John R. Olsen started writing games as a high school student and we still have quite a lot of his works to go. This is not one of them, despite a few sites stating otherwise.
This is instead by John Olson. Note the vowel. He was originally from Illinois, and after getting a Bachelor’s degree moved to Kansas in 1976 to teach math at Hoxie High School. He eventually also picked up a job teaching at Colby Community College starting with college algebra, then branching into computer science.
Modern aerial view of Colby Community College, from their Facebook page.
In the area of computer science, we were using Radio Shack TRS-80 computers that had a Z-80 microprocessor. The era of personal computers had arrived.
In the fall of 1981 he wrote Island Adventure “For Fun” (as he says in the comments) before it eventually winged its way to CLOAD Magazine to be published in their May 1982 issue. Given the single vowel change, plus TRS-80 as a platform, plus both authors being published in the same tapemag; it is understandable why they’d be lumped together. But (other than them of course being different people) we have a teenager vs. adult enthusiast contrast, and the formats of gameplay themselves are fairly different.
Before getting into the game itself, let’s focus a little back on the CLOAD issue in question, which kicks off with the editor unraveling:
For headache, take aspirin. For tension…
Not another dumb question??!! I’ll have the editorial tomorrow! Ad by Thursday. Oh, no! A bug in a program? Tom, get to work. What do you mean, I’m not a nice guy anymore? My attitude needs a tune-up? I should take a vacation? But I had a REAL one 3 years ago. What do I need another one for? Oh, Robin mentions that I WILL take a vacation. I see. Won’t the shop fall apart without me? No? How will I survive a week without computers? How does it feel to be needed…
Quite often the past gets seen through polished lenses, so it is interesting to see these moments demonstrating: despite most of these objects now being forgotten cultural debris, they were still work for the people that produced them.
How long did it take to copy all the tapes? How long did it take to lay out a 4 page newsletter by hand? How much time was spent making the animated “slot machine” cover?
Barring this moment right now when I’m mentioning it, most of these things will fall into historical dust. Adventures were really popular and oftentimes much better preserved than the games they were packaged with; did the people at the time already know Island Adventure might survive at least a bit longer than Math Drill, or (to make a fairer comparison) Destiny, a weirdly elaborate space flight sim by Scott Richmond where you need to destroy a Klingon base?
Seriously, what? Also, it is my greatest aspiration someone will be searching for the modern Bungie game and accidentally pull this up instead.
But we have only time for the Island. Maybe a Space Sims Addict will pass through again one day.
If I didn’t know about the naming confusion, this game would puzzle me; it is much simpler than Frankenstein Adventure, or really almost anything we’ve played lately. I have to go back to the early work of Greg Hassett to make a comparison: very little in the way of puzzles, with most of the treasures in the open. Hassett at least tossed in a few static or random enemies to mix things up, but this is really an abandoned island.
The main interest is a lot of red herrings. For example, trying to OPEN the chest at start says “that’s not allowed / possible”. You can pick up the very specifically measured 82.35 pound rock (we’re an adventurer, I guess we’ve had practice) but it is useful for nothing.
Looking over the map of the south part of the island, to the west there’s a wild dog (a “St. Bernard”), a rope, and a “dangerous looking pit”, all which are red herrings. Heavy log and broken mirror directly to the north? Also red herrings.
Out of the three items in the hut above (shovel, jar, knife) only the knife is useful. DIG isn’t even recognized as a verb. You can’t scoop up any water with the jar even though there’s a river nearby (not like it’d be useful in any puzzles anyway).
Where the knife is useful. I’ve been taught to fear taking eyes out of idols in other adventure games, like how in Acheton doing this would set off an enemy that would chase you the rest of the game.
North of the diamond eyes scene above there is a jungle where all directions (n/s/e/w) loop. There’s a *GOLD STATUE* so you have to go in there. Taking a cue from the nearby religious items our protagonist is looting, I tried PRAY.
This leads the player to safety.
Swimming over a river, you can find a lantern which you need to be holding to enter a cave. There you can find multiple treasures just lying around.
The only obstacle remaining is a boulder too heavy to move, but fortunately immediately adjacent is an iron rod.
Outside there’s one more treasure (a pearl necklace) and a boat, where you can drop all the stuff you’ve scooped up and win. There’s a max inventory limit of five and there are six treasures so it takes at least two trips.
Honestly, I think the red herrings perhaps weren’t meant as red herrings at all; rather, this was just being written “for fun” so at some point the dog etc. got left in and ignored once it was possible to get from the start to the end.
I can’t begrudge this game being written; this is the sort of starter game lots of people from the era tried to make. I’m just a little surprised it got published (unlike the closest comparison game from 1982, Smurf Adventure), but perhaps refer back to the over-worked editor trying to crank out monthly tapes. If nothing else, Olson came back with three more games, and one of them (Gymnasium Adventure, written 1982, published 1983) I’ve played before and I remember being decent. It’s set at a high school, so perhaps a few in-jokes on the part of the author helped.
Renga in Blue 
My word that takes me back. Not the specific game (which I probably played back in the day if it was in CLOAD Magazine, but have no memory of), but the John Olsen/John Olson confusion. I devoted some time to double-checking their credits back in my Baf’s Guide days.
It was super satisfying to find some biographical info on Olson. That is, despite the games being in radically different styles, and Olsen not mentioning the doppelgänger games in an interview, I always had a nagging feeling it was just a big misunderstanding.
You can pick up the very specifically measured 82.35 pound rock
It may seem specific in pounds, but in kg it’s a nice round 37.353332– er, wait.
Why that and then describe the boulder merely as “large, heavy”? I wonder if there’s some in-joke about the number that is lost to the mists of time.
maybe some sort of school record?
Ordinarily I wouldn’t mention it, but I think in the last paragraph you have an “Olsen” that should be an “Olson”?
already had to fix two other instances before posting!
When the magazines at the time were getting both Johns confused, it’s no wonder mistakes have been duplicated online all these years later.
I guess it didn’t help that both John’s were maths/computing teachers at some point, but thankfully Mr Olsen with an E’s own writings help identify his softography… although there are still gaps in our knowledge of some of the earlier releases of games that we only have later archived versions of.
The writing on that carving at the end is echoed in Mr Olson with an O’s 1987 game Palace Adventure (“Adventures in a Palace are Fun… and Who Can Doubt It…” etc.). I wonder if he includes that in every one of his games somewhere.
The last time I had to PRAY in a text adventure was to placate the Spanish Inquisition in Quondam after many deaths at their hands. Perhaps a Cardinal Sin not to have tried it earlier but I really hadn’t expected the Spanish Inquisition.
Maybe the weight was an homage to the COUNT LEAVES mathematical nerdiness in Zork and Wishbringer.
Yes, but NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition, so don’t be too hard on yourself.
In any case, there was “pray”ing in Zork too, so you may be onto something.
I’m fascinated by the loading notes! I’m assuming “turns” refers to cassette rotations, which the user had to meticulously count to find the beginning of the data stream for a particular program? What really baffles me is the bit about the AM radio. Do you know how this worked? (Forgive me if this was all covered by earlier posts.)
yeah, the TRS-80 Model I kind of snuck by the FCC regulations on signal leakage (that’s why it is Model I only)
I don’t remember which offhand but supposedly there are games that do their sound effects by literally using the signal leakage and asking the player to put a radio next to their computer
FCC was normally really strict in the late 70s (there’s a recent good video about how the Fairchild Channel F got delayed here but I forget why the Model I didn’t get stopped.
Yeah, the radio trick went back to the mainframe days. Search for the video “The IBM 1401 makes music” for a great example and explanation. The TRS-80 also had other wacky methods for making music, like wiring out to a cheap little speaker.
Off topic, but just wanted to say that I’m a big fan of your writing, Mr. Murphy.
“Off topic, but just wanted to say that I’m a big fan of your writing, Mr. Murphy.”
That’s always very good to hear, and a pleasant surprise in an unrelated context. There’s a large amount of new material in the queue for publication over the next couple of years, some of which directly involves retro-computer-gaming.
The IBM 1401 video, and especially the information that accompanies it, is very intriguing. I love that the card pictured above encourages the user to do this for the sole purpose of listening to the loading sounds. There’s a degree of physicality to old computer tech that added an entirely different dimension to its use. Even in the early 1980s, when I was running a C64, this lent a sort of mythical quality to the machine. It felt like any number of anomalous operations were hidden just beneath the surface, waiting to somehow be accidentally discovered.
The cassette players I had in the 80s often had a counter to help you keep track of where things were on the tape–I don’t know if it was standardized in a way that would help a user find the program without turning the reel with a pencil… ok, this exhaustive discussion makes me think it wasn’t standardized, but an intrepid CLOADer might be able to work out what their tape counter did in a way that could enable them to get close to the right place?
The transport would presumably be moving the tape at the standard 1 7/8 inches per second in play/record mode and the counter linked to that, moving faster in RW/FF. FWIW I recall with our tape software for Vic 20 (type-ins and such) that we would have a list of the approximate counter position on the tape.
If you type HELP by the chest, you get the following response: “You need a BREAK today!” This a clue to use the rock to BREAK CHEST. That reveals a map. If you EXAMINE MAP, you get: “The map is barely legible . . . you can make out . . . A beach region on the extreme North end of the island.” So, not very useful.
ha! very nice.
(I mean, kind of meaningless in context, but still good you found that. I guess he expected people to get stuck working out that the boulder hid the exit.)
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