As promised at the end of the last adventure post, we’re looking today at the graphics version of Adventureland by Adventure International, which came out some 4 years after the text only game. I’m also going to try a new format which may or may not prevail – influenced somewhat by Sprite Castle, I’m going to start including the music I would be listening to at the time as well as interesting news items and/or personal memories from the year or month of release.
If you search for Adventure International today you’ll find various outdoor pursuit companies and holiday operators. The one we are interested in was founded in 1979 by non other than Scott and Alexis Adams, who basically pioneered adventure games on home computers. In fact Adventureland was the very first commercially available text adventure! They were hugely successful until 1986, and even had a partnership with Marvel releasing three Questprobe games based on the Marvel characters The Incredible Hulk, Spider-Man, The Human Torch and the Thing. I own physical copies of Spider-Man and The Hulk, and no doubt we’ll get around to all three of those games eventually.
At their peak the company employed over 50 staff, operating out of Longwood, Florida, but the video game crash which started in 1983 ultimately claimed Adventure International and they went bankrupt in 1986. In 1980 the source code for the text version of the game was published in Soft Side magazine, something which sounds crazy today. It obviously didn’t do the company any harm though, and they went on to publish 30 games and over 300 more from other independent programmers.
The Game
The purpose of our adventure is to locate treasures and return them to their proper place. After an intro screen explaining what an adventure game is and how to play them (you should ALL know that by now!) the game begins. Having said that, it took me way longer than it should have to realise you had to hit return to see the location description, and return again to see the graphics. Without knowing that it would be a struggle! I found that mechanism a little clunky and going EAST from the text description screen, for example, just gave you O.K. and it isn’t until you hit return again that the screen is drawn and the description is available (after hitting return again). Clunky.
Examining things on screen or in the description can offer up further graphics.
Like all adventures from these days, you’ll need to map as you go. You’ll also need to get comfortable with being frustrated – that is part of the fun after all! Actions are not always obvious but, as a hint, if you see something with a magical word on it is probably worth carrying that item and saying that word in various situations.
Limitations of the vocabulary and interpreter soon become obvious. UP is not recognised, for example, but U is. It is also strictly two word commands – GO IN HOLE or GO TO STUMP are not recognised. GO HOLE, GO STUMP etc. are. It is fairly quick to get used to but can be a bit annoying. Actually, I realise that isn’t quite true – some one word commands are accepted such as SWIM, E,N,W,S,U,D and others.
Anyway, that last paragraph was a bit of a clue and if you do things in the right order fairly early on in the adventure you’ll find the location where you are supposed to dump your treasures and check your SCORE.
This adventure, whilst still very early on in the genre, is head and shoulders above some of the ones we have played thus far. It is a proper adventure game, and it was the reason I fell in love with text adventures. Games would get more complex, bigger, more in depth, they would have better graphics, but as far as game play goes and problem solving, Adventureland shows why Scott Adams is regarded as one of the best in the business.
One thing I quite like about Adventureland is that when you die you are sent to Limbo – only a specific direction can get you out of limbo and you get to live again. The other thing to mention is that you’ll come across chiggers – nasty little things that bite you. If that happens you need to take something that heals you – a sign early on in the game, by the dragon, hints to what that something is. If you don’t heal, your bites get infected and you eventually die, and getting from limbo to where you were can be very frustrating. The key here, and I say this on literally all games that allow it, is to save your game often. Nothing is as annoying as having to retrace all your steps and hard work because you forgot to save your game.
This game, it has to be said, is hard. It takes some lateral thinking and if you play it properly it will take you some time away to ponder and ruminate on solutions. I remember spending a lot of time in school thinking about what I should have tried or how I could solve a particular problem, and rushing up to the bedroom when I got home to put my theories to the test. And there we have the brilliance of a good adventure game in a nutshell. They gave me so much more than a shoot-em-up or platformer ever could.
Couple of other gotchas – the lamp will not last forever, you will need to be economical with it, and don’t drop your treasures off as soon as you find them, they may be useful elsewhere first.
You will die – it’s pretty impossible not to – and this is where your save games come in. You only get 10 save slots (0-9) so use them wisely and overwrite slots as required.
The sense of achievement in this game is huge – solving the problems does fill you with a sense of pride and it is clever writing, not treating the player as an idiot but also giving enough subtle hints along the way to help you out. I’m not sure I’d recommend this one unless you’ve played a couple of easier adventures first, although saying that this is the first commercial game so logically you should start here.
One thing Adventureland will definitely give you is a good grounding for the games to come.
Before I end the review, a special mention to Brian Howarth who ported this game to the Commodore 64. He worked with Scott Adams a lot and ported more than 17 games across to the commodore and other home computers. He also wrote his own original games such as The Golden Baton and The Time Machine and had a film deal for The Gremlins and TV deals for Robin of Sherwood and Supergran! We’ll be covering some if not all of Brian’s games in this series.
Rating
One of the best. Only not 5 stars due to slight limitations with vocabulary and too many deaths! There are better to come, but at the time this was the definitive adventure game.
Music & Context
I have tried to find out the month of release for this game but failed, so 1982 will have to do.
Released fairly early in 1982 was English Settlement by XTC. This has become one of my favourite albums ever but I was limited fund wise as a kid in 1982, so only had the single, Senses Working Overtime. I played this a lot back then (still do) and I am certain this would have been playing in my room as I was tackling Adventureland.
Also music related, in the news in 1982 The Who began their ‘Farewell Tour’.
I had already by then formed my love of The Who largely from playing my brother’s collection, but also because they were among the first albums I did own as a kid. I remember thinking of them as somewhat past their best by the time their farewell tour was announced so I wasn’t surprised. The Who for me were all about the late 1960s and 1970s, and so I accepted the fact that they were no longer to be around. Silly me 😄
