able to figure out the stuff I missed last time and finish the game with full points.

Game 52: Eamon Scenario 2 - The Lair of the Minotaur (1979)

Well, I'm into the weeds with this one.  Lair of the Minotaur is another first for the blog, as it's not a game in itself but rather the second scenario for a game I've already played.  That game - more accurately a game creation system - is Eamon, and I covered it in March last year.  I went over the history in that first post, but all I need to mention here is that Eamon's creator Donald Brown released it for free, and a sizable community (for the time) created quite a number of games for it.

The default scenario for Eamon, The Beginner's Cave, was written by Donald Brown.  The second scenario was also written by Brown, as the game had not quite taken off yet.  There were 10 scenarios created in 1980, and in 1984 there were 41 created, so it ramps up fairly quickly. My current plan is to tackle them all, but I'll get back to that after I've played some more. So far they've been short and easy, but my tune might change if I get to some that are a hassle to get through.  It's also setting a precedent for me to play through loads of non-commercial products, which I'm not super-keen on. I don't mind when those products are historically significant in some way, but I can't see myself playing through hundreds of RPG Maker games. As usual, I'll play these things by ear.

Games created using Eamon visually resemble text adventures, but although they use a command parser I'd say that they are more CRPGs at heart. The number of commands available to the player is minimal, and I've found that combat, gear and improving stats are much more important to play than solving puzzles. One of the biggest draws with Eamon in this regard is the ability to take the same character through different scenarios. I still had my character Artis, who had gone through The Beginner's Cave. He had a Hardiness score of 16, an Agility of 17, and a Charisma of 14. He was also wielding the magic sword Trollsfire, which could be found in that first scenario, and was wearing Plate Armor and carrying a Shield. (Actually, I'm pretty sure Artis has been through Lair of the Minotaur before this, because I played it months ago.  I was badly in need of a refresher before writing this post, so it's likely that this is the second time he's has been through this adventure.)

The background of Lair of the Minotaur is that I had arranged to meet my girlfriend Larcenous Lil in the town of Dunderhaven. Unfortunately, Lil went off to burglarise a local castle, and hasn't been seen since. I snuck into the castle to look for her, only to be ambushed by the local lord and dumped in a pit, presumably the same fate that she suffered. I suppose my goal is to make it out alive from the dungeons beneath the castle, and rescue Larcenous Lil along the way, if possible.

Not gonna lie, I already have a crush on Larcenous Lil.

I'm getting a bit of a Return of the Jedi vibe, but that
movie won't come out for a couple of years.

When the game started I was at the bottom of a long shaft, with an exit leading off to the south. There was a lantern on the floor, already lit, which was handy if a little unlikely.  Thankfully, unlike so many other adventure games of the era, the lantern has no time limit.

Nice of my captors to provide me with an unlimited light source.

Exploring south and west, I came to a room containing a coffin. I opened the coffin, only to be predictably attacked by a skeleton from inside. It missed with its first swipe, and I destroyed it in a single blow with Trollsfire. The skeleton dropped a skeleton key.

South of that was a room containing a large stone, and a mirror with the word "CIGAM" reflected in it. Saying the word backwards - MAGIC - caused an emerald to pop out of the stone. I always appreciate it when a game eases you in with some elementary puzzles.  Some easy successes early on can be very encouraging.

Fear my intellect.

To the east was a river with a boat on the bank, so I got inside and rowed downstream to the south. There were three grottos where I could land, but before I could choose I was attacked by a Killer Rabbit that emerged from the water. As with the skeleton earlier, I killed it with my first swing.

The river continued south, but I ignored that path and landed in the southernmost grotto. (The hints were pretty strong that I'd die if I continued along the river, and experimenting to find out isn't really a viable option when you can lose an experienced character.) There were signs that the grotto had been recently dug up, but without a shovel I wasn't able to investigate, so I kept exploring to the west.

In the tunnel I encountered a floating eyeball creature that was humming to itself, a creature that the game identified as a "Wandering Minstrel Eye". It wasn't hostile, and couldn't otherwise be interacted with, so I gather that it's only in there so that it can be a pun. I love a good pun, but I hate a bad one, so I stabbed this creature in its stupid eyeball so I wouldn't ever have to see it again.

I'll show you some fuckin shreds and patches...

At a crossroads I encountered a Black Knight, who I tried to greet in a friendly manner. He attacked, but after I hit him a couple of times he thought better of it and ran away. I had to track him down before I could put him to the sword. (I'm not sure if this guy is always hostile, or if my Charisma score is to blame. I suspect the former, but in Eamon your Charisma can sometimes decide whether an NPC will be helpful or hostile.) With the crossroads now clear I was able to explore the other grottos, but I found nothing of interest.

Insert obligatory Monty Python reference.

East of the knight's crossroads was a four-way intersection. Further west was a gate that opened to my skeleton key, but I decided not to explore that way yet. To the north I found two things of interest: an "insanity room" that borrowed the Witt's End pun from Colossal Cave Adventure, and a bag with an Acme label. It's not explicitly called out, but this bag allows the player to carry more treasure.

South of the intersection I came to the door of a temple to "Kalimar". In the initial area there was a storeroom where I found a shovel, and another room with a jewel. I backtracked with the shovel to the first grotto, and dug up some gold coins before returning to the temple to investigate the jewel.  There was a warning not to take the jewel, but my greed got the better of me and I decided to risk it. Sure enough, I was damaged by an electric shock, but it wasn't enough to kill me. I took the opportunity to cast a Heal spell to restore my Hardiness.

(There are four spells in the game that you can purchase from a shop between adventures. I had purchased three of the four, but I forgot to really experiment with them. The only one I cast was Heal, which worked on my first try. I gather that like your weapon skills, your skill with spells increases the more you use them. Once again, I promise to delve into this in greater detail the next time I come around to Eamon.)

Further into the temple I found a treasury, containing a pile of silver coins. There were a number of bags for carrying the treasure, but they all disintegrated as I touched them. Luckily I had my Acme bag, so I was able to scoop up the coins and take them with me.

At the end of another tunnel I encountered a high priest in his bedroom, armed with a morning star and dressed in chainmail. He managed to hit me in the ensuing battle, but my armor completely absorbed all of the damage. The priest wasn't so lucky, and Trollsfire claimed another victim. The room contained a number of books in an unfamiliar language, which I swiped on the off chance I'd be able to sell them.

Finally, I came to the main chamber of the temple, where a priest was standing over a sacrificial altar. There, chained to the altar, was my beloved Larcenous Lil. I made short work of the priest, and freed Lil from her chains. (I'm not sure if the skeleton key is required here, but I suspect so.)  I swiped a gold-and-silver candlestick from the temple, as well as the jewelled sacrificial dagger. I gave the black knight's longsword to Lil, but I have no idea if she used it in combat or not. She did follow me around for the rest of the game and help me in my battles, but I don't know if giving her a weapon made her more effective or not.

I wonder how much games like this shaped my
innate distrust of organised religion.

Heading out of the temple and back to the gate, we continued west into a smithy. There we found a blacksmith, and a solid gold anvil. The blacksmith wasn't hostile, but I couldn't get anything out of him, so I decided to kill him anyway. This ended up being a terrible idea. He didn't hurt me in retaliation, but one of my attacks was a fumble, which caused Trollsfire to break. I was forced to finish the fight with a regular longsword, but before I could kill the blacksmith he ran away. Feeling a little dejected, I decided not to track him down. The anvil was too heavy to move, so I left it behind.

Past the smithy was a series of passages and intersections that form a maze. The maze wasn't too difficult to navigate, although it did loop around on itself in a number of places. After spending some time mapping it, with Larcenous Lil in tow, I eventually found my way to a corridor with a breeze coming in from the surface. I made a rush for freedom, only to be stopped in my tracks by a terrible monster.

Hey, remember the title of this game? The Lair of the Minotaur? Well, the game gets around to it eventually, as the titular minotaur is the one guarding the exit with a battleaxe. Lil and I fought the minotaur together, and once again I was saved from injury by my armor. I did the bulk of the damage, but it was Lil who struck the killing blow.  With the minotaur dead there was nothing stopping us from escaping. We encountered a gypsy on the way out, but he wasn't hostile, so we left him behind and made our way to freedom.

What a woman!

With the adventure done, I was able to sell my loot to Sam Slicker, the local fence.  I was paid 2,184 gold pieces, but the game doesn't itemize the treasures, so I have no idea what each was worth.  I was also able to check out my stats, to see if any of them had improved. The only one that went up as far as I can tell is my skill in Swords; it was at 28% when I started the adventure, and 40% by the time I finished.  That's a pretty significant improvement for one adventure, I feel, but probably offset by the loss of my magic sword.

Artis' stats at the end of the adventure.

It took under an hour to play through Lair of the Minotaur, and it didn't present any difficulties: there were no puzzles to speak of, and the combats were all trivial. I might have been in trouble without my armor, but as far as I could tell wearing plate mail made me pretty much impervious.  If the other Eamon scenarios are like this, I'll keep playing them.  Lair of the Minotaur wasn't particularly engaging, and there really wasn't a lot to it, but a quick game with no hassles is always welcome.

THE RADNESS INDEX:

Story & Setting: Rescuing princesses and such is one of the more common video game tropes, but it's not often that you get tasked with rescuing someone named "Larcenous Lil". The setting doesn't really fit together, though. A dungeon under a castle, with an evil temple, plus a maze with a minotaur? It's all a little much, and no effort is made to stitch it together.  Plus the temple is much more prominent than the minotaur, who doesn't really merit his titular role despite being a final boss of sorts.  Rating: 2 out of 7.

Characters & Monsters: As with the previous Eamon scenario, there's not a lot to be done in terms of interaction. Either a character is hostile and you fight them, or they're friendly and they'll follow you around and help you fight. There are plenty of foes here: a skeleton, a knight, some priests, the minotaur, and even an aquatic killer rabbit.  There are a few non-hostile NPCs, in the blacksmith, the gypsy and the minstrel eye, but none of those responded to anything I tried. Larcenous Lil certainly sounds like she has character, but she doesn't do anything except follow you around and fight. So while there's plenty of variety in terms of numbers, there's not much variety in terms of interaction. Rating: 2 out of 7.

Aesthetics: As a text game with minimal sound it's bound not to do too well here, although I do like the descending speaker beep when you're thrown in the pit at the beginning.  The writing is decent, so it avoids a minimum score. Rating: 2 out of 7.

Combat: The system is a solid one (you can see the math it's using in the game manual), but a little simplistic: like many text adventure games with a combat system, it amounts to typing ATTACK MONSTER repeatedly. The spells might add something extra, but I haven't tried them out much, and hardly needed them anyway. Rating: 2 out of 7.

Mechanics: Everything in Eamon pretty much does what it's supposed to do, but with such a limited parser I always found it just a bit too restricting. It's solid, but unspectacular. Rating: 3 out of 7.

Challenge: I was never really challenged in this game, although it's probable that I was somewhat over-powered for the adventure in terms of gear and skills. That (or the opposite) is going to be a factor with these Eamon scenarios, as it's impossible to design such games for characters of every power level. I'll never complain too hard about a game being easy though. Rating: 2 out of 7.

Fun: The exploration is enjoyable, but the controls are just too limited to allow for much enjoyment. It's possible that future designers are able to wring something more out of Eamon, but there's honestly not a great deal to Donald Brown's efforts. Rating: 2 out of 7.

Bonus Points: 0.

The above scores total 15, which doubled gives a RADNESS Index of 30. That feels a little high compared to some other games, but it's hard to see where I'd knock it down. It's a solid if unspectacular game of the era, and taken on its own a score of 30/100 seems about right.

NEXT: For my next post I'll be trying to refresh my memory on Maces & Magic: Balrog Sampler.  This game was a nightmare to get running in any sort of playable form, so hopefully I can repeat the emulator wizardry that I managed last time. If not, I'm going to be piecing things together from my notes and maps, which might not make for the greatest of posts.

Priority Adventure 3: Mission: Asteroid (1980)

The best quality image I could find of this game's
Apple II packaging

Well, I've been gone for quite some time, and let me tell you returning to the blog is going to test my memory.  After I wrapped up Local Call for Death and decided to take a break from blogging - a potentially permanent one - I kept on making headway through my list. In late November and early December I played through Mission: Asteroid, Eamon: The Lair of the Minotaur, and Maces & Magic: Balrog Sampler.  I also got a start on Wizardry, but tossed that aside after several of my parties got wiped out. I definitely wasn't in the right frame of mind to be playing a game that would murder me ruthlessly and repeatedly, especially after my long slog through Rogue, so I took some time off to replay The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. That's just as well for the blog, because otherwise I'd have a lot more games to catch up on.

What I'm saying is, you'll have to bear with me for the next few entries.  I might not be as detailed as usual, and there probably won't be as many screen shots. Things should be back to normal when I reach Wizardry again, and hopefully by that time I'll be emotionally prepared for that meatgrinder of a game.

Thankfully, my first game back is pretty simplistic, and shouldn't be difficult to recap.  Mission: Asteroid - designed by Ken and Roberta Williams - is designated as Hi-Res Adventure #0, but in actuality it was released after The Wizard and the Princess.  Apparently Mission: Asteroid was deliberately designed as a game for novices, and so it was placed before their other games in the series.  It is much easier than its predecessors, but that doesn't mean it isn't without its own peculiarities, as I'll explain below.

An evocative beginning.

Mission: Asteroid begins with the player standing in front of a building. I started my usual SCORE, INVENTORY, HELP routine, which was interrupted partway through by a beeping sound. An examination of my inventory revealed a watch with a switch. I pressed the switch, and a voice from mission control gave me some instructions: I was to report to the briefing room at once, and the password I should use is "starstruck".  I wasn't able to wander off in any other directions, so I had little choice but to open the door of the building and go inside.

The first room was a reception, with a secretary who wouldn't let me continue without giving the password. Beyond that was the briefing room, where a general gave me my mission: an asteroid was headed for the earth, and I had to fly up there and blow it up. The asteroid collision was going to happen at 7:15, which means that NASA was cutting things very fine here.  It's a very stealthy asteroid, I must assume. (The game prompts you to salute the general when you meet him, and if you don't you're kicked out of the air force and the game ends. I guess they'd have back-up personnel for these missions, but it seems a little drastic to sack your number one pick for a small breach of etiquette when the world's at stake.)

Roberta Williams always finds the dumbest ways for you
to fail in her games.

The general also makes a point of saying that the mission is top secret, and that plays into the room directly to the west, where there are a pair of reporters. What they're doing their if the mission is top secret is anyone's guess, but if you talk to them it's another game over.  Never mind that the verb "talk" doesn't necessarily mean "spill your guts about the top secret mission you've just been given", but apparently the hero of this game just can't help himself.  I shouldn't criticise, because when I played the game I talked to the reporters with the almost-certain knowledge that I'd be blowing the mission wide open.  What can I say, sometimes finding ways to lose is the most fun part of an adventure game.

Back past the briefing room is a computer room, with a "diskette" (yes, we called them that sometimes, but I have no idea if there's a difference between a diskette and a floppy disk). I loaded the diskette, and the computer displayed my flight plan from Earth to the asteroid: right for 10 minutes, up for 5 minutes, left for 15 minutes, down for 5 minutes, left for 5 minutes, and up for 10 minutes. It seems needlessly erratic, to be honest. I was also wondering how these directions would apply to a text adventure, where time doesn't always pass unless you input commands. I tested things with my watch, and discovered that 5 minutes passed every time I made a move.

Next was a supply room, which contained the explosives required to blow up the asteroid.  North of that was the pre-flight checkout, where a doctor gave me the once-over. Apparently my personal hygiene wasn't up to standard, as the doctor wouldn't let me pass until I'd exercised in the gym and taken a shower.  Given the urgency of my mission, I question this doctor's sanity. He's really going to put the world in danger of destruction because I smell bad?

This might be the first game I've played where having bad
BO is a major obstacle.

Once past the doctor, I was able to head out to the airfield and over to the rocket. Inside was a throttle, and four buttons: white, black, orange and blue. These corresponded to left, right, up and down, respectively. Using the throttle launched me into space, where I had to navigate to the asteroid. As I suspected, each move corresponded to a five-minute interval, so it was a simple case of pressing the buttons the right number of times (once for 5 minutes, twice for 10, or thrice for 15), then landing on the asteroid. The need to press the buttons multiple times goes against space physics, of course, but it's hard to see how else this could have been implemented in such a limited parser.

In the space rocket.

The surface of the asteroid was a small maze, made up of just three areas (unless I mapped it incorrectly). The only danger here was suffocation: I needed a spacesuit to survive outside of the ship, and it had a limited oxygen supply. With such a small area to explore I soon found my destination, a cave which contained a deep pit. I set the timer on my explosives, dropped them in the pit, hightailed it back to the rocket and took off.  The asteroid was blown up before it could strike, and the Earth was saved.

Well, that's how it should have gone.  The first time, I dropped the explosives in the right area, but without specifying that I was dropping them in the pit. The explosion didn't fully destroy the asteroid, and it struck the Earth. (I hope it landed right on top of that doctor who insisted I take a shower.)  The second time, I didn't give myself enough time to escape. You have to set the timer on the bomb before dropping it in the pit; I set it too low, and was caught in the explosion.  The third time, I got it right, giving myself enough time to get back to the rocket, retrace my flight plan in reverse to get back to Earth, and watch as my world-saving handiwork took effect.

Oh no, I've been struck by Hugh chunks!

Oddly, the game allows you to continue playing once you've saved the Earth. I wandered around for a bit hoping that some characters might congratulate me, but nothing about the game changes, and when the timer runs out the asteroid destroys Earth anyway. I thought that maybe something was wrong with my copy of the game, but looking around at other blogs I see that this is a universal experience. It makes sense to me when modern games ship with bugs, but in something as small and simplistic as this it's quite baffling. Still, it doesn't affect gameplay at all, so it's hard to complain too much.

Not only does it allow you to keep playing after a victory, but you can keep playing after you've died as well. After the screen shot above I waited around, and at 7:15 the asteroid hit the Earth as scheduled. Then I flew back to Earth and tried to land, only to be told that I'd landed in the ocean and died (presumably because the asteroid had destroyed most of America). So this game is pretty buggy, but at least one outcome has been accounted for.

The victory screen, soon to be invalidated.

Having completed Mission: Asteroid, it's a real case of a game that's on my priority list because of the games surrounding it rather than because of any qualities possessed by the game itself. It's not particularly good or interesting, and it has very little in the way of historical significance, but the Hi-Res Adventure series is important so it's in the queue.  This is going to happen from time to time; heck, it's going to happen a couple of priority games down the line when I hit the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons games for the Intellivision.  It's an inherent drawback with being systematic, I suppose.

RADNESS INDEX:

Story & Setting: The "asteroid colliding with Earth" set-up is a new one, and it's still unusual to find an adventure game with a hard time limit.  The setting is split between mission control headquarters, outer space, and the asteroid itself.  The asteroid and outer space are both disappointingly empty, although I suppose that's realistic.  Mission control has the most content in the game, but most of it's pretty nonsensical. Rating: 1 out of 7.

Characters & Monsters: There really aren't any. The receptionist only responds to the password, the general is a one-time infodump who gets mad if you don't salute, the reporters are only there as a way to lose the game, and the doctor is an absurd obstacle to you getting to the rocket. Characters you can only interact with in one specific way barely qualify as such, so this game is getting a low score. Rating: 1 out of 7.

Aesthetics: The colour graphics here are on a par with those of The Wizard and the Princess, though it must be said that they're not depicting anything nearly as interesting as what's in that game. They're quite ugly, but colour graphics of any kind on a home computer is still refreshing at this point. Rating: 2 out of 7.

Puzzles: The puzzles in this game are dreadfully simplistic, and most of them are signposted heavily within the game. That's a legacy of designing the game for beginners, but I feel like Ken and Roberta took it a little too far. The most difficult part is probably navigating outer space, or finding the asteroid cave before your air runs out. As a small game with simple puzzles it's not going to get a minimum score, but I can't rate it too highly.  Rating: 2 out of 7.

Mechanics: It's a very simple game with very simple commands, but it does what it does reasonably well I suppose. It's tempting to knock it down a point for the false ending, but it doesn't affect gameplay at all. Rating: 3 out of 7.

Challenge: This is definitely one of the easiest games I've played for the blog, but it's short and comes without a great deal of frustration. Rating: 2 out of 7.

Fun: The game may be short, and may be lacking in frustrating elements, but it's also overly linear and gives the player almost no scope to do anything outside of the obvious solutions. Games should at least enable some kind of "play", but Mission: Asteroid just walks the player from one simplistic puzzle to the next. Rating: 1 out of 7.

Bonus Points: 0.

The above scores total 12, which doubles gives a RADNESS Index of 24. That's well below Mystery House and The Wizard and the Princess, and only a little bit above the earliest of Greg Hassett's adventures. It really is one of the least engaging games I've played so far though. It might have been designed for beginners, but I'd be hard-pressed to see it convincing many of them to stick around and play some more adventures.

NEXT: I go back to Eamon to try out its second adventure, The Lair of the Minotaur.  I can't remember a damn thing about playing it, so writing this one up is going to be a test.