Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

Our journey with Highland Computer Services comes to an end. It was established in 1980 by Butch Greathouse and Garry Rheinhardt and was shuttered by the end of 1981. While Creature Venture did well by the standards of the day (an estimated 10,000 units) Mummy’s Curse only sold 1000-2000 and was their last game.

Now we get to the heart of the downfall of HCS. The people who answer the phone, package the orders, write the manuals, and program all day can’t be the same two people. We couldn’t create new products and do everything else so we just sort of starved ourselves out of business. All the money went right back into the business and we weren’t the greatest business people in the world.

The handwriting was on the wall (expenses greater than Income) so Garry and I went back to work at A.P.P.L.E.. [A computer club in Renton, Washington.] I was in charge of the Technical Hotline at A.P.P.L.E. for 3 years and talked to thousands of APPLE II enthusiasts from all over the world and answered their questions.

For the Gallery of Undiscovered Entities.

At least we can try to enjoy their last hurrah, where they transitioned from black and white to color.

The results are decidedly mixed. While I’m fine with some of the graphics, like the desert oasis start of the game…

“Fine” even though the trees look bizarre and the water has a strange blockiness. How does a pool of water look wrong?

…there are some pieces which I just find painful to look at.

There’s something … I wouldn’t call it “charming” exactly, but “more palatable” about the black and white equivalent from the prior games.

An encore performance by Count Snoottweeker, from The Tarturian.

You are tasked with finding the golden death mask of “King Rutattuttut”, and you start in an outdoor area in the desert near a village and a pyramid.

The game does the unfortunate schtick of prior Highland games of forcing you to test directions, but at least only N/S/E/W/U/D work this time. The geography is sanely and pleasingly laid out (see above) and I felt more like I was filling in a map of a real place as opposed to trying to catch up with the fever dream of a robot with graph paper.

In the village you get stopped entering a palace (see farther above), stopped buying a knife and shovel (nothing valuable at hand), and stopped visiting a “mysterious man” in a shroud.

In the mountains, there’s a part of the Nile you can drown yourself in, as well as a locked door (no key) and a stone shrine.

South of here is an AMULET (SMA) and the instructions are clear you can USE SMA to activate it. It glows briefly but I haven’t figured out what the effect is.

In the desert is a buried monument/pillar/ancient-looking-thing which I presume the shovel is for, and a temple with an inscription.

The “hint” from the inscription I assume is intended for the last section, by the pyramid, where there are indeed two pits you can fall into, but it’s so fast to just map things out I already had it figured out (and the entrance to the pyramid discovered) before seeing the inscription.

I’ve found mapping things out enjoyable so far, but I only scratched the surface of the inside of the pyramid, so I’ll get to that next time. I get the impression this may tilt easier than Creature Venture. Fingers crossed, because that one was a bear.