Rather amateurish adaptation of the song by RUSH. The year is 2112, and the world is governed by an oppressive priesthood of soulless logic. Your goal is to bring a violent end to their regime, using an ancient piece of forbidden technology: a guitar. Suffers from an extremely picky two-word parser and occasional sound effects from the internal speaker.

Rating: **

Reviewed by Carl Muckenhoupt (30 Jun 2000)

1994-01-04 2112.zip (29.02 KB)

MS-DOS executable

A treasure hunt set in the mysterious crypts below an old church. The vicar, if asked, will provide a brief account of the building's history that explains some otherwise incongruous juxtapositions. Quite professional-looking, with some nice puzzles. Two mazes, one small and easily mapped on a grid, the other large and annoying. The parser is its weak point. This game could stand to be ported to a more sophisticated system.

Rating: ***

Reviewed by Carl Muckenhoupt (30 Jun 2000)

1994-01-04 crypt.zip (69.06 KB)

MS-DOS executable (version: 2.0)

1994-07-21 crypt.sol (2.77 KB)

solution

The English translation of the title is "Pacy-Face and His Adventures - Magicland". To play this game, you should have a working knowledge of German. A a brief synopsis in English: The player guides Pacy-Face through a simple, childish treasure hunt with arbitrary deaths, arbitrary puzzles and very poor descriptions.

Du hast in einer Schenke vier Männer belauscht, die von einem Schatz sprachen, der in der Umgebung versteckt sei. Deine Aufgabe ist nun, diesen Schatz mit Hilfe von Pacy-Face in einer Fantasy-Welt zu finden. Ein winziges Spiel mit spartanischem Parser, so gut wie keinen Raumbeschreibungen und völlig willkürlichen Toden, was auf das Alter des Autors (damals 13 Jahre) zurückzuführen ist. Die C 64-Version biete immerhin ein Bild von Pacy-Face...

Rating: *

Reviewed by Matthias Oborski (03 Jan 2003)

1994-01-27 zauberland (7.13 KB)

Commodore executable in German

1994-01-18 zauber.zip (8.44 KB)

BASIC source code in German (ported by Bob Newell, compatible with QBASIC)

A game with an old-school feel, set a haunted manor during the 18th century, with a backstory involving smugglers and betrayal. Rambling and full of deadly spooks. Half the screen is devoted to text, the other half to a map drawn in text characters. Full-sentence parser that doesn't understand pronouns. Has some satisfying mechanical puzzles, some cryptic instructions to follow without a lot of feedback on whether you're following them correctly, a few spots where you have to refer to objects that aren't mentioned explicitly, and one crucial piece of godawful noun resolution where it doesn't recognise the adjectives given in the output text.

Rating: ***

Reviewed by Carl Muckenhoupt (29 Dec 2001)

1994-01-04 skull.zip (65.66 KB)

MS-DOS executable (version: 3.1)

1996-08-27 skull.sol (8.65 KB)

solution

1994-01-31 skyland4.exe (188.13 KB)

MS-DOS executable (version: 4.0, packed in self-extracting archive)

1994-01-18 klaus.zip (848.34 KB)

AGT executable (bundled with MS-DOS runtime)

1997-08-10 klaussol.zip (36.02 KB)

solution

A highly conceptual game in which you interact with abstract concepts and mathematical entities as if they were tangible. Requires some techinical knowledge, but nothing that you probably haven't picked up if you pay attention to such things. Small, primitive, difficult, fun. Some sticking points - thank goodness for the walkthrough.

Rating: **

Reviewed by Carl Muckenhoupt (30 Jun 2000)

1994-01-19 tess.arc (34.64 KB)

Atari ST executable (version: 2.0p)

2005-07-31 BTT.zip (39.67 KB)

Cybiko executable (version: 2.0p, ported by Athlor), C source code, solution

1993-02-17 tess.zip (40.84 KB)

MS-DOS executable (version: 2.0p)

2003-12-14 tess.tar.gz (27.66 KB)

C source code (version: 2.0p)

2003-12-27 tess.z5 (91.50 KB)

Z-code 5 executable (version: 2, ported by Andrew Plotkin)

1993-02-17 tess.sol (1.42 KB)

solution

1997-06-09 C64adv.zip (2.78 MB)

Commodore executable

1994-01-31 castle-quest (9.18 KB)

Commodore executable

This is a free demo of Zork I. Although substantially smaller than the full game, it contains all the memorable bits - kind of like a Reader's Digest Condensed Zork. See Dungeon for a larger dose and more commentary.

Rating: ***

Reviewed by Carl Muckenhoupt (30 Jun 2000)

1998-09-16 minizork.zip (51.00 KB)

Commodore executable

1994-01-27 minizork.z3 (50.99 KB)

Z-code 3 executable (version: 34)

The English translation of the title is "The Caravan of the Seventh Dynasty". To play this game, you should have a working knowledge of German. Because this demo version contains only one of five worlds, I did not rate this game. As far as I can tell, you find yourself wandering around in a lonely desert after meeting somebody called "Gi Mando".

Da Anleitung und Hintergrundgeschichte erst mit dem Kauf des Spiels erworben werden, ist man in dieser Demoversion ganz auf sich alleine gestellt, was Sinn und Zweck des anfänglichen Umherwanderns in einer Wüste angeht. Anscheinend hat man vor Spielbeginn eine Aufgabe von "Gi Mando" erhalten und findet sich nun in einer einsamen Wüste wieder. Grafiken illustrieren den Text. Da die Demoversion nur eine von fünf Welten enthält, erhält dieses Spiel keine Wertung. Die Kaufversion kostete zum Zeitpunkt der Veröffentlichung 39 DM (20 EUR) und bot u.a. Musik auf Audio-CD.

Rating: Not rated

Reviewed by Matthias Oborski (03 Jan 2003)

1994-01-25 karawane.zip (273.60 KB)

MS-DOS executable in German (version: demo release, implemented by Ingmar Bode)