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Where Adventure Games Live.
Sierra On-Line Adventure Games
By Scopria
The world of adventure games is a large one, spread out over many different
computers.
To make this book even more valuable, I asked Scorpio, the
sysop of CompuServe’s Games Special Interest Group, to write some reviews of
Apple adventures for inclusion here.
The result is this chapter.
Scorpia’s material not only covers an important
adventure publisher that otherwise would have been neglected, but it gives you a
chance to read a viewpoint on graphic adventures that is more sympathetic than
my own!-GM
In the beginning it was nothing but words. Text flowed across the screen, evoking mental images of people, places, and events. For a non-graphic computer, like the TRS-80, that was fine. But for a computer with potential for high-resolution color displays, like the Apple, that wasn’t quite enough. While arcade games had begun to take advantage of Apple’s graphics abilities, the art of hi-res adventures languished. And then along came Online Systems.
Their first entry into the graphic-adventure field, Mystery House, was hardly calculated to raise eyebrows. It was simply done, with line drawing on a black background and no color, and it wasn’t what we not think of as hi-res. That really came in with the second adventure, The Wizard and the Princess, and graphic adventure games haven’t been the same since.
The Wizard and the Princess set the pattern for most of the hi-res games that were to follow: full-screen color graphics, with four lines of text and player input at the bottom of the screen, along and all-text screen. The game itself had very nice, smoothly drawn graphics, with a clean color-fill. Even today, with some very sophisticated hi-res displays around, Wizards graphics stand up well. That is even more remarkable when you consider that the game was first published back in 1981 (ancient times, in computer terms).
Aside from graphics, online (later renamed Sierra Inline) also established a reputation for writing tough adventures. Wizard is not a game for novice players, nor is most of the others in Sierra On-Line’s stable. For these adventures are more than pretty pictures. They present you with some tough puzzles as well, and the combination quickly brought On-Line to the forefront in the world of computer adventures,
One of the more interesting features of Sierra On-Line adventures is their linearity. In most (although not all) of the games, you move only forward, never back. The games tend to have small clusters of locations which, once visited, need never be visited again. The desert in Wizard is a case ion point. Once you have been through all desert areas, and there aren’t too many, you don’t ever have to go back there.
Another oddity of On-Lines adventures is the: limitless inventory.” Where many games limit the number of objects you can hold at one time, On-Lines don’t care in the least how many you have with you. You can literally pick up every item you come across, hauling them all around with you for however long you please. This may sound like a big advantage, but first you have to get the item-and that’s not always easy! These games are good at concealing objects without seeming to do so, which is why the reviews that follow all tell you to look at the graphics carefully. Those aren’t there just for show.
Mystery House
Mystery House, by Ken and Roberta Williams, was On-Lines first adventure game. It puts you in a spooky-looking Victorian mansion, set in the middle of a dark forest. Somewhere in that house is a hidden fortune in jewels-and someone wants those jewels badly enough to kill for them.
You’ll need to find a light source pretty quickly, since night is rapidly approaching. Then, as you explore inside, outside, upstairs and down, you will find clues to identity of the killer, as well as to that person’s secret hiding place. And you’d better find a weapon, too; when you finally track down the killer, only one of you will walk away from the encounter.
That’s pretty tough stuff, but the adventure itself is some what easier than later Sierra On-Line games. There are a couple of hard puzzles and one that might be considered a little unfair, since it requires more of an intuitive leap than careful reasoning. Also, players familiar with the dynamic Deadline from Infocom may be disappointed by the static nature of this game, No matter what you do; the same people will always turn up dead in the same places. There is no way to save them.
The graphics may come as a surprise to some people, too. Unlike later games, Mystery House is not hi-res. Instead, the pictures are all done as line drawings on a black background, with no color-fill. This occasionally produces some odd results (for example, allowing you to see through many of the solid objects in the game). However, the drawings themselves are quite good.
The save game feature is somewhat limited. Saving is done to the game disk itself, and you can save only one position at a time. Each new save wipes out the previous one. This can sometimes make you think twice when saving the game, since you have only the one save.
By current standards, Mystery House is a little crude. But overall it’s a pretty good intermediate-level adventure.
The Wizard and the Princess
There you stand in the desert town of
Thus begins one of Sierra On-Lines most famous games, The Wizard and the Princess, by Ken and Roberta Williams. One of the earliest of the hi-res graphic adventures, it has stood the test of time and is as playable today as it was when it first came out.
Your journey to the wizard’s castle will be long and hard. Trackless desert, bottomless chasms, endless oceans, and towering mountains are only some of the obstacles you must overcome. Maddening gnomes, ferocious lions, and grumpy giants will all do their best to stop you cold. And, when you finally get through all this, there is still the magic castle, full of tricks and traps for the unwary.
Each past of the game builds on previous ones, so once you move ahead, there s no going back. It’s important to search every area thoroughly to make sure you haven’t over looked anything, which is very easy to do in this adventure.
The location or importance of some items may not be immediately obvious; careful attention to the graphics is essential to complete the game successfully.
The graphics themselves are disk-driven. Each time you move to a new area, the program must read in the picture from the disk. The fill routines are a bit slow in comparison to those in more recent hi-res games, but they are pretty to watch. The graphics, while not spectacular, are quite good.
There is a save game feature, which allows you to make a “snapshot” of up to 15 different positions on a separate save disk. Frequent saving is highly recommended, since you never know (until its too late) when you’ve done something that will prevent you from finishing the game.
This is a good, tough adventure for experienced players.
Cranston Manor, by Harold DeWitz and Ken Williams, is an old-fashioned treasure hunt through a haunted house. The object is to explore the estate of Old Man Cranston and to recover 20 treasures, which will help revitalize the town of Coarsegold, California/ If you know anything about Sierra On-Line games, you know this isn’t going to be as easy as it sounds.
Old
Although the manor itself has a fair number of rooms, its layout is straight forward and mapping is simple. The underground areas, however, are another matter. The many corridors and openings take some strange twists and turns, so you may not always end up where you want to. That can easily make a shameless of any map you try to draw. While there aren’t any mazes per see, just trying to get the underground area figured out is frustrating enough.
You must learn your way around down there, for it is only in the depths of the caverns that you will uncover the secret of the armor and the soldiers. But even after you banish those troublesome contractions, your problems aren’t over. Some of the treasures (such as the bottle in the cistern) are not easily accessible; others, like the emeralds, are not immediately evident. As with all sierra On-Line games, it is vital to pay close attention to the graphics display.
Cranston Manor features typically good, if slow, graphics. The pictures are well drawn, nicely detailed, and the colors don’t appear to run into each other. The usual save game feature is also available, allowing you to save up to 15 different positions to a separate disk.
This is a good, hard adventure game fro experienced player’s.
Cranston Manor
Cranston Manor, by Harold DeWitz and Ken Williams, is an old-fashioned treasure hunt through a haunted house. The object is to explore the estate of Old Man Cranston and to recover 20 treasures, which will help revitalize the town of Coarsegold, California. If you know anything about sierra Om-Line games, you know this isn’t going to be as easy as it sounds.
Old
Although the manor itself has a fair number of rooms, its layout is straightforward and mapping is simple. The underground areas, however, are another matter. The many corridors and openings take some strange twists and turns, so you may not always end up where you want to. That can easily make a shambles of any map you try to draw. While there aren’t any mazes per se, just trying to get the underground area figured out is frustrating enough.
You must learn your way around down there, for it is only in the depths of the caverns that you will uncover the secret of the armor and the soldiers. But even after you banish those trouble some contraptions, your problems aren’t over. Some of the treasures (such as the bottle in the cistern) are not easily accessible; others, like the emeralds, are not easily accessible; others, like the emeralds, are not immediately evident. As with all Sierra On-Line games, it is vital to pay close attention to the graphics display.
Cranston Manor features typically good, if slow, graphics. The pictures are well drawn, nicely detailed, and the colors don't appear to run into each other. The usual save game feature is also available, allowing you to save up to 15 different positions to separate disk.
This is a good, hard adventure game for experienced players.
Ulysses and the Golden Fleece
Someday, Sierra On-Line will explain why they names this game for Ulysses, since most people know that it was Jason who went after the Golden Fleece. Even so, anyone who is at all familiar with The Odyssey, or who knows something about the legends surrounding Ulysses, will be one step ahead of everyone else in this adventure.
The game starts with your character (Ulysses) standing penniless and empty-handed in a Greek town. From that humble beginning, you must buy supplies, obtain a ship, hire a crew, and set sail on your quest for the fabled fleece.
Once underway, you will find several nasty puzzles and traps in your path. The first is a hurricane; getting past it is one of the more difficult problems in the game. The solution is particularly maddening, too, as it isn’t something you would ordinarily think of and there are absolutely no clues to help you figure it out. You must just make an intuitive leap to discover the answer.
Having done so, you proceed onwards to other obstacles. These include Neptune, God of the Sea; Pluto, God of the Underworld; a wall of flame; several chasms; The sirens; the Cyclops; Harpies; and animated skeletons. There’s even a dragon thrown in for good measure.
Your mind (and recollection on Greek myths) will get quite a workout. Some of the solutions are quite subtle. It is very easy to pass by something important and never even know that it’s there. And passing something by could spell disaster, since you can’t backtrack in this game.
Fortunately, you can save the game. Up to 15 different positions can be saved to a separate diskette, considering the difficulty of the game and the ease with which you can paint yourself into a corner, frequent saving is highly recommended.
The graphics, as you might expect, are high quality. While simple in design, they are well drawn and use clean, bright colors.
Overall, the game is excellent. But there is one thing to be aware of. In the very beginning, when you go to the store, you will find several items for sale. You can purchase all but one of them. The only way to figure out which item not to buy is through trial and error. This can become extremely frustrating if you get very far into the game and then find that you can’t go on because you don’t have what you need. If that happens, there is nothing to do but start all over again from the beginning of the game, but such challenges help to make this tough adventure one of Sierra On-Lines best.
Time Zone
Time Zone, by Roberta Williams, may well be the most ambitious hi-res adventure game ever designed. It spans the course of history from the dawn of time to the far future, taking you across the continents of earth and out into the depths of space. As a result, the program fills six double-sided diskerres and is advertised as requiring “a year to complete.” That may or may not be true, but in any case, finishing this game is definitely an achievement.
The story line is simple: you have been chosen to save the Earth from destruction at the hand of an alien tyrant on Neburon, a planet located many light years from Earth. You are given a space/time machine that can transport you to different continents and time periods on Earth. Thus, most of the game is spent traveling back and forth among time zones, solving puzzles to obtain the items you will need a t the finish line.
Make no mistake about it: the puzzles in this game are rough. Part of the difficulty is compounded by the fact that if you try taking something backwards in time before it could exist, that item will disappear forever. Fortunately, there is no problem with taking anything forward in time,
When you finally arrive on Neburon, things are no easier. You will have to make your way around a hostile planet, overcoming a number of nasty tricks and traps as you go. There is also a maze that must be negotiated before you can locate and destroy the tyrant’s weapon. All in all, it’s a rough trip.
Since its likely to take some time to finish the game, Sierra On-Line recommends that you back up the diskettes. They provide a utility that will copy all but disk 1, side 1 (the main boot program). They also provide another utility that will initialize a blank diskette for saving the game. Each disk can hold up to 15 separate positions, and you can have as many different save disks as you like.
There are also some drawbacks to Time Zone. For one thing, it is a very disk-intensive game. Every graphic display is stored on dick, so there has to be an access every time you move to a new location….and there are, as you can guess, quite a few locations on 12 disk sides! Further, a lot of disk swapping is necessary as you move between the zones. Since the game supports only one drive, that can become tedious during long sessions of play.
In addition, while the graphics are quite good (and the fill routines are faster than in previous On-Line games), there is still waiting time while the new picture is loaded and drawn. All this makes the game a bit more time-consuming that some people might wish.
However, the most bothersome feature of this otherwise superbly designed game is its over-use of “empty” zones and red herrings. More than half the time periods are dead ends, whose sole purpose is to slow you down, frustrate you, and misdirect your efforts. Having red herrings is a time-honored convention in adventure games, but they should be carefully placed and used sparingly. Here, they have been used almost with abandon, adding extra frustration and confusion to an already tough adventure. That’s a shame, because the basic game is very well thought out and executed.
This is a good but hard adventure game, married by a lot of filler. But if you want to spend the money and time, the puzzles will provide a real challenge for the experienced adventurer.