TRS-80 Adventure games?
Harrison Page
father to buy adventure games for the TRS-80. I was first
introduced to "Adventure" under the name "Pyramid 2000". There
was another called "Bedlam". Does anybody else remember these?
I never, ever figured out how to get past Napoleon in Bedlam.
Sigh,
..Harrison
(who did find his TRS-80 Model I Level II in a box a few weeks ago
and is going to take it out and hook it up and see if he can
remember how to use the Exatron Stringy-Floppy gosh we had
48k and lowercase and a tape drive and some Scott Adams adventures
and a joystick that fell apart after a month and, oh sorry.)
--
Harrison Page (harr...@adobe.com || harr...@wiretap.spies.com)
Box 4436 Mountain View California 94040 1 415 962 4800 x3957
"Nearly all invertebrates of a suitable size fall prey to frogs,
and even such vertebrates as mice and reptiles may be eaten."
WEAVER, GREGG S
>I have a vague memory, at best, of going to Radio Shack with my
>father to buy adventure games for the TRS-80. I was first
>introduced to "Adventure" under the name "Pyramid 2000". There
>was another called "Bedlam". Does anybody else remember these?
>
I don't remember ever solving them, though, and it's been so long, I don't
remember much of anything about them. They always seemed a lot harder than
the Infocom games to me. Bedlam and Pyramid 2000 didn't seem to have as
much logic to their solutions as the Infocom games did. I kinda wish I still
had the games, but the computer was my dad's, and he gave it away years ago.
There was one old non-Infocom game I thought was pretty good on the TRS-80.
It was called something like "Xenos" and involved exploring a deserted town in
the middle of the desert. Nearby, a ufo had landed and somehow the aliens had
killed all the city's residents.
Weaver
pa...@castlebbs.com
IH>I have a vague memory, at best, of going to Radio Shack with my
IH>father to buy adventure games for the TRS-80. I was first
IH>introduced to "Adventure" under the name "Pyramid 2000". There
IH>was another called "Bedlam". Does anybody else remember these?
No, I don't remember these, but my brother had a TRS-80 and he had this
game called Raaka Two or something like that and it was really hot. I
played that in 1980 or around then and have a vague memory of it, but I
know that if I could I'd play it again. Anybody else play this game or
hear of it?
Paul
* SLMR 2.1a * Custom Tagline: Please deposit 50 cents...
Stephen R. Granade
In a previous article, pa...@castlebbs.com () says:
>No, I don't remember these, but my brother had a TRS-80 and he had this
>game called Raaka Two or something like that and it was really hot. I
>played that in 1980 or around then and have a vague memory of it, but I
>know that if I could I'd play it again. Anybody else play this game or
>hear of it?
Yup, played it aeons ago. As I remember, I kept getting stuck at this
one point with a guard who always killed me...
I also saw (but never played) Bedlam. What can I say, Radio Shack
had their hooks into me early.
Stephen
--
_________________________________________________________________________
| Stephen Granade | "My research proposal involves reconstructing |
| | the Trinity test using tweezers and |
| sgra...@obu.arknet.edu | assistants with very good eyesight." |
pa...@castlebbs.com
IB>>No, I don't remember these, but my brother had a TRS-80 and he had this
IB>>game called Raaka Two or something like that and it was really hot. I
IB>>played that in 1980 or around then and have a vague memory of it, but I
IB>>know that if I could I'd play it again. Anybody else play this game or
IB>>hear of it?
IB>Yup, played it aeons ago. As I remember, I kept getting stuck at this
IB>one point with a guard who always killed me...
Hehehe yeah. I was only like 12 when I played Raaka Two and was hooked.
It was actually my first ever 'text adventure'. It was hard to figure
out what was going on. And I definitely remember the guard who kills you
if he sees you and right before says, "You infidel dog!" I love it. Do
you still have this game or was it borrowed or did you end up selling
it?
IB>I also saw (but never played) Bedlam. What can I say, Radio Shack
IB>had their hooks into me early.
Oh I've never seen nor played this game. I remember playing another game
on my brother's TRS-80 computer that was like building up armies of
ships and attacking each other's planets. I think you can play against
a friend or what I remember most is playing against the computer. It was
pretty cool.
Fredrik Ekman
"Lord of the Rings". Things like publisher, programmer, et c. Has
anyone even played it?
/F
Stephen R. Granade
In a previous article, pa...@castlebbs.com () says:
>Do
>you still have this game or was it borrowed or did you end up selling
>it?
Unfortunately, I played Raaka Two on a friend's CoCo. Ditto for watching
him work on Bedlam. He sold all of his old equipment years ago, I'm
afraid.
David Librik
>IH>I have a vague memory, at best, of going to Radio Shack with my
>IH>father to buy adventure games for the TRS-80. I was first
>IH>introduced to "Adventure" under the name "Pyramid 2000". There
>IH>was another called "Bedlam". Does anybody else remember these?
>No, I don't remember these, but my brother had a TRS-80 and he had this
>game called Raaka Two or something like that and it was really hot. I
>played that in 1980 or around then and have a vague memory of it, but I
>know that if I could I'd play it again. Anybody else play this game or
>hear of it?
Raaka-Tu. Like every piece of software from Radio Shack it wasn't very good;
but unlike Apple 2 users, the ordinary TRS-80 owner did not have a convenient
source for decent software which you could browse and buy off-the-shelf.
In order to get the good stuff you usually had to mail-order it, unless you
were lucky enough to live somewhere where a computer store would deign to
stock a few titles for a machine they didn't sell.
The Scott Adams adventures have already been mentioned, and of course Microsoft
had its own version of Colossal Cave. But also very good were the games from
Med Systems Software (later Screenplay): the maze-based graphical games
DEATHMAZE 5000, LABYRINTH, ASYLUM and ASYLUM II. They were fond of mental
institutions -- another adventure of theirs was THE INSTITUTE, in which you
are a mental patient, and your primary action in the game is to get out of
your cell, lock yourself in the medicine closet, and repeatedly shoot up with
all sorts of hallucinogenic drugs. You spent most of the game lying on the
floor, stoned out of your gourd.]
The usual model was the Scott Adams adventure; in addition to Scott's there
were also Greg Hasset's adventures -- ENCHANTED ISLAND, HOUSE OF THE
SEVEN GABLES, WORLD'S EDGE, DEVIL'S PALACE, etc. etc. Greg Hasset was
about 13 years old, and while many of these games were popular then, I
always thought they were fairly unspectacular. The Programmer's Guild,
especially Teri Li, wrote LOST DUTCHMAN'S GOLD and SPIDER MOUNTAIN, two
quite good games of the Adams variety; they also brought us the incredibly
gruesome DEATH DREADNAUGHT and DOMES OF KILGARI. Jyym Pearson, though his
interface was really poor, had some of the best plotted and most literarily
satisfying games: THE CURSE OF CROWLEY MANOR, ESCAPE FROM TRAAM, LUCIFER'S
REALM, and LAST DAYS OF SAIGON. He also did THE PARADISE THREAT which always
seemed like outtakes from LUCIFER'S REALM.
But there's no question that everyone simply dropped dead of astonishment
when Infocom's ZORK first appeared. Infocom was founded to put ZORK on the
TRS-80 Model I -- the other machines followed, when they could scrounge up
the money to buy some. But ZORK 1 barely fit on a single-density Model I
disk, and never ever could have been developed on a TRS-80, so it's really
kind of an anomaly.
I've been using Jeff Vavasour's excellent shareware TRS-80 emulator (runs
your TRS-80 stuff on your PC) lately, and sure enough, a lot of those
Scott Adams games are still loads of fun!
- David Librik
lib...@cs.Berkeley.edu
Damien Neil
David Librik <lib...@congo.EECS.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:
>Raaka-Tu. Like every piece of software from Radio Shack it wasn't very good;
>but unlike Apple 2 users, the ordinary TRS-80 owner did not have a convenient
>source for decent software which you could browse and buy off-the-shelf.
Hey...I remember that one now! One of the first games I ever played. My
local library had a TRS-80...I taught myself BASIC on it, and played every
game they had. This was one of them -- rather nice game for the time,
actually. I finally won it after much work. I seem to remember that there
was no way to save, or maybe you needed a cassette to save. (I didn't have
any.) There was one place near the end where you had a fairly random chance
of running into the guards and dying...the first time I made it that far,
they killed me and I had to start all over from the beginning.
They also had Pyramid, which was essentially Collosal Cave in a pyramid.
(Same little bird, black rod, green snake, gold nugget, etc...)
--
Damien Neil [MIME OK] CMPS/EEAP "Until somebody debugs reality, the best
dam...@b63519.student.cwru.edu I can do is a quick patch here and there."
dp...@po.cwru.edu Case Western Reserve University - Erik Green
Harrison Page
> [ .. ] But also very good were the games from
> Med Systems Software (later Screenplay): the maze-based graphical games
> DEATHMAZE 5000, LABYRINTH, ASYLUM and ASYLUM II. They were fond of mental
> institutions -- another adventure of theirs was THE INSTITUTE, in which you
> are a mental patient, and your primary action in the game is to get out of
> your cell, lock yourself in the medicine closet, and repeatedly shoot up with
> all sorts of hallucinogenic drugs. You spent most of the game lying on the
> floor, stoned out of your gourd.]
Hee hee. I remember seeing advertisements for those in "80 Micro" magazine,
but I never ordered them. 80 Micro also had an adventure game that you
could type in the Basic for and play. If memory serves, it was called
"Hog Jowl Mansion". I stole the clever :-) parser and wrote my own games
on the TRS-80 and the Apple ][.
> But there's no question that everyone simply dropped dead of astonishment
> when Infocom's ZORK first appeared. Infocom was founded to put ZORK on the
> TRS-80 Model I -- the other machines followed, when they could scrounge up
> the money to buy some. But ZORK 1 barely fit on a single-density Model I
> disk, and never ever could have been developed on a TRS-80, so it's really
> kind of an anomaly.
> I've been using Jeff Vavasour's excellent shareware TRS-80 emulator (runs
> your TRS-80 stuff on your PC) lately, and sure enough, a lot of those
> Scott Adams games are still loads of fun!
Emulator? Ooo. Hmm..
..Harrison
--
Harrison Page (harr...@hedgehog.darkside.com || harr...@wiretap.spies.com)
Box 4436 Mountain View California 94040 +1 415 962 4800 x3957
"Nope. Nothing wrong here." - The Sharp Cereal Professor