It wrapped around by a little bit (the first 1982 post was December 28, 2021) but I can claim, essentially, I started 1982 in 2022. So, a brief recap:
I finished 43 games I’ve designated as 1982 (or “finished” in the case of some broken games like The Lazurite Factor, which I just wrote about. This was not quite the number I was hoping — really gunning for at least 65 or so — but of course, a gigantic chunk of time was taken up by the still-ongoing Ferret. I thought Time Zone was going to be the big calendar suck, and it did take two whole months as expected (from the start of January to the end of February).
I did do a little bit of “looping” as well, hitting Explore from 1979 (and its passive-aggressive jab at other TRS-80 software companies from time time), Mighty Mormar from 1980 (essentially straightforward theft of Dog Star Adventure), Planet of the Robots from 1981 (Softdisk’s first original “real game”) and the ICL game Quest, which I also sorted as 1981 by the copyright date in the text even though it technically was worked on from 1980 to 1983.
My looping bin isn’t atrocious and if I really felt a sense of pain leaving things behind it wouldn’t take that long to get through, but new things keep getting discovered, and out of the four games I just mentioned, Mighty Mormar is the only one I knew about before 2022 started. So there was a certain amount of running in circles on the backlog, there.
Some random moments through the year for your enjoyment:
Zodiac. A very difficult moment — you need four elements at the end, and much earlier in the game the only water in the game was from some melting ice. The urn breaks if you DROP it so you have to understand that LEAVE not only works but is interpreted as “DROP, but gentle”.
Time Zone. Done in 24 hours! And I don’t expect to be timing any of my other games, it is nerve wracking even when not that worried about going fast.
Lucifer’s Realm. Wherein we team up with Satan to defeat Hitler. Astonishingly good graphics. Jesus, hanging out in hell. The sequel (coming up for 2023) has Hitler’s army try to invade Heaven.
The Program Power game Adventure. While there is no physical difference between TAKE and STEAL here, the parser interprets it in a much different way. The “man behind the curtain” essentially is collaborating in the plot.
Deadline was so incredibly good.
One of the randomly-generated maps of Mad Monk, a weirdly ambitious adventure-roguelike title for the tiny UK101 computer which jammed in a 3D maze section and a space invaders game.
Omotesando Adventure. An adventure by the publishers of ASCII magazine, wherein you precent the next issue from publishing due to a “magnetic monopole” bomb. Also, the first adventure written in Japan.
Two of the thieves from The Queen of Phobos, which managed to handle random elements unusually well.
Arrow of Death, Part 2. The final boss. An improvement over the prior Mysterious Adventures, including an “unexpected hub” area which gradually grew larger in the early part of the game.
One of the self-contained mazes of Hamil, which requires passing through every connection and returning back to the start.
The “guide card” from Mystery House (1982), the first adventure game written in Japanese.
From the opening puzzle of Devil’s Island. You start in a cell with nothing, and to solve the puzzle, you need to wait nearly 2 real-time minutes, even though the game appears to be turn based (and the rest of it is!)
Adventures in Videoland, which hooked up an Apple II to a videodisc player with a copy of the movie Rollercoaster to make a text adventure with both images and video.
A map from the still-ongoing Ferret, from the really fascinating section in the Cathedral.
One last shot from Time Zone, an entirely optional scene. You can kill Brutus early but Caesar trips and dies anyway. Alternatively, you can go the Grand Theft Auto route after reaching this scene and start stabbing the rest of the senators.
Coming up ahead in the earlier part of 2023:
– I’m going to go finish-or-bust on Ferret — I’m putting a hard stop at the end of January, otherwise I have to move on.
– The next really-difficult game will probably be Asylum II, the return of the TRS-80 3D-view.
– At least two Apple II games, one of them wildly obscure.
– The return of Infocom (there’s two choices, I’ll let you guess which one).
– And of course plenty of odd surprises besides, and maybe something else will get discovered none of us even know about yet!
Renga in Blue 
This has been a pretty fun and interesting year.
Thanks a lot for keeping up with the project!
Great reading, I now have so many things to delve into here. I already binged all the Time Zone posts!
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