Uncle Harry has died! You are called to his house on the east coast of the country to hear the will. The will leaves everything to you! The only problem is that he failed to tell where “everything” is located. Not even a map! The only thing that might help is a poem which gives clues on where to look.
In 1975, Art Walsh and Fred Ruckdeschel were both working at Xerox in the area of Rochester, New York. Fred was Art’s supervisor. In 1975, Ruckdeschel had just bought an Altair:
… it only came in kit form, cost $495, I think. And you you got a a box full of components in a in a shell which look like a big bread basket. And, he put one together.
He said this is neat. And, so that we could use it in our laboratories and have our machines directly input their output, into a computer and do all sorts of image analysis on it. Which we were able to do. And he, he tried getting me interested in the computers, and I’m used to working on mainframes, but, and it was also cheap.
Both Fred and Art got further into computers, writing articles for Byte magazine.
Ruckdeschel’s articles were fairly technical and eventually he wrote a two-part book of over 1000 pages on mathematical algorithms in BASIC. From November 1978 Byte.
Art had a lull between assignments where he programmed his computer to play bridge, and around the same time Fred had made an oil tanker simulator. Ruckdeschel had the notion that they since the pair had two programs already, and they could produce a few more and a start a new company together.
We formed a company, and it was one of the first software companies [1978], and the name is Dynacomp. And we ran ads in Byte Magazine … we started getting an order here and there for our software.
This was all while they were still at Xerox. The pair eventually had a personality conflict and by 1981 decided to split their company (and catalog) in two, with Art going one way with the company Artworx, and Ruckdeschel keeping under the Dynacomp name. (Some titles were kept in both, which is why both had a version of Cranston Manor Adventure.) For our purposes today, Dynacomp is more our target of interest, because Fred Ruckdeschel had a North Star Horizon at home and it was one of his favored computers, meaning his company kept the North Star part of the catalog.
Dynacomp incidentally lasted a bit longer than many other mail-order kings; they got up at least to the early 90s. Artworx had similar longevity, but at least I can explain theirs: their Bridge game was an evergreen product. With Dynacomp, I’m not entirely sure why they lasted so long. It may have been they didn’t focus entirely on the “hip” computers (like Apple and Commodore) but rather went for unusual niches, most with some variant of the CP/M operating system. In addition to their large collection — really the only large collection — for the North Star Horizon, later catalogues list support for:
Osborne, North Star CP/M, SuperBrain, NEC PC 8000 CP/M, KAYPRO II MORROW DESIGNS, HEATH ZENITH Z-100, HEATH ZENITH H-89 8″, CROMEMCO, ALTOS, XEROX 820, IBM PC/PC Jr., SANYO (with MS DOS), PANASONIC, COMPAQ Z or BA, CANON AS-100, DEC RAINBOW 100 (with MS DOS), and other CP/M IBM 3740 systems.
SuperBrain, now that’s a oddball computer. I found a Usenet thread from ’88 with someone trying to locate a commercial C compiler for CP/M and getting a recommendation for Dynacomp (a company that “no one has heard of”).
The SuperBrain came out in 1979. Check out that 70s design aesthetic! From Wikipedia.
The North Star Horizon has only come up here recently due to the discovery of a new cache of software thanks to f15sim, essentially a gigantic chunk of the Dynacomp catalog (given there are disks supposedly still left to upload, maybe the entire Dynacomp catalog). I wanted to try out three games from I hadn’t heard of before: Gumball Rally Adventure, Uncle Harry’s Will, and Windmere Estate, all (probably) by R.L. Turner. They’d been out there in the Dynacomp catalog already (see the Winter ’82 one here) but uncatalogued on Mobygames and elsewhere; the North Star just never has gotten much attention.
From DeRamp.
I unfortunately have not dredged up any details on R. L. Turner other than he seems to have been a car enthusiast, as his first game in the Dynacomp catalog (probably) is Gumball Rally Adventure. The (probably) is because it is listed as copyright 1980 from Novel Software, but there’s a Turner Motel, and the theming matches quite strongly with Uncle Harry which we’re about to get to, and they’re right next to each other in the catalogue, so–
YOU ARE IN GOOFY’S GARAGE ON THE EAST SIDE OF BIGTOWN. THERE ARE FIVE CARS PARKED HERE. YOU MAY CHOOSE ANY ONE TO DRIVE. EACH CAR HAS BEEN PREPARED FOR RACING AND IS GASSED UP READY TO GO. ALL FIVE CARS HAVE A SPARE TIRE IN THE TRUNK. THERE IS AN EMPTY 1 GALLON CAN HERE. ALONG ONE WALL IS A GAS PUMP, AIR & WATER HOSES, GREASE GUNS, ETC. THE EXIT IS ON THE WEST SIDE OF THE BUILDING AND LEADS ONTO A NORTH-SOUTH STREET. WHICH CAR WILL YOU DRIVE?
1. PORSCHE 2. FERARRI 3. COBRA 4. RABBIT 5. HOTROD FORD
(1 – 5) >
This is essentially a simulation game in the vein of Camel, The Oregon Trail, etc. where you are trying to get from point A to point B. Except if you don’t have the map which presumably came with the game, it’s super easy to get to lost trying to get from one coast to the other.
This is based on the ’76 movie and some of the vehicle choices seem to match what’s on the show.
(The trailer references It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World from more than a decade before, which is a comedy where people were racing across the country to find a treasure hidden at the Big W. This movie was also part of the trend invoking the brief fame held by Cannonball Runs, getting from one coast to the other coast of the US as fast as possible, like Will Wright did in 1980.)
I have no doubt there’s an “optimal” vehicle choice (they allegedly have different gas consumption and handling) but I wasn’t interested enough in the proceedings to figure out.
The basic idea is:
1. Type START to start your engine, STOP to stop.
2. Type a number to change your speed.
3. If something is a “sharp” curve the car’s speed needs to be fairly low (25, sometimes lower) or the car will slide.
4. You’ll lose a shocking number of tires to flats, you need to CHANGE TIRE when it happens.
5. At various gas stations you can BUY GAS, BUY OIL, or BUY TIRE. Make sure you buy more than one spare because of the aforementioned flats.
6. There’s the occasional police radar speed trap.
7. There’s the occasional other special encounter, like a school bus and a hitchhiker (who will, according to the source code, steal your car if you try to stop, but I was never able to get her to trigger).
YOU STOP FOR THE BLONDE. SHE GETS IN AND PULLS A GUN. SHE TAKES ALL YOUR MONEY AND YOUR CAR. YOU LOSE!
8. There’s a bit where it “goes dark” and you are supposed to type LIGHTS ON. It’s a car, after all, not the middle of a dungeon.
9. I’m not entirely sure if the map is bug-free; I managed to get to one point where it “overlapped” a road in a way that didn’t make sense, and I checked every route going west and all of them dead-ended.
(Orange is a gas station, red is a tire blow-out spot, blue is police radar.)
Despite the very mild gesture to special encounters this is entirely “simulation” gameplay without anything resembling a puzzle. However, it does get at something I’ve wondered, which is the Route to Adventure Without Adventure; that is, if we didn’t have Crowther/Woods or Wander, and we somehow got to an Adventure archetype, by what route would it come? By adding a map a game like Camel gets close to feeling like an adventure, maybe? However, that’s not what happened here as the author is clearly aware of adventures and adds a response to PLUGH:
MAGIC WORDS DON’T WORK HERE
It was worth spending the time here because of Uncle Harry’s Will, which is clearly playing with the same idea, but dumps the speed/gas simulation aspect.
UNCLE HARRY HAS DIED! UNCLE HARRY HASN’T BEEN HEARD FROM IN A NUMBER OF YEARS. HE WAS PRETTY MUCH A RECLUSE AND DIDN’T HAVE MUCH CONTACT WITH THE FAMILY. IT WAS SAID THAT UNCLE HARRY WAS RICH AND HAD HIDDEN A LARGE TREASURE WORTH MILLIONS.
WHEN THE LAWYER CALLED, HE STATED THAT YOU ARE THE LONE BENIFICIARY. HE ASKED THAT YOU COME TO HARRY’S HOUSE FOR A READING OF THE WILL. THE WILL WAS QUITE SIMPLE. IT STATED THAT THE MONEY WAS YOURS IF YOU COULD FIND IT. THE ONLY CLUES TO THE LOCATION WERE IN THE FORM OF A POEM. NO OTHER CLUES! NOT EVEN A MAP. I GUESS YOU’LL HAVE TO MAKE A MAP AS YOU TRAVEL.
Looking at 1981, the only other “rich person dies with an eccentric will” game is Stoneville Manor; the rich person in that game wasn’t technically our relative! So this is arguably the first “claim your inheritance” adventure plot (eventually followed by games like Hollywood Hijinx and The Mulldoon Legacy and…. IFDB lists 14 games and I’m pretty sure it is missing a few).
BEHIND THE WALL, BELOW THE RISE,
IN THE ROOM MY TREASURE LIES
IN ALL DIRECTIONS YOU SHOULD DRIVE
TO FIND IT, YOU MUST STAY ALIVE
ON YOUR WAY ACROSS THE NATION
YOU’LL HAVE NEED TO FIND A STATION
THE SMOKEY HILL WILL LEAD THE WAY
I KNOW YOU’LL FIND IT, COME WHAT MAY
FOLLOW THE SUN AT THE END OF DAY
TO GET ACROSS, YOU’LL FIND A WAY
STAY ON THE ROAD OF THE GOLDEN BAR
‘TILL YOU FIND THE PLACE WITH THE PARKED CAR
FOLLOW THE LION ‘TILL YOU FIND THE SCHOOL
CLIMB ON UP AND SEE THE JEWEL
FROM THE TOP YOU CAN SEE REAL GOOD
THE THING YOU WANT’S BENEATH THE WOOD
TAKE THE THING THAT YOU’LL FIND THERE
THEN GO AND SEARCH; YOU’LL KNOW WHERE
The big difference here between this wacky uncle and his later variants as that this one is asking you to drive cross-country. It’s possible R. L. Turner (and the fictional uncle) are fans of road rallies with a puzzle element. These are road races where the racers need to follow instructions and there are puzzles embedded within.
Here’s an example of an easy gimmick: a misspelled street name. Let’s say that your current Route Instruction is “Turn right at Smith” when you come to Smyth Street. According to the General Instructions, the word “Smith” must appear on a sign where you do this Route Instruction, but the word “Smith” does not appear on the “Smyth St” sign.
I have no idea if Uncle Harry’s Will is really following this tradition (which includes straight puzzle hunts), because I still have yet to get that far. The map alone is a serious time investment; there are multiple connected towns and a freeway to map out, and finally one-way exits make sense. You spend most of the time in your car, although you can LEAVE CAR to enter locations on foot. The only adventure I’ve played that I can think of that’s remotely comparable is Amnesia (1986), which put in every intersection in Manhattan.
You can go to every intersection on this map. From the Internet Archive.
Rather like Amnesia, most locations in Uncle Harry’s Will are bare-bones. Amnesia doesn’t make the player map things out, but we have to. Driving onward!
YOU ARE ON MAIN ST. IN THE TOWN OF EASTPORT
MAIN RUNS NORTH-SOUTH
>N
YOU ARE AT THE INTERSECTION OF MAIN AND FIR
>E
YOU ARE AT THE INTERSECTION OF DOCK AND FIR
>N
YOU ARE AT THE CORNER OF DOCK AND PINE
>W
YOU ARE AT THE INTERSECTION OF MAIN AND PINE
>N
YOU ARE AT THE EASTPORT ZOO. THE ZOO IS CLOSED
Before driving away too far I should mention there’s a by-foot location right where you start in the town of Eastport: you can walk up to a house which is locked and the game asks for a key you don’t have.
>LEAVE CAR
OK, YOU’RE OUT OF YOUR CAR
>W
YOU ARE ON THE STEPS LEADING TO A WALKWAY UP TO THE FRONT PORCH THE WALKWAY HAS A WIRE FENCE ALONG BOTH SIDES HERE
TO THE WEST IS THE FRONT PORCH
>W
YOU ARE ON THE WALKWAY AT THE BASE OF THE FRONT PORCH STEPS LEAD WEST TO THE FRONT PORCH ANOTHER WALKWAY LEADS NORTH AROUND THE SIDE OF THE HOUSE
>W
YOU ARE ON THE FRONT PORCH THE FRONT DOOR IS TO THE WEST TO THE EAST STEPS LEAD DOWN TO A FENCED WALKWAY
>W
YOU HAVE NO KEY
I can give the starting town at least, which has no items to nab.
However, the freeway (which you can see a part of) makes things very confusing, as it is possible to have it merge with an existing freeway without it being clear.
YOU ARE ON A NORTHBOUND FREEWAY
>N
YOU ARE ON A NORTHBOUND FREEWAY
THE FREEWAY PASSES THROUGH MOUNTAINS HERE
>N
YOU ARE ON A NORTHBOUND FREEWAY
>N
YOU ARE ON A NORTHBOUND FREEWAY
THERE IS AN EXIT TO THE NE AHEAD
>NE
YOU ARE AT THE CORNER OF PARK AND OAK
(In the clip above, we landed back in the starting town, but it wasn’t clear that’s what was going to happen until I tried the exit, and sometimes exits just lead to more freeways.)
Here are some highway rooms where I’m fairly sure I did a loop and have some duplication:
Taking Route 60 south from Eastport I was able to find a dirt road with a chainsaw, my first item.
YOU AT THE END OF THE ROAD
THERE ARE CUT TREES EVERYWHERE
THIS IS AN OLD LOGGING CAMP
THERE IS A CHAINSAW LAYING NEAR A LOG HERE
Further down there’s the town of Baycity where I was able to find a shovel in an old hardware store and a ferry ticket in the dump. Everything seems to be totally abandoned.
The abandonment (so far) means no police radars, but I did find a spot that clearly invoked Gumball Rally with a flat tire trying to go west from the starting town.
YOU ARE ON FORD ROAD
THERE IS A BRIDGE TO THE WEST
THERE IS A LOUD POP! YOU HAVE A FLAT TIRE!
>CHANGE TIRE
YOU HAVE NO SPARE TIRE
THERE YOU SIT WITH A FLAT TIRE!
AND NO SPARE! NEXT TIME, GET MORE SPARES!
READY
Well. I would buy one if I could find a store with living people! I’m sure they are somewhere. This seems to now be treated more like a puzzle than a simulationist checkbox.
I’ll try my best to get more of a full map next time and maybe reckon with the poem. Even with the abandoned towns this could end up being a neat idea but the number of rooms (over 300, according to the advertising) is overwhelming.
At least the reward ought to be better than a gumball machine! Although I could see the plot having a twist at the end.
Renga in Blue 
Okay, here’s my status report:
I had to start over a couple of times because I’m a “text mapper”, and have never cared for normal drawn maps. Meaning, my mapping method looks something like this:
1 Front of house – N(2), E(3), W(4)
2 Path to woods – S(1), N(5)
3 East of house – W(1), S(6)
etc.
It ends up looking like a string of code, especially for larger games, but it’s always made more sense to me than 2D maps trying to represent 3D spaces, with “up” and “down” locations swung randomly all over the place next to rooms accessed by cardinal directions or special commands, etc. I also keep two other sheets, one for items and one for notes/unsolved puzzles, all numbered by their rooms of origin. Again, I’ve always found this to be neater and easier to quickly reference than having stuff scrawled all over a traditional map. I’ve done this since I was a kid in the early 80s, meaning that I’ve never really taken to using Trizbort, but… (I think you can see where this is going). Anyway, this game’s road map is so absurd that I broke down and started doing both methods at once, in order to check that it all made sense. It’s definitely helped a bit, but using Trizbort for this means having to revise and swing rooms around, since different roads start crossing into the same traditional map spaces, etc. Pardon my French, but… BEURK!!!
Anyway, now I’m about at the same place as you, mapping and item-wise, but I’ve found a bit of other stuff (items and areas of interest) just driving around randomly, that I haven’t technically “gotten to” yet, so I’m motivated to keep going, despite the pain. Let me know here if you have any ideas or points of interest you want to point out, and I’ll do the same.
Oh, one other thing: Aside from the popping tires, this game does seem to have some sort of gas management, as once after driving around forever, I started to get a low fuel warning. I also saw a gas station somewhere, but it was way beyond anywhere I’ve actually mapped yet.
I’ve alsi unsurprisingly found a couple of weird bugs, but I’ll save that for later.
Just realized that of course the poem itself makes it clear you’ll need to buy gas, so your comment about dropping the gas management was referring to another issue. Sorry for confusing that.
One of the bugs I discovered may be a spoiler of some kind, so I’ll skip that for now. But these two you might want to know about:
There seem to be a few road locations where if you enter an invalid direction, instead of getting the usual “You can’t go that way” message, you get an “Out of bounds” error and it crashes you out of the game.
There also seems to be a weird savestate issue where after you load a state a few times in one session, the game won’t accept any keyboard input anymore. There’s a way around it, though: cycle through your savestate spots and it unlocks again. Not sure if this is an issue for you, but once I’ve played for a little while it always starts happening.
Thanks for the great research! It’s always nice to know the background stories of these games.
I had started mapping Uncle Harry’s Will but got so confused by the highway systems that I quit early on. I’ll try it again some time in the future, I hope.
Regarding Gumball Rally, if I recall correctly, there is a tunnel that you must go through, but then you are sort of “teleported” to a place before it (don’t know if it’s a bug, I don’t see any logic to it.) Maybe that’s why your map is overlapping. Then if you go again through that tunnel it returns to normal. Doing this I was able to get to the end.
Isn’t HAUNT kind of a “claim your inheritance” game?
oh yeah, that one’s wild
you sort of retroactively have to become a relative, even if it doesn’t start that way
TIL what the movie The Cannonball Run is actually about. Huh.
maybe doing an update today but it might need to be tomorrow
the “best” bug so far is there’s this road that’s blocked by ash and you can get the hint (from radio) to get a shovel, but it turns out you can’t get through if you have the shovel (no special message, YOU CAN’T DO THAT) and if _don’t_ have the shovel then you can get through
so this was coded wrong, rather than letting people through who had the shovel it did the exact opposite in the logic
Yeah, just getting to that part. Good to know! How much have you mapped of this nightmare so far? I’m “officially” at something like 150 rooms, so not even half?!? Some of the looping overpass/underpass freeway stuff is just awful…
190ish (I have some “Fake” rooms where I used the dot-dash outline indicating that they actually “warp” somewhere because I don’t want to draw the arrow)
I’ve got what seems to be a complete freeway map now, a lot of it is just re-connecting
I’m stuck on things to do, I think maybe next I need to go west from the Town of Amikay (based on the poem — the hint about the smoke seemed to lead me to the card that allows for gas/oil changes) but I’m not sure how, other than maybe if you kill enough time the sun will start to set and the gate will open? Weird if that’s what it wants
I’m not checking source code yet, I want to make my second post at least
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I dated Fred in the 70s and knew Art and Joyce quite well. Art and Joyce taught us how to play bridge. We had great times getting together with them. Not long after they started Dynacomp, Fred and I went our separate ways. It was fun reading your account of those Xerox days and the close friendship Fred and Art had. I was sorry to hear they went their separate ways. I always felt their relationship was complicated. Thanks for the memories!
Thanks for sharing! I pulled the quotes from an audio interview with Art, if you’d like to listen to him talk about it
https://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-284-art-walsh-dynacomp-and-artworx
Thanks! I will.