Path: menudo.uh.edu!usenet From: ping@ping.actrix.gen.nz (Peter Ingham) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Subject: REVIEW: The Lost Treasures of Infocom Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.games Date: 16 Aug 1993 15:57:44 GMT Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett Lines: 188 Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator) Distribution: world Message-ID: <24oapo$7uh@menudo.uh.edu> Reply-To: ping@ping.actrix.gen.nz (Peter Ingham) NNTP-Posting-Host: karazm.math.uh.edu Keywords: game, text adventure, commercial PRODUCT NAME The Lost Treasures of Infocom BRIEF DESCRIPTION A collection of the more significant Role-Playing Games (RPG's) originally published by Infocom in the late 70's/early 80's. The original Zork was developed at MIT by Dave Lebling and Marc Blank and inspired by "advent". Like advent, Zork is a text-based adventure with an English-like parser, so you type in English sentences to control the game. They formed/joined Infocom to market microcomputer implementations and extend the genre. AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION Name: Activision / Infocom Address: PO Box 67001 Los Angeles, CA 90067 USA LIST PRICE Unknown. Price paid $NZ 160 (approximately $90 US). USA mailorder prices are around $40-50. SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS HARDWARE NONE. Very little RAM is needed. Remember - this stuff was written to run on the microprocessors of the early 1980's. "Hitchhikers Guide" for example uses only 175K. Hard drive not required, but can be used. Works on 68000 Adspeed accelerator. I haven't heard of any problems on other CPU's. SOFTWARE NONE. Runs under Kickstart 1.3 and 2.0. (I've not tried any others; there are no documented incompatibilities). COPY PROTECTION None. Installs on a hard drive. Saves games as ordinary AmigaDOS files in the directory the particular game is run from. MACHINE USED FOR TESTING Amiga 500 Rev 6 1MB Chip RAM, 2MB Fast RAM Commodore A590 hard drive AmigaDOS 2.04 REVIEW The package includes 20 of the "classic" text-based adventure games released by Infocom in the early 80's: Zork Zork II Zork III Beyond Zork Zork Zero Enchanter Sorcerer Spellbreaker Deadline Witness Suspect Lurking Horror Ballyhoo Infidel Moonmist Planetfall Stationfall Suspended Starcross Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy The games utilise the Infocom "Zork Interpreter" and data files which control the operation of the game. These are set up to run from Workbench with a simple icon click. Whereas in the original implementations (at least my experience with them on Apple II) the data file was continually accessed off the disk, in this incarnation, the files are read into memory. This explains why a game that ran on a 32K Apple II needs a massive 175K to run on an Amiga 500! Most of the games (particularly the earlier ones) run in a text window on the Workbench screen and seem to multitask quite happily. Some of the later games include graphics and sound and run on their own screens. DOCUMENTATION Two printed manuals are provided: The Manual The Hint Book The Manual contains the original printed material for each of the games in a single book. This provides special instructions understood by each game, background information and scenario for each game. The Hint book provides tips, and answers to get you going once you get stuck. This is full of spoilers. In the original release, this information was NOT provided with the games, but was available from Infocom should you get hopelessly stranded. Nice to have it provided. A set of maps for the games is also included (and like the hint book, this was available as an add-on originally). Does it tell you everything you NEED to know? Yes, but you have to hunt for it sometimes (this is not a criticism!!). Everything you WANT to know? Definitely not!!! That's the point of an adventure game. The hint book (which a REAL adventurer would never use) DOES give the answers to most of your questions (including those you don't know you need to be asking... yet). LIKES AND DISLIKES The games cover a range of difficulties. Unfortunately, the documentation does not give any indications as to which games are advanced and which are better for novices. COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS These Infocom games are the originals (or close to them). Most other computer-based RPG games trace their ancestry back to them. The games were renowned (in their day) for the power of their text parser. For example, it understands commands like "press all but the blue button." CONCLUSIONS Want to buy a 15-year old computer game??? Want to buy 20 of them??? YES... in my case. If you want flashy graphics, sound tracks and spoon feeding, then this product is not for you. If you want solid puzzles, a lot of mental gymnastics, strategy and a variety of scenarios, get it. COPYRIGHT NOTICE Copyright 1993 Peter S. Ingham. All rights reserved. This review is freely distributable for non-profit use. -- Peter S. Ingham ping@ping.actrix.gen.nz Lower Hutt, New Zealand 3:771/150.2 <- note: changed June 93 --- Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews Send reviews to: amiga-reviews-submissions@math.uh.edu Request information: amiga-reviews-requests@math.uh.edu Moderator mail: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu Anonymous ftp site: math.uh.edu, in /pub/Amiga/comp.sys.amiga.reviews