Holy smokes, talk about a nostalgic knock to the face. I can remember playing this game way back "in the day" for quite some time. And to think I was impressed by the ASCII graphics. Nowadays you can reverse hack some more up to date games like quake or quake II into ASCII graphics with the aalib, but let’s not get off topic. This game really got me started and hooked onto adventure games, and while I now play Nethack more than any other ASCII adventure game of this kind, it's still nice to reminisce about adventures gone by.
Holy smokes, talk about a nostalgic knock to the face. I can remember playing this game way back "in the day" for quite some time. And to think I was impressed by the ASCII graphics. Nowadays you can reverse hack some more up to date games like quake or quake II into ASCII graphics with the aalib, but let’s not get off topic. This game really got me started and hooked onto adventure games, and while I now play Nethack more than any other ASCII adventure game of this kind, it's still nice to reminisce about adventures gone by. Back when games like these told you what your status was by textual output, as opposed to the ugly HUDs of today's games.
As
far as gameplay goes, imagine if you took legend of zelda, put it in a grid based movement system, and told "link" what to do through commands such as get key, or wear armour.
As far as storyline is concerned, it's really lacking, but then again this was written back in the golden day of reasonless games, where you didn't actually need a reason to do whatever it was that you were setting out to do. Gamers nowadays require a full back-story in order to fully enjoy any game, even if it's Bob the Builder's Castle Adventure (which is in no way related to this wonderful game).
One thing that sets this game apart from games like Rogue or Nethack, is that this game was real-time. None of this "turn based" garbage. You were in this virtual world, and stuff happened to you whether you were prepared for it or not. While nowadays the concept of "real-time gameplay" is commonplace (in fact, turn based games that aren't strategy based are incredibly hard to come by with recent releases) at the time, this was the most amazing advancement in terminal based games.
Which isn't to say this game didn't have its hardships. After all, Keypunch software went and stole it and sold it like they made something this awesome (an act I still find absolutely despicable), but overall, this free game was just about the greatest thing anyone with a computer could have at this time.
I am personally going to go off and run this on my dosbox for a few hours, so if anyone needs to get a hold of me, use the "get attention" command at my terminal prompt.
