As far as the “classic” Scott Adams goes, they’re taking a break throughout 1982; the first six of the Adams games were converted to graphical format, but I’m not replaying games just because they add graphics.
However, Adventure International was still selling at a brisk rate through the year, including some products by high school student Roger Jonathan Schrag. One of them, Arex, is a Qix variant of sorts that looks genuinely well-programmed.
Maybe his adventures are the same way, but I could only get a little bit of the way into Toxic Dumpsite before being stumped. It, along with the game Spook House, were sold as a “double feature” in a single game package; both feature TRS-80 graphics.
As the manual states:
Something’s gone very wrong at the Toxic Dumpsite where life-threatening nuclear wastes are treated and buried. The entire plant will explode like the Fourth of July in less than 30 minutes unless you can avoid the many traps and protection systems, find the right controls and shut the plant down in time.
The 30 minutes is counted in real time. If you step away from the keyboard and come back 30 minutes later the explosion will have happened.
(This is, in a way, very bad and not bad at all. Very bad in that real time and typing don’t always mix, not bad at all in that when I play games on a modern emulator with save states I can usually beat any time limits handily.)
You start with a note in your hands — it seems like you’d be briefed about this information beforehand?
Other than that, you start in a series of three rooms: the entrance, a storage room, and a room with a furnace.
Trying to head north or south from the entrance leads to locked doors (I assume one of the locked doors was simply the way we came in). I’ve tried many verbs and actions on the doors and the furnace with no luck. So I’m stuck on the game right away.
I’ve tried every verb on this list on the furnace.
There is a hint sheet for the game but I know if I check it this early I’ll have very little resistance for checking hints later. If someone would like to deliver a hint in ROT13 in comments, though, I’ll take it that way.
Having an extremely hard opening puzzle doesn’t mean the game will be dire — Subterranean Encounter started the same way — but it certainly doesn’t give a good first impression.
Renga in Blue 
….and I was missing a mechanic.
I had been trying to go “NORTH” to maybe face north thinking that there was stuff in the room I wasn’t able to see, and the configuration was more like Mystery House (Japan) than Mystery House (America) and wasn’t having any luck, but I was thinking of TURN as turning objects. I decided to try TURN NORTH and it worked, d’oh.
So more progress hopefully soon!
ok, _still_ stuck in those rooms
Found a red button (a click but no effect), a chest with a lantern (can be lit at the furnace) a book that has a credit card in it, but that’s it. Credit card doesn’t work to pick the lock unless I’m missing a syntax.
I took a look at the hint sheet, and a walkthrough, to try to help get this one off the ground:
1. Bar bs gur ireof lbh grfgrq vf gur bar lbh arrq – ohg lbh’er abg gelvat gb cvpx n ybpx.
2. Jung zvtug bar abeznyyl arrq gb qb gb tnva npprff gb n frpher nern (yvxr n ahpyrne zngrevnyf fvgr)?
3. Jung zvtug gung juvgr fdhner arkg gb gur ragenapr qbbe ercerfrag?
4. V’z abg fher gung pneq lbh sbhaq vf ernyyl n “perqvg” pneq.
5. Qrzbafgengr lbh orybat urer.
6. Cerfrag fbzr perqragvnyf.
7. Snpvat gur ragenapr qbbe, FUBJ PNEQ.
8. (Vs vg’f abg jbexvat, gel chfuvat gur erq ohggba svefg.)
“Turn north”? Really? Oh dear…
This is the first time I hear something like this. It is peculiar that the English adventures had so many variations for advancing the character:
– the “common” ones: [go] (n)orth, (s)outh, …:
– go door: it means “go to the same direction the door is in”, normally works if the door is open. In Spanish, if the door is to the east, we would just say “(e)ast” instead. Or maybe “enter” or “exit”. But not “ir puerta” or something similar.
– turn (direction): definitely not found before. It would resemble something like tank controls in graphical games if you had to enter “turn north” and then “advance”. Isn’t it?
I hope there was a manual at some point explaining this, because otherwise that’s a particularly cruel way of doing movement.
the manual doesn’t make it clear
Click to access manuals-Toxic-Dumpsite-&-Spook-House.pdf
it just talks about also having Forward/Backward/Left/Right available and arrow keys but those also work by moving you in the direction, not turning
(correction: arrow keys actually turn. manual acts like typing f/b/l/r would be equivalent but it isn’t)
Figures it isn’t helpful. I don’t understand the logic in having mechanics like this and not explaining them. Manuals should be so full of detail you have the history of the radioactive waste or something, but perhaps Microprose just spoiled me on such things.