Working in the gaming industry

Our weekend journey through the pages of the February/March 1983 Aardvark Ltd. software catalog continues, with pages 9 and 10.  (Were out of the Dave Edson pages now, though not all of these games are credited to an author.)

Page 9 focuses on TRS-80 Color Computer games, with a few that are also compatible with the Ohio Scientific Instruments kit computers that gave Aardvark its start.  Like a lot of early home computer games, most of these are simple renditions of tried-and-true game ideas, written in BASIC in somebodys den:



Starship Hercules is yet another version of the classic, unlicensed Star Trek games that appeared on mainframes and just about any other system with an addressable text display back in the day; my own introduction to this once-thriving genre came via Radio Shacks Space Warp for the TRS-80 Model I.  This CoCo version required a whopping 32K of memory, unusual for a game with no real graphics, but as its written in BASIC there was probably some resource wastage afoot.

Breakaway is yet another Breakout clone, also written in BASIC.  Biorhythm is a very 1970s concept, based on the then-popular pseudoscientific idea that people function on precisely timed cycles of various types that intersect in propitious or negative ways, and can predict compatibility via comparison.

Killerbot sounds like a version of the arcade gamer Berzerk, but its actually an older, simpler idea that inspired the Stern coin-op -- the player moves, the enemy robots move toward the player in turn, and the player tries to get them to run into obstacles or each other.  Calling this "real time" is a bit of an exaggeration, but the concept is a classic; I played a Dr. Who-inspired version called Daleks on the Atari ST in the late 80s.  It was originally available for the OSI platform and was ported to the TRS-80 Color later on.  The same goes for Battlefleet, which sounds a lot like Battleship but appears to have a little bit of Mastermind thrown in, as feedback scores the players 6-shot volleys in terms of how many squares were hit.

Page 10 continues the trend, with more CoCo renditions of established game concepts:


Space Wall sounds about as exciting as its title -- two players duke it out through a wall... in space!  For some unspecified reason, the (I assume) more playable machine code version is accompanied by a BASIC version.  But in the early home computer hobbyist days, when third-party software was scarce and everybody needed to learn how to program to some degree, this wasnt too unusual.

Golf purports to provide a "very accurate simulation" of the sport, but like a lot of early golf games, it plays more like pool, with an overhead 2-D perspective.  But it looks like it was a decent attempt at the sport -- some details are available here at L. Curtis Boyles excellent TRS-80 Color Computer Games List site.

Crosswords (aka Parizeks Crossword Game) wasnt really a crossword puzzle game -- that is, there wasnt enough storage available to provide clues for word-guessing.  Instead, players took turns placing words into a computer-generated crossword grid, making the game more like Scrabble.

And Space Shuttle is nothing like Activisions sophisticated simulation for the Atari 2600 -- from the description, this sounds more like Ataris coin-op Lunar Lander in reverse, as the player tries to fly up to dock with an orbiting space station but may have to land back on the planets surface for refueling.

Were nearing the end of this vintage catalog -- next time, pages 11 and 12!

Im a little bit busy this week, so for the sake of tight deadlines, were tackling another Greg Hassett adventure for the TRS-80 -- Journey to the Center of the Earth, published in 1978, which I believe is his second published game after Enchanted Island.  No publisher is credited, but its likely this one was released by Mad Hatter Software or Hassetts own Adventure World; it was also published in type-in form in 1981, in Bob Liddils Captain 80 Book of BASIC Adventures, and also appeared on the Commodore 64 a few years later.


Hassetts style was still developing -- he was only twelve or thirteen years old at the time -- and so we see that spelling and grammar are again an issue, and the map is rather loosely and randomly constructed.  If we die, the program just ends; theres no opportunity to retry.  And the BASIC-language parser is surprisingly fast, but limited -- for instance, INV and INVENT dont work, we must spell out INVENTORY, and some words are very situation-specific, requiring a fair amount of guessing.  The name borrows from Jules Vernes classic novel, but like Hassetts later The House of Seven Gables, the game is a treasure hunt that borrows the basic concept but otherwise bears no substantial resemblance to the book.



I always urge interested readers to try these games out before proceeding here; Journey to the Center of the Earth is not a particularly difficult game to finish, though the map is fairly large and its not always obvious which items are score-worthy treasures and which are just items.  As usual, I will be giving away most of the puzzle and plot details as I encountered them, so as you proceed beyond this point, be advised there are...

***** SPOILERS AHEAD! *****

The game begins by prompting "WHAT IS YOUR NAME?"  -- I went with GUYBRUSH -- but I never saw the game make use of this information; it seems to be an unfinished idea, and does not appear in Hassetts other games.  I can only speculate that this is here to confuse the player with a later "WHO GOES THERE?" puzzle -- our entry here is not useful as a password.





We begin in a ship with nothing in inventory, apparently arriving at the center of the Earth rather woefully undersupplied.  This adventure wont be too serious in tone, as the ships computer screen reads: SHIP WILL NOT FUNCTION -- FRIBULATING GONKULATOR IS BURNED OUT.  So presumably we will to have to get it refribulated so it can gonkulate, or gonkulate it for the sake of fribulation.

North of the ship, we suddenly find ourselves in a COBBLESTONE HALLWAY, with a chirping that reportedly SOUNDS LIKE BUGS.  Further north is a room with rubies in its walls, and theres a LARGE RUBY we can take.   But GADZOOKS!!! A GAINT [sic] BUG JUST WALKED IN TO KILL ME!  Hassetts early games never felt bad about telegraphing a creatures intentions... and whoops, maybe Im misunderstanding and thats not a misspelling, as shortly IM BEING DEVOURED BY A GAINT BUG!!  And then IM DYING...DYING...DEAD, in rather an overdramatic (not to say impossibly uttered) manner.

So we dont want to run into any Gaint Bugs, at least not yet.  But they show up randomly, and all over the place, so were going to have to figure out a solution before too long.

Over to the west is A ROOM WITH MANY ANIMALS... until WAIT! THEYVE ALL RAN [sic] AWAY.  All that remains is A PARROT IN A CAGE.  We cant GET CAGE or OPEN CAGE, as its not a recognized noun, but we can GET PARROT and the cage comes along.

South of the ship is a DUSTY PLACE containing A SET OF KEYS.  Past this, as the topography becomes increasingly random, we find A HUGE ICE CAVERN, leading to A ROOM WITH TRACES OF SLIME ON THE FLOORS AND WALLS.

The slime room leads to ALS DINER, apparently of unlicensed Happy Days fame, where theres a COKE MACHINE, joyfully and explicitly unlicensed with an ENJOY COCA-COLA banner.  Presumably we will need a quarter to avail ourselves of its carbonated bounty.  Theres also some FOOD here.  I never found a need to eat or drink in-game, though the game will let us imbibe and consume these, or try to feed various creatures.


South of the slime room is the source of the slime - the HYDRA ROOM, occupied by a nine-headed hydra.  It blocks our way south and west, but we can explore a TORTURE CHAMBER to the east (where THERE IS [sic] SOME HUMAN SKELETONS and a giant bug asleep.)  Trying to KILL BUG indicates that I CANT KILL ANYTHING. IM TOO WEAK. BUT MAYBE IF YOU WERE A BIT MORE SPECIFIC... though this actually a lie, as the game will let us KILL things in the right context.

The HUGE PIT west of the slime room contains a quarter and a cigarette lighter.  We cant BUY COKE, but we can INSERT QUARTER to get a bottle back at Als Diner.  We cant SHAKE COKE or SPRAY COKE or even OPEN COKE, so thats not going to be a novel attack.


A SMALL ROOM west of our starting point contains a GOLD NUGGET, and a scribbling reading HAR HAR HAR! YOULL NEVER MAKE IT! >> ARBADAC ARBA.  A 35,000 CARAT DIAMOND (could a human being actually lift that? We can carry it, anyway) lies in a low crawl space south of this room, and going east from that room leads into the traditional MAZE OF TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES a la the classic Colossal Cave Adventure.  The maze contains a MAGIC WAND.


One exit from the maze leads back to the ruby room -- and with no giant bug about at the moment, we can go north to find ourselves IN A DARK ROOM.  And I THINK I HEAR GRUNTS AND GROANS NEARBY.  Ahem... I never found out what this was referring to, and thats probably a good thing.  East of this area is another maze.

North of the dark room is the SOUTH SIDE OF A CHASM, and a SHINY SWORD, with molten lava below.   The game keeps us from walking blithely into the molten lava, but we will probably want to find a way across.

We seem to score 10 or 15 points per treasure, out of a maximum of 175, but they do vary.  We have to drop them in the ship to earn points, otherwise we remain at 0 with a BOY, YOU STINK! assessment from Mr. Hassett.

Hassetts mazes are usually pretty straightforward -- each room generally has multiple exits that lead back to the same place, with one that goes to a new area and one (usually) that goes back to a previous one, so they are not hard to map using the traditional item-drop method.

The "secret passage" maze leads to THE TROLLS PALACE, with gold bars and a diamond necklace. With 5 treasures claimed, I have 80 of 175 points.  I am hoping the sword will help deal with the hydra or any giant bugs I encounter, but in a dark room where THERE ARE GIANT [sc!] BUGS ALL AROUND ME! we still cant KILL them, though at least we can just exit the room without being harassed or killed.

Ah, yes, when a giant bug arrives specifically to kill us, we can use the sword to KILL BUG -- DING! DONG! THE BUG IS DEAD, THE BUG IS DEAD!!!  Several of the authors works contained Wizard of Oz references.

How can we cross the lava chasm?  POUR COKE and OPEN COKE and THROW BOTTLE dont do anything -- not that I should have realistically expected a cold soda to cool down molten lava.  But we can WAVE WAND to magically transport ourselves to the north side of the chasm.  It leads to a wooden platform and a sign warning us about the rickety wooden bridge, but we can ignore the sign and travel to the TROLLS PLACE. (Which turns out -- [sic] -- to be the Trolls Palace again, but by a different entrance and with more resistance from the resident troll, who throws an axe at us if we try to enter without dealing with him.)


The axe-throwing troll is another homage to the classic Crowther/Woods adventure, but his axe is consistently fatal, so we dont want this to happen.  We cant answer the Trolls "WHO DARES TO ENTER MY PALACE???", it seems, nor can we KILL TROLL or exit the room without being killed by his axe.  So is this a red herring?  Are we just supposed to get into the palace via the maze?

What about the hydra?  We can FEED HYDRA, which turns him into A GIANT HYDRA RUBBING HIS STOMACH, but he still wont let us past.  HELP is actually helpful here, suggesting CIGAR? CIGARETTE? TIPPARILLO [sic]?  We cant USE LIGHTER or LIGHT LIGHTER, but we can BURN HYDRA and THE HYDRA CRUMBLES TO THE GROUND DEAD.  With this surprisingly flammable creature dispatched, we can get an emerald from the CLAM ROOM and a MING VASE from the DRAGON ROOM.  Weve got 7 treasures and 105 points now.

Past the Dragon Room, we can get some silver bars in a MAMMOTH GARDEN.  The VELVET ROOM contains some tools (not described further and treated as a set).  Theres a TREASURE ROOM where MANY DWARVES GUARD SOME PRETTY SCRAWNY TREASURE thats not further described and cannot be obtained, and an ARABIAN ROOM with an oil slick, in a bit of 1970s pop culture xenostereotyping.  But we cant BURN SLICK, as oddly enough IT DOESNT BURN.

The oil slick is meant to be a hint leading us south to MACS EARTHDIGGER BODY SHOP, which contains a new fribulating gronkulator!  This is a little clearer now -- we are near the center of the earth because our "ship" is a digging contraption of some kind.  But we cant GET FRIBULATING GONKULATOR because the parser doesnt recognize any variant of it???  We have tools, so maybe we can FIX FROBULATING GONKULATOR... but I CANT.   Oh, wait, I have been mistyping, calling it a GRONKULATOR [mic] instead of a GONKULATOR!  We can GET GONKULATOR.

Now can we install it in the ship?  We cant REPLACE or INSTALL it; if we try to FIX it here, the parser says I THINK I HAVE TO DROP IT FIRST, but DROP GONKULATOR doesnt work?  Ack, I keep typing GRONKULATOR!

And as soon as we DROP and then FIX GONKULATOR, the game is over!?!  I am 5 points short, though, with 170 of the 175 points, so lets see what Ive missed.

Aha!  If we return to the dangerous TROLLS PALACE entrance with the parrot in hand, the parrot chants, "SIR ALEXANDER...SIR ALEXANDER!"  But SAY SIR ALEXANDER doesnt solve the problem?  A simple SIR ALEXANDER works, and THE TROLL SCURRIES AWAY IN FEAR without tossing an axe in our direction.  But this is just another way into the Trolls Palace, where we have already been, and we dont get any points for doing it. 

I had to look at the BASIC code to see that DROP PARROT at the climax counts as a 5-point treasure, earning us the rank of ADVENTURER GRANDMASTER:


Hooray!  Were the Adventurer Grandmaster of Adventurerdom!




Im getting close to exhausting Mr. Hassetts sizeable body of work, but there are still a couple of his games I havent tackled.  Well get around to them in due course, I am sure; somehow I missed the existence of his games back in the TRS-80 era, so Ive been enjoying discovering them, three decades later.

Back in the mid-1990s, Ataris Jaguar console was trying to gain a market foothold.  It was a tough road -- the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo Entertainment System were still going strong with solid software support, the 3DO was out and arguably flashier with its CD-ROM standard hardware, and Atari was having a hard time convincing gamers and developers to commit to its new system. 

The struggling Atari lacked the marketing capital to run a major television ad campaign, and mainstream retailers were quite happy with the Sega and Nintendo lines; the demand for the Jaguar was failing to materialize according to plan.  So the company engaged Sendai Publishing to include a 16-page full-color brochure in an issue of the companys popular Electronic Gaming Monthly magazine.  (Im inclined to believe that Sendais design department had a hand in it, as well, as some of the "new" material looks a lot like the EGM of the time.)

The cover features Ataris always striking Jaguar logo, which promised mind-ripping 64-bit power that the software library didnt always live up to.  Theres also a good picture of the memorable "toilet" CD-ROM add-on:

Good thing I didnt sit down!

Ataris promotion, like its Lynx ads at the time, treated the hardware specs as the main selling point.  The Jaguar was a complicated system, with a mixture of 64-bit and 16-bit processors that made programming the beast a bit daunting.  Witness the carnage as Atari attempts to link the systems raw power to the gaming experience, both overstating -- "combat games thatll drain pints of your blood" sounds dangerous -- and misstating -- what the heck is 850 million pixels-per-INCH rendering speed supposed to mean?

Feel the turf burn!

Theres no question that the system had power -- the Cinepak rendering did make Dragons Lair look better on the Jag than on the competing 3DO and Sega CD systems, and Jeff Minter was clearly able to synthesize psychedelic gaming intensity out of the complex array of processors.  And Ataris foray into VR gaming was forward-looking, although it never came to market despite its "Coming Soon!" promo below.  The table-of-specs marketing approach, used to sell stereo systems and home consoles in decades past to a knowledgeable geek-insider market, was starting to become obsolete as video gaming became more mainstream.  I doubt this carried a lot of weight with mid-90s EGM readers:

Tote bags!  Oh yeah!

The hardware was impressive, but youll note that none of the awards listed on the right were for specific games.  The Jaguars power didnt necessarily lead directly to great software -- the few third-party publishers that did produce Jaguar games generally played it safe, producing experiences that were not too different from the 16-bit systems already on the market.   Well take a look at the Jaguars library as this cover-to-cover series continues.

Were continuing our cover-to-cover pagethrough of the 1992 Virgin Games catalog, up to pages 15 and 16.

Page 15 features Scrabble Deluxe, an enhanced edition of the classic physical-world word game:


Scrabble is Scrabble, of course, but having The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary online is a nice touch (noting that hard disk installation is required, as the 100,000-word dictionary likely spanned more than one 3.5" diskette.)  And the big draw with most of these adaptations is that the computer can provide AI opponents, so dedicated Scrabblers need not round up actual human beings for a quick game.  The game also features PULL-DOWN MENUS, presumably with mouse compatibility, which was still a pretty neat new thing in 1992.

Page 16 features a genre near and dear to my heart, with KGB, a graphic adventure game set behind the newly post-Cold War-era, rapidly shredding Iron Curtain: 



KGB was developed by the French software house Cryo Interactive, and is a point-and-click adventure game with a dense plot that, reportedly, may be difficult to grasp unless the player is very, very thorough about explorations and conversations.  There was a CD-ROM upgrade released later on, with new video clips featuring Donald Sutherland and a retitle as Conspiracy, presumably to make the game a little less historically specific.

On to pages... drum roll please... please?  Hello?  Never mind... well look at pages 17 and 18 tomorrow.