Look, the world’s most vague objective!
IN THIS ADVENTURE, SUBTERRANEAN ENCOUNTER, YOUR GOAL IS TO ATTAIN THE HIGHEST SCORE POSSIBLE IN THE FEWEST NUMBER OF MOVES.
Via 80-U.S., November 1982.
According to the 1985 book Microcomputer Market Place, Toucan Software was owned by Scott Mckenna and Steve Forrette. They only published one game which sold 500 copies. They are about as obscure a company can get; they never filed any official incorporation papers. (There’s another Toucan Software that emerges in the 1990s, but there seems to be no relation.)
Today’s game is a team effort between the aforementioned pair, and I’ve not been able to find either. The closest I got was a reference to a Scott McKenna who went to Bella Vista High School in that time span (in Fair Oaks, 1981-1985), so I’m going to guess the company was another one of the teenaged-entrepreneur larks, but I can’t confirm that with certainty. It does make sense that under such circumstances the authors would only sell 500 copies of one game and disappear after into history.
But it’s an interesting game! We’ve had TRS-80 games with graphics before, but none seem to have been influenced by the growing market for graphic adventures on the Apple II; they formed their own ecosystem with little relation.
I get the sense McKenna and Forrette at least saw a graphical Apple II game.
This games keeps the Scott-Adams style “YOU SEE” and “OBVIOUS EXITS”, but also fills more than half of the top of the screen with an image. We haven’t seen that before with the TRS-80, and the two other graphical TRS-80 games I know of coming up in 1982 don’t follow this pattern.
If the authors got the two-thirds-top-of-screen graphics look from, say, one of the [Sierra] On-Line games, they may also be enamored with the amount of random death. That bottle from the initial shot is acid (don’t drink it! you can POUR BOTTLE and it asks on what, but I have found nothing that works).
Heading east and then north from the starting room arrives at a “shack”.
Trying to enter kills you. You have one line where command can technically be typed, but the game seems to be coded to send every reaction to death.
How about a low move count with a low score as the game’s objective?
Heading south rather than north leads you to a castle.
There’s some logs on the south side (that are too heavy to move), while the east side has an open drawbridge.
I’m sure what happens next will shock you.
That’s almost everything I’ve managed so far, but go back at look at where the path splits. The game says there are “two forks in the path” which you could kind of read as a north fork and a south fork, but the way to actually read it is there is a fork and also a fork.
LOOK FORK reveals one of the forks to be a dinner fork, so this isn’t quite the same as Mad Venture where fork referred to both the literal location and the object. This is a joke rather than a mind-bending warp of reality.
I poked around some contemporary material that indicated the game was short (41 rooms) but given what happened last time, that doesn’t mean it will be easy. (At least it’s written in BASIC!) If you’d like to poke around yourself you can find a couple version of the game here, and AUTORUN (under the DISK EMU column) seems to work for the first version.
Renga in Blue 
via the magic of my verb list testing, I found STAB HERMIT works when you’re holding the fork
no progress otherwise
but information in case someone is trying the game
the verbs I found are
CLIMB, READ, OPEN, CLOSE, DRINK, EAT, KILL, THROW, UNLOCK, LOCK, SIT, STAND, POUR, JUMP, PUT, PUSH, PULL, EXAMINE, PUNCH, STAB, GO, UNLIGHT
Yeah, the hermit puzzle’s solution (and the general surreal/punny nature of the game) is mentioned in various reviews/magazine snippets; such as the one in Family Computing.
Going on an Internet search, 4024 Canonero Court seems to have been the family home of Steve Forrette as there is a Michael Forrette listed as living there at one point. Toucan Software are listed at the same address as “a division of Queue, Inc” at least as late as 2008 in publishing directories, but I guess that could just be based on an older ISBN application.
However there is a Michael Forrette and a Steve Forrette listed for a Toucan Enterprises, Inc – originally incorporated in California and later in Texas. That company still seems to be running.
hmm, if Queue is connected with the address, maybe it _is_ the same company as the 90s one (they’re connected with a bunch of educational software, they did something called Big Book Maker)
which means they basically went moribund with it for 8 years before starting up again with the same name?
but what’s with the Texas company then?
mysterious! Will need more prodding
ok, here’s the way to ask the question
are we sure the Pelican at “338 Commerce Drive” in Fairfield, CT — that’s the one that cranked out a bunch of educational software — is the same as the one in California? I’m worried about databases connecting names up speciously but it seems like it should be possible to confirm
here’s some names from one of the manuals (Quentin) in case it helps
Director of Product Development – Joel Fried
Programming – Ken Grey
Project Editor – Susan Swanson
Computer Graphics – Christopher Lewis / Susan Swanson / Gerry Gigon
Documentation – Ken Dube
have seen no evidence from the materials of a connection with other Pelican
One of the big nostalgia bugs I get when looking at old game documentation like this are how game publishers just printed their home addresses (and likely home phone numbers) in the manuals of their games. You can actually look up the Zillow listing for Ken & Roberta Williams’ Coarsegold, CA house and get a peek inside.
I was poking around and found this thread I think you’d like — Ken Williams drops in and talks about the house a bit
Is this one without any (known) solution posted?
No solution posted. (This seems to happen more often with the trs-80 only games.)
Since there are two locs with a drawbridge (at least it seems so in the map you published), it would be nice to try the other one.
after passing the hermit you get a rope
as long as you’re holding the rope, you can BUILD RAFT while at the logs
I tried MAKE which wasn’t understood so wasted a bunch of time trying other things, raaar
Heading east and then north from the starting room arrives at a “shack”. Trying to enter kills you.
Damn! Don’t go to Radio Shack, I guess! ;)
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If you have access to Ancestry.com (your local library might have Ancestry Library), you can find the date of birth and current address of just about anyone (the more common the name, the harder it is to find). Steve / Stephen Forrette is not a very common name, so I was able to find that he was born in California in 1967, went to Bella Vista High School with Scott McKenna, and currently lives in Houston (at least as of 2020). I’m not not rude enough to post his address here, but if you’re interested in it, I can email it to you.
is it the same as this one?
https://opencorporates.com/companies/us_tx/0013557106
I’m 99% sure now it is isn’t the same Toucan as the one in CT, which is the main thing I needed to eliminate
Yes, according to Ancestry, he lived at that same address in Houston from 2002 – 2020. As of 2020, he now has a new Houston address. I should point out that the Index of Public Records offered on Ancestry often confuses business and residential addresses, and sometimes the address timelines are suspect.
Ancestry also offers access to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Index. He has three patents listed there:
Name Residence Place Application Date Publication Date Certificate #
Stephen M. Forrette Houston, Texas, USA 30 Dec 2016 21 May 2019 15396337
Stephen M. Forrette Houston, Texas, USA 27 Jan 2016 10 Sep 2019 15008426
Stephen M. Forrette Houston, Texas, USA 20 May 2019 10 Dec 2019 16417114
It does not say what the patents are for, unfortunately, but he shares them with Lyle M. Green, Randolph A. Rice, and Charles E. Russo.
one of those looks like it had two filings?
https://patents.google.com/?inventor=Stephen+M.+Forrette
MarkeTouch Media, Inc. seems to be a company that does automation for hospitals, like being able track keycards or something like that
That could be. I had a great-great uncle (who died before my time) who was a printer by trade, but also an inventor on the side. Among other things, he owned 6 or 8 patents involving envelopes. Some of the different features that had separate patents were virtually identical except for the most minute details. Who knows? Great find, by the way.