| Amazon | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer(s) | Telarium |
| Publisher(s) | Telarium |
| Programmer(s) | Stephen Warady |
| Artist(s) | David Durand |
| Writer(s) | Michael Crichton |
| Platform(s) | Apple II, Atari ST, Commodore 64, DOS, Macintosh, MSX |
| Release | 1984 |
| Genre(s) | Interactive fiction |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Amazon is an interactive fiction graphic adventure game. The game was published by Telarium in 1984 and written by Michael Crichton. [1]
Best-selling novelist and director Michael Crichton was a computer hobbyist who taught himself the programming language BASIC. In the early 1980s he, programmer Stephen Warady, and artist David Durand began developing an Apple II graphic adventure game based on Crichton's novel Congo ; he sometimes programmed game sequences which Warady converted into much faster assembly language. They worked on the project for 18 months and, before Crichton found a publisher, Spinnaker Software approached him about adapting his novels for its Telarium division's new "bookware" games. The author revealed the game, amazing Spinnaker, and signed a contract in late 1983. [2]
Crichton did not realize, however, that he had already sold all adaptation rights to Congo to another party. The team revised the game (renamed Amazon), moving the setting from Africa to South America and changing a diamond mine to an emerald mine; the novel's Amy the talking gorilla became Paco the talking parrot. Because the game was mostly complete, Telarium was able to port it to the Commodore 64 before Amazon's release. [2] Crichton later said that he was disappointed with the game due to technological limitations at the time of its development. [3]
Amazon was the best-selling Telarium title with as many as 100,000 copies sold, the majority likely for the Commodore 64. [2] Computer Gaming World praised its rarely used animated graphics and Crichton's cooperation with its designers, stating that "the cohesive manner in which the game's storyline unfolds reflects Crichton's skill as a writer". [4] James Delson of Family Computing reviewed the Apple II version and wrote that the game "has limited graphics, but what's there is choice." Delson also noted the game's difficulty and wrote, "Patience is more than a virtue in this game, it's a necessity." [5] German reviewers recognized the suspenseful, atmospheric and elaborated prose. Storyline, graphics and text parser got the score "sehr gut" (very good). [6]
Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, is software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives, either in the form of Interactive narratives or Interactive narrations. These works can also be understood as a form of video game, either in the form of an adventure game or role-playing game. In common usage, the term refers to text adventures, a type of adventure game where the entire interface can be "text-only", however, graphical text adventure games, where the text is accompanied by graphics still fall under the text adventure category if the main way to interact with the game is by typing text. Some users of the term distinguish between interactive fiction, known as "Puzzle-free", that focuses on narrative, and "text adventures" that focus on puzzles.
Congo is a 1980 science fiction novel by Michael Crichton, the fifth under his own name and the fifteenth overall. The novel centers on an expedition searching for diamonds and investigating the mysterious deaths of a previous expedition in the dense tropical rainforest of the Congo. Crichton calls Congo a lost world novel in the tradition founded by Henry Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines, featuring the mines of that work's title.
The Pawn is an interactive fiction game for the Sinclair QL written by Rob Steggles of Magnetic Scrolls and published by Sinclair Research in 1985. In 1986, graphics were added and the game was released for additional home computers by Rainbird.
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Wizard and the Princess is a graphic adventure game written for the Apple II and published in 1980 by On-Line Systems. It was the second title released in the Hi-Res Adventures series after Mystery House. While Mystery House used monochrome drawings, Wizard and the Princess added color. Ports for the Atari 8-bit family and Commodore 64 were released in 1982 and 1984 respectively. The 1982 self-booting version for IBM PC compatibles was renamed Adventure in Serenia.
Garry Kitchen's GameMaker is an integrated development environment for the Commodore 64, Apple II, and IBM PC compatibless, created by Garry Kitchen and released by Activision in 1985. It is one of the earliest all-in-one game design products aimed at the general consumer, preceded by Broderbund's The Arcade Machine in 1982. Several sample files are included: a demo sequence featuring animated sprites and music, a recreation of Pitfall!, and a birthday greeting.
Red Moon is the second game in the Time and Magik trilogy.
Emerald Isle is an interactive fiction game by Level 9 Computing released in 1984. A plane has crashed after being struck by a storm over the Bermuda Triangle. The sole occupant has escaped by parachute and finds himself on an unknown island inhabited by strange peoples and creatures.
Dragonworld is an interactive fiction game with graphics. The game was published by Telarium, a subsidiary of Spinnaker Software, in the year 1984. The game was based on the novel written in 1979 by Byron Preiss and Michael Reaves; text for the game was written by J. Brynne Stephens.
Perry Mason: The Case of the Mandarin Murder is an interactive fiction computer game with graphics. The game was published by Telarium, a subsidiary of Spinnaker Software, in 1985.
Rendezvous with Rama is an interactive fiction game with graphics published by Telarium, a subsidiary of Spinnaker Software, in 1984. It was developed in cooperation with Arthur C. Clarke and based upon his 1973 science fiction novel Rendezvous with Rama.
Nine Princes in Amber is an interactive fiction video game with graphics. The game was published by Telarium, a subsidiary of Spinnaker Software, in 1985. The game is based upon the fantasy novels Nine Princes in Amber and The Guns of Avalon by Roger Zelazny.
Shadowkeep is a first person role-playing video game and interactive fiction video game with graphics. The game was published by Telarium, a subsidiary of Spinnaker Software, in the year 1984. It was the first computer game to be novelised.
Telarium Corporation was a brand owned by Spinnaker Software. The brand was launched in 1984 and Spinnaker was sold in 1994. The headquarters were located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. The President of Telarium was C. David Seuss, the founder and CEO of Spinnaker Software.
Borrowed Time is a interactive fiction game about a detective, who tries to rescue his kidnapped wife. The game was developed by Interplay and published by Activision in 1985. Mastertronic republished it as a budget title under the name Time to Die.
The Serpent's Star is an interactive fiction game with graphics. It was developed by Ultrasoft and published by Broderbund for the Apple II in 1983 as the sequel to The Mask of the Sun. Ports to the Atari 8-bit family (1984) and Commodore 64 (1985) followed.
Windham Classics Corporation was a subsidiary of Spinnaker Software. The corporation was founded in 1984 and went defunct circa 1985/86 or later. The headquarters were in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
The Wizard of Oz is an illustrated interactive fiction game developed by and published by Windham Classics for the Apple II, Commodore 64, MS-DOS and MSX in 1985. It is an adaptation of the books The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and The Marvelous Land of Oz.
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Micheal Crichton (The Andromedia Strain, The Terminal Man) has actually created a software work from scratch: Amazon (Telarium; $39.95), which transports the player and a sidekick parrot named Paco into the jungles of South America in search of a lost city and hidden emeralds.