The Retro Adventurers

Chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancy, Jason and Nick ask for a double-helping of Shakespeare text adventures. The chef heaps a challenging amount of "appetizer" Macbeth (1984, Oxford Digital Enterprises) on their plates, but main course Avon (1982/1988, Topologika) has its day. And that day may be foul, and/or fair, as you like it.

Macbeth on MobyGames

Macbeth on MOCAGH

Avon on MobyGames

Avon (Playable online, BBC Micro)

Avon mainframe source code

Topologika Ltd. overview

Topologika on The Digital Antiquarian

Macbeth solution (almost)

The Tempest (1997)

In this interview episode we're transfixed by the career of Ron Martinez, whose interactive fiction began as a writer for the Be an Interplanetary Spy book series, the Trillium/Telarium home conversion of Rendezvous With Rama, and the design and implementation of Star Trek: The Promethean Prophecy powered by his own TRANS Fiction System parser. Since then Ron has had a widely varied career, and a widely varied career since then including pioneering work in NFTs.

Ron and Jason discuss the wild experimental days at Electronic Arts, the nature of "post-linear" storytelling and the trade-offs of writing in the Star Trek universe, and Ron's brush with actual immortality.

Invention Arts

Star Trek: The Promethean Prophecy on archive.org

Rendezvous with Rama on archive.org

Full GET LAMP documentary interview

Ron Martinez MobyGames credits

Jason and first-time Retro Adventurer Nick Moffitt sample two courses of text adventure horror, featuring Infocom's "MIT with the serial numbers filed off" The Lurking Horror and Sir-Tech Software's "don't call it a Murder Hospital, call it the" Crypt of Medea.

Jason also speaks with Strange Studies of Strange Stories co-host Chad Fifer about how, when, and why the Lovecraftian school of horror became mainstream entertainment fodder.

The Lurking Horror

Crypt of Medea

The Call of Cthulhu (2005 film)

The Apple II Mockingboard

Seemingly from out of nowhere, Kingdom of the Seven Stones, a sprawling text/graphic adventure has just been published for the Commodore 64 by The Future was 8 Bit. Creator (and Retro Adventurers listener!) Robin Raymond joins Jason to talk about how the game took shape, why it's cartridge-only, and what the future might hold for his new C-based 8-bit adventure game engine.

Kingdom of the Seven Stones @ TFW8b

Martin Piper's technical analysis

Dithertron

The Coveted Mirror

Ulysses and the Golden Fleece

Dave and Jason make another transatlantic cultural exchange in this episode, beginning with the youth-oriented Windham Classics' Swiss Family Robinson before heading to the deadly grownup world of Norse mythology for Legend's Valhalla.

Valhalla playable online (ZX Spectrum)

Swiss Family Robinson playable online (Commodore 64)

August 1983 ad for Valhalla (Sinclair User Magazine)

In this interview episode (cruelly cut short by an impatient harbormaster) we barely scratch the surface of the careers of the legendary power couple of adventure gaming. Jason speaks with Roberta and Ken Williams of On-Line Systems / Sierra On-Line fame. We touch on chapters from the late 1970s to present day, including the first text/graphics adventures on the Apple II to King's Quest and Phantasmagoria, and the new reimagined Colossal Cave published by Cygnus Entertainment.

Colossal Cave

Farewell to Tara by Roberta Williams

Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings by Ken Williams

Sierra Gamers

Mystery House (Hi-Res Adventure #1) playable online

Dave and Jason take on a pair of BBC Micro originals from the early 1980s in this episode, with the appetizer course of Acornsoft's first adventure game Sphinx Adventure by Paul Fellows, followed by the main course of Twin Kingdom Valley by Trevor Hall.

Twin Kingdom Valley playable online

Sphinx Adventure playable online

Tim Gilberts published legendary text adventure creation systems The Quill and Professional Adventure Writer (PAW) through family publishing house Gilsoft in the 1980s. These products became the basis for hundreds of commercial games, many developed and sold as part of a late direct-to-consumer wave of adventure development in the late 1980s into the 1990s. Dave and Jason discuss with Tim the origins of The Quill and its successors, the reasons for its success and lasting impact, and Tim's connections to gaming today.

Gilsoft

Tim Gilberts' YouTube channel

Zenobi Software

Stranded by Dave Hawkins

Ghostship Delgado by Tony Kingsmill (2024 Quill game)

Dave and Jason seek revenge on the dread pirate Skarvench and go on an interplanetary hunt for the mysterious Wing. This episode of The Retro Adventurers explores the neo-retro title Down Among the Dead Men (originally published as a Virtual Reality Adventures gamebook in 1993, converted into ZIL (Zork Implementation Language) and Z-Machine binary format in 2020 by SD Separa) and the oft-overlooked Interplay launch title The Tracer Sanction, originally published by Activision.

The Tracer Sanction playable online

Down Among the Dead Men (includes play link)

Transporter by Andrew Laker (includes play link)

Solution and map for Transporter

Dead Flesh Retro

Terrormolinos

Slaine

Scott Adams of Adventure International and Clopas fame joins Dave and Jason for a conversation on this episode of The Retro Adventurers. We discuss the rise and fall of Adventure International, the Marvel Comics relationship behind the Questprobe games featuring The Hulk, Spider-Man, and The Human Torch & The Thing, building international business relationships, and more.

>GO WEST
You are in an office.
Big Tall Jim Shooter is here.

Clopas LLC

Adventureland XL

Stereotypical by Clopas (in development)

Adventure International (Mobygames profile)

Portland Retro Gaming Expo

Retro Adventurers Jason Compton and Dave Hawkins explore iconic early text adventure The Hobbit (by Philip Mitchell and Veronika Megler, adapted from the novel by J. R. R. Tolkien) and Planet of Death (by Richard Turner and Chris Thornton).

Includes listener mail, an explanation for postponing the promised Knight Orc, and a dive into both games.

Special thanks to Robin Harbron of 8-Bit Show and Tell for final engineering.

Links

Planet of Death playable ZX81 edition

The Hobbit playable Spectrum 128 enhanced edition

AppleAdventures on YouTube

Renga in Blue's Planet of Death finale (featuring "Dusty Bin")

The Tracer Sanction

Down Among the Dead Men

(Please note that Episode 1 has some audio issues which are ironed out in future episodes.)

The premiere of The Retro Adventurers. Three old-school gamers talk about text adventures they have loved, hated, or are just experiencing for the first time. In this episode, Ben Collier, Jason Compton, and Dave Hawkins take a look at early text adventure Around the World and the first Magnetic Scrolls adventure, The Pawn. 

Includes news, biographical notes, and a dive into both games.

Links

Ronin by David Alzofon

Ghosts Of Blackwood Manor

PunyInform

Infocom Z-Machine interpreter source code

The Classic Adventurer

Softside adventure archive including Around the World (Apple II emulator image)

The Pawn at the Magnetic Scrolls Memorial (playable online)