I don’t have that far to go in 1980 (relatively speaking), so I thought I’d give an update on my game list. My original list was compiled from The Interactive Fiction Database, CASA Solution Archive, and Mobygames. I tossed some games off the list for various reasons so I’ll talk about those too.
HAVE ALREADY PLAYED
Just check the All the Adventures list.
STILL TO BE PLAYED
(ADD: As of 24 October 2019 I have crossed out games played since I wrote this document.)
Two Programmer’s Guild games:
Dragon-Quest Adventure by Charles Forsythe
TimeQuest by William Demas (NOTE: Not played yet but now moved to 1981.)
The two that remain from Joel Mick’s trilogy:
Treasure Island, Journey Through Time by James Taranto and Joel Mick
Four “private games” that Roger M. Wilcox published many years after 1980, I’ll likely lump them all in one post:
Space Traveller, India Palace, Poseidon Adventure and Vial of Doom by Roger M. Wilcox
The very last of the Greg Hassett games:
Curse of the Sasquatch, Devil’s Palace by Greg Hassett
The last Gary Bedrosian game, written in 1980 but only published in 1982:
G.F.S. Sorceress by Gary Bedrosian
Some random Commodore PET and TRS-80 games:
Will o’ the Wisp by Mark CapellaHouse of Thirty Gables by Instant SoftwareMad Scientist by Thomas M. Hamlin IIIKidnapped by Peter Kirsch
Two very interesting and unusual Apple II games:
Oldorf’s Revenge by Highland Computer ServicesThe Prisoner by David Mullich
The publisher of Deathship and Trek Adventure had 4 more games from 1980:
Escape From Mars, Nuclear Submarine Adventure, Pyramid, Vampire Castle
Two by the coiner of the phrase “interactive fiction” which use a “conversational” parser:
Six Micro Stories by Robert LaForeHis Majesty’s Ship “Impetuous” by Robert LaFore
A fascinating mainframe game with a lot of randomization, but old Pascal source code is a bear to compile:
Lugi by Jay Wilson and Paul Kienitz
The follow-up to Deathmaze 5000:
Labyrinth by Frank Corr, Jr.
A game I will still get back to, likely at the very end of 1980:
Warp by Rob Lucke and Bill Frolik
I tried this a little and think it may get booted for being not-an-adventure, it feels more like a strategy game, but I haven’t played enough to be official:
Survival by Dr. Charles Kingston
There’s also one game (possibly two games) in a non-English language, but I’ll wait on listing them until I start writing about them.
I can’t know for certain until I start playing them, but I believe the only “long” games I have left are Lugi, Oldorf’s Revenge, G.F.S. Sorceress, Labyrinth, and Warp.
MOVED TO ANOTHER YEAR
Medieval Adventure by Hugh Lambert
Published by CLOAD in 1981, I see 1980 in multiple places but I don’t know the source. I’m willing to go by year of writing rather than publishing but I can’t find that date in any source code.
Haunted House by Darren Deloach and Tim Koonce
Released “late 1982 or early 1983”.
The Demon’s Eye by John Dueck
A type-in published in 1991 (!).
Pharaoh’s Curse by Tim Koonce
From 1981 (probably).
REMOVED FROM THE LIST
FisK by John Sobotik and Richard Beigel
Definitely an adventure game (for mainframe), but I still don’t have a copy, and one of the authors requested (for understandable reasons which I won’t go into here) to leave it alone for now.
Manticore: An MS 8k BASIC Adventure by Anonymous and Jon Bradbury, also given as Explore by Jim Butterfield
I played this one and even made a complete map, but it turns out to be entirely an RPG.
Dungeon of Htam by Howard W. Sams & Co
This is an edutainment game where you solve math problems.
Dungeons and Dragons by Peter Trefonas
An RPG which the The CRPG Addict played here.
Eamon games like The Cave of the Mind, The Zyphur Riverventure, etc.
There’s quite a few of these but I’ve tried enough to say they’re essentially RPGs. I might be willing to loop back at some future point since these haven’t got the attention they deserve.
Time Traveller by Krell Software
Interesting, but more of an educational strategy game than an adventure.
Renga in Blue 
The comment about old mainframe Pascal source code intrigued me. But it turns out Lugi’s code is pretty close to standard Pascal :) It compiled almost out of the box with the GNU Pascal compiler. I’ve put my version on Github, in case you need it: https://github.com/pdewacht/lugi
FreePascal chokes on enough things I was having a lot of trouble. I’ll have to test out the compile.
I was kind of hoping that you’d play through all of the Eamon games, too. For me, they feel much more like adventure games although I can see why someone (i.e. you) would label them as RPGs. It’s certainly true that they get too little attention as most people tend to blog about the first two games only. As most of them are short I really hope you’ll reconsider. (I can perfectly understand your reasoning, to be sure. It’s a giant project as it is.)
It’s always possible — I certainly don’t have anything against CRPGs in general, and based on 1979 games still popping up here once in a while it’s not like there won’t be a few stragglers from 1980.
Who (other than me) has blogged about the first two? I’d like to read them!
Maher had some good posts on Eamon but he only went into depth on the system, not the games, and he played #1, #4, and #6.
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