 |
| Pirate Adventure | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Publisher(s) | Creative Computing Software Adventure International |
| Designer(s) | Scott Adams |
| Series | Adventure |
| Platform(s) | TRS-80, VIC-20, TI-99/4A, Apple II, Atari 8-bit, PET, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, BBC Micro, Acorn Electron, Dragon 32/64 |
| Release | 1979 |
| Genre(s) | Text adventure |
Pirate Adventure (also known as Pirate Cove) is a text adventure video game written by Scott Adams. It was published by Adam's company, Adventure International, in 1979.
Published by Adventure International and the second game of the series, after Adventureland , this text-based adventure game was one of many adventure games created by Scott Adams, [1] in this case based on his wife Alexis's ideas. [2] The setting was inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson's 1883 novel Treasure Island and involved a quest to retrieve Long John Silver's lost treasures. [3]
Gameplay involved moving from location to location, picking up any objects found there, and using them somewhere else to unlock puzzles. Commands took the form of verb and noun, e.g. "Climb Tree".
The player starts the game in a London flat, and progresses via a bit of magic to Pirates Island. Here, the player has to build a ship to reach Treasure Island and there find two pieces of treasure. The player also has to contend with an unpredictable pirate ally; it was the first text adventure game of the Adams series in which the player shared the adventure with a second character.
The magic phrase to reach the island in this game, 'Say Yoho', was the name of a long-running column in SoftSide magazine by Scott Adams.
The source code for Pirate Adventure was printed in the December 1980 issue of BYTE , with an addendum in April 1981. [2] [4] This enabled others to discover how the engine worked and to create their own adventures using this or a similar design.
Pirate Adventure was reviewed in issue #42 of The Dragon magazine. The reviewer, Mark Herro, commented on the difficulty of the game: "Supposedly one of the "easier" programs of the series, I'm embarrassed to say that I have yet to find a treasure in Pirate Adventure... This Program has been sending me in circles for weeks." [1]
Bruce Campbell reviewed Pirate's Cove in The Space Gamer No. 36. [5] Campbell commented that "Pirate's Cove is a good first adventure (some of the others are harder), but also entertaining for the experienced adventurer." [5]
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.
Scott Adams is an American entrepreneur, computer programmer, and video game designer. He co-founded, with then-wife Alexis, Adventure International in 1979. The company developed and published video games for home computers. The cornerstone products of Adventure International in its early years were the Adventure series of text adventures written by Adams.
Star Trek is a text-based strategy video game based on the Star Trek television series (1966–69) and originally released in 1971. In the game, the player commands the USS Enterprise on a mission to hunt down and destroy an invading fleet of Klingon warships. The player travels through the 64 quadrants of the galaxy to attack enemy ships with phasers and photon torpedoes in turn-based battles and refuel at starbases. The goal is to eliminate all enemies within a random time limit.
Temple of Apshai is a dungeon crawl role-playing video game developed and published by Automated Simulations in 1979. Originating on the TRS-80 and Commodore PET, it was followed by several updated versions for other computers between 1980 and 1986.
Plundered Hearts is an interactive fiction video game created by Amy Briggs and published by Infocom in 1987. Infocom's only game in the romance genre, it was released simultaneously for the Commodore 64, Atari 8-bit computers, Atari ST, Amiga, classic Mac OS, and MS-DOS. It is Infocom's twenty-eighth game.
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.
Questprobe: Featuring Spider-Man is the second video game in the Questprobe series.
Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord is the first game in the Wizardry series of role-playing video games. It was developed by Andrew Greenberg and Robert Woodhead. In 1980, Norman Sirotek formed Sir-Tech Software, Inc. and launched a beta version of the product at the 1980 Boston Computer Convention. The final version of the game was released in 1981.
Hillsfar is a role-playing video game for MS-DOS compatible operating systems, Amiga, Atari ST, and Commodore 64. It was developed by Westwood Associates and published by Strategic Simulations in 1989. It combines real-time action with randomly generated quests and includes elements of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. A port to the Nintendo Entertainment System was released in 1993. Hillsfar received mixed reviews from critics.
Bug-Byte Software Ltd. was a video game company founded in 1980 in Liverpool, initially producing software for the Acorn Atom and ZX80. Bug-Byte's first hit was Don Priestley's Mazogs which was one of the most successful titles for the ZX81. In 1983, it published Manic Miner, considered to be one of the most influential platform games of all time. The company went into liquidation in 1985 but their name and logo were purchased by Argus Press PLC for use as a budget software label.
Adventureland is a text adventure video game for microcomputers, released by Scott Adams in 1978. The game has no plot but simply involves searching for thirteen lost artifacts in a fantasy setting. Its success led Adams to form Adventure International, which went on to publish thirteen similar games in the Adventure series, each in different settings.
Brian Howarth is a British video game designer and computer programmer. He wrote many interactive fiction computer games in the early 1980s in a series called Mysterious Adventures. He was born in Blackpool in 1953.
Strange Odyssey is a text adventure written by Scott Adams and Neil Broome.
Questprobe featuring The Hulk is a 1984 graphic adventure video game developed and published by Adventure International in collaboration with Marvel Comics. It is the first entry in Questprobe, an intended series of graphic adventure games that only released three installments before the developer's bankruptcy. The game's narrative follows the Marvel superhero Hulk and his human alter-ego Bruce Banner, who must explore the mysterious lair of the Chief Examiner. The graphics and story outline were created by Marvel artists and writers. Critical reception was generally positive, with much of the praise going to the visuals. Reactions to the gameplay were mixed, especially upon the game's budget re-release, by which time it was considered dated.
Adventure International was an American video game publishing company that existed from 1979 until 1986. It was started by Scott and Alexis Adams. Their games were notable for being the first implementation of the adventure genre to run on a microcomputer system. The adventure game concept originally came from Colossal Cave Adventure which ran strictly on large mainframe systems at the time.
Time Traveler is a 1980 fantasy text adventure developed by Krell Software. The game was released on the 16K, Level II TRS-80, Apple II, Commodore PET, and Atari 8-bit computers
Ghost Town is a text adventure developed by Adventure International and released in 1980. It is part of the Adventure series of games developed by Scott Adams, preceded by Adventureland, Pirate Adventure, and Strange Odyssey.
Swords and Sorcery is a fantasy role playing video game developed and published by Personal Software Services. It was released exclusively in the United Kingdom for the ZX Spectrum in 1985 and the Amstrad CPC in 1986. The game contains elements of dungeon crawling and revolves around a customisable player-character navigating through catacombs in order to secure a large wealth of treasure, whilst simultaneously collecting seven pieces of sacred armour.
