 | |
| Author | Kim R. Schuette |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Jennifer Boynton Mia McCroskey |
| Cover artist | Estela Montesinos |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Text adventures |
| Publisher | Arrays, Inc. |
Publication date | 1984 |
| Publication place | US |
| Pages | 341 [1] |
| ISBN | 0912003081 |
The Book of Adventure Games is a book by Kim Schuette published in 1984 by Arrays, Inc.
The Book of Adventure Games is a strategy guide for 77 text adventure video games, and contains descriptions, reviews, maps, and solutions for each. [2] [1]
Allen Varney reviewed The Book of Adventure Games in Space Gamer No. 70. [2] Varney commented that "The Book of Adventure Games is worth the money to any aficionado of 'interactive fiction'." [2] Mike Nicita and Roun Petrusha of Popular Computing commented that "frustrated players will appreciate Schuette's treatment of 77 of the best-known adventure games for its help in learning to play and enjoy them." [1] Similarly, Russ Lockwood of Creative Computing concluded "if you need help with a pre-1984 adventure game, The Book of Adventure Games just might be your salvation." [3]
Infocom was an American software company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that produced numerous works of interactive fiction. They also produced a business application, a relational database called Cornerstone.
Interactive fiction (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.
Zork is a text adventure game first released in 1977 by developers Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling for the PDP-10 mainframe computer. The original developers and others, as the company Infocom, expanded and split the game into three titles—Zork I: The Great Underground Empire, Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz, and Zork III: The Dungeon Master—which were released commercially for a range of personal computers beginning in 1980. In Zork, the player explores the abandoned Great Underground Empire in search of treasure. The player moves between the game's hundreds of locations and interacts with objects by typing commands in natural language that the game interprets. The program acts as a narrator, describing the player's location and the results of the player's commands. It has been described as the most famous piece of interactive fiction.
Steven Eric Meretzky is an American video game developer. He is best known for creating Infocom games in the early 1980s, including collaborating with author Douglas Adams on the interactive fiction version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, one of the first games to be certified "platinum" by the Software Publishers Association. Later, he created the Spellcasting trilogy, the flagship adventure series of Legend Entertainment. He has been involved in almost every aspect of game development, from design to production to quality assurance and box design.
Richard Allen Garriott is a British-born American video game developer, entrepreneur and private astronaut.
Enchanter is an interactive fiction game written by Marc Blank and Dave Lebling and published by Infocom in 1983. The first fantasy game published by Infocom after the Zork trilogy, it was originally intended to be Zork IV. The game has a parser that understands over 700 words, making it the most advanced interactive fiction game of its time. It was Infocom's ninth game.
Beyond Zork: The Coconut of Quendoris an interactive fiction video game written by Brian Moriarty and released by Infocom in 1987. It was one of the last games in the Zork series developed by Infocom. It signified a notable departure from the standard format of Infocom's earlier games which relied purely on text and puzzle-solving: among other features, Beyond Zork incorporated a crude on-screen map, the use of character statistics and levels, and RPG combat elements.
The Witness is an interactive fiction video game published by Infocom in 1983. Like Infocom's earlier title Deadline, it is a murder mystery. The Witness was written in the ZIL language for the Z-machine, which allowed it to be released simultaneously on many systems. It is Infocom's seventh game.
Justice, Inc. is a role-playing game published by Hero Games in 1984 that simulates adventure stories that appeared in the pulp magazines of the 1930s.
The Zork books were a series of four books, written by S. Eric Meretzky, which took place in the fictional universe of Zork. The books were published by Tor Books. Like the Zork video games, the books were a form of interactive fiction which offered the reader a choice of actions symbolized by pages to turn to, as in the contemporary book series Choose Your Own Adventure or the later Give Yourself Goosebumps series. The protagonists of each book were a boy and girl, called Bill and June on Earth and re-dubbed Bivotar and Juranda in Zork. The settings and plots were reminiscent of locations and events from the Zork universe.
Hi-Res Adventure #6: The Dark Crystal is a graphic adventure game based on Jim Henson's 1982 fantasy film, The Dark Crystal. The game was designed by Roberta Williams and was the first Hi-Res Adventure directly released under the SierraVenture label in 1983. Versions were published for the Apple II and Atari 8-bit computers. An alternate version of the game intended for younger players called Gelfling Adventure was released in 1984.
Denis Loubet is an artist who has worked on several pen-and-paper role-playing games and video games, including the MMORPG Ashen Empires.
Adventure in Time is a text adventure written by Paul Berker for the Apple II. It was published in 1981 by Phoenix Software, followed by a version for Atari 8-bit computers in 1983.
The Queen of Phobos is a graphical text adventure for the Apple II published by American studio Phoenix Software in 1982.
Crystal Caverns is a text adventure written for the Apple II by Daniel Kitchen of Imaginative Systems Software. It was published by Hayden Software in 1982, followed by a Commodore 64 port in 1984.
Creature Venture is a video game for the Apple II published by Highlands Computer Services in 1980.
Atari Games & Recreations is a book written by Herb Kohl and published by Reston Publishing in 1982.