If you look at Jason Dyer’s blog, he’s been at 1982 for three years with no signs of finishing it yet, and he seems to show no signs of reaching 1983.
Believe it or not, we are getting close to the end of 1982. This is my final list. If any games show up after this point they can go on my float-list. That doesn’t mean they’ll necessarily wait, but I don’t need to finish them for 1982 to be “done”.
I am excluding games that are lost media or I am unable to play at the moment for whatever reason (if Testament shows up, for example, I’ll be bumping it up in priority, but it isn’t on this list).
These are more or less in alphabetical order.
…
Arkenstone: minimal type-in for the VIC-20 with some Tolkien inspiration.
Arsène Larcin: French game from Québec for the Apple II.
Bedlam: The other 1982 game by the author of Xenos.
Circus: The last of the Mysterious Adventures from 1982.
The Colonel’s House: First of a supposed series from Rabbit Software, but it looks like only the first game was written.
Cornucopia: One of the Brian Cotton games, although I need to play Witch Hunt Goblin Towers from 1981 first. (Update: have played it, now free to play Cornucopia.)
Countdown to Doom: Last of the Acornsoft games from 1982.
Crystal Caverns: Hayden’s other text-only Apple II game, other than the buggy Crime Stopper.
The Curse of the Pharaoh: Kirsch, while not busy cranking out Adventures of the Month, also did a graphical adventure that got tossed on one of the Softside special disks.
The Deadly Game, The Dalton Gang, Alaskan Adventure: The final games for the Softside Adventure of the Month.
Danger Island: Another game for the Dragon.
Dark Star, Mexican Adventure: The other SharpSoft games remaining.
Derelict 2147: Roger M. Wilcox’s last game of 1982 (number 20 out of 21 games).
Drive-In: A naughty game, not the earliest but pretty early.
Enchanted Forest: Tandy CoCo game with weird graphics.
Espionage Island: The fourth Artic game after Ship of Doom.
Geheim-agent XP-05: The second-oldest German text adventure game we have.
Grave Robbers: Victory Software, of the minimal VIC-20 games like Jack and the Beanstalk, somehow now also includes text-mode graphics.
Haunted House: The last 1982 game from Aardvark.
From the Tolkien Collector’s Guide.
The Hobbit: The famous Melbourne House game, probably the most famous game of 1982 I haven’t played yet.
In Search of: The Four Vedas, Stone Age, Fun House: The remaining TI-99 games by ASD&D. Fun House was sleuthed out recently by reader LanHawk.
Island Adventure: The last Apex Trading game for 1982.
Keys of the Wizard: The sequel to the ultrahard Madness and the Minotaur. Probably the hardest game remaining on my list.
Mad Martha: Satirical Britgame with minigames, from the author of Mines of Saturn.
Mysterious Mansion, Troll Hole Adventure: Two games for the Victor Lambda computer from France, based on the US Interact Model One.
Quest: Schatzoeken: Mysterious VIC-20 game.
Rainbow Adventure: Tandy CoCo type-in.
Search For The Ruby Chalice: Type-in via the Rainbow Book of Adventures. (Moved to 1983.)
Sherwood Forest: Apple II graphics game.
Softcore software collection: A set of naughty games. Not all the games are available. (Note: need to finish 5 and 6 now.)
The Software Toolworks version of Adventure: With three extra treasures, for CP/M.
Time Adventure, Hitch Hiker: Two from the same author, the latter being a modification of Supersoft Hitch Hiker’s Guide.
Time Warden: An unpublished game by the author of The Scepter.
Tom Sato Adventure: An obscure BBC Micro game, the rest of the games on this collection are lost but the adventure got rescued last year.
Windmere Estate, Zodiac Castle: Two that originally were on North Star, and one is weirdly a modification of the other. Maybe?
There’s also Apple II versions which are supposedly broken due to a bug.
Renga in Blue 
Did someone manage to fix that weird number entry problem in Dark Star? I’d like to get back to that one if possible. It was actually quite fun up until that made it impossible to go on.
I’m going to edit the source code to make it work when I get to that game.
(…not the first time I’ve ever had to do that)
I finally got around to trying out Notepad++, that you had recommended, to check out Dark Star for myself to see what’s going on here with the numbers. However, the code displays as gibberish aside from the regular in-game text, just like in the simple text editors I usually use, and I couldn’t find any included or external options for viewing the appropriate BASIC code. Even with that, I was still able to see what might be a simple fix (changing the the in-game definition of the MZ-700s special function keys to the required numerals), but then I can’t get the emulator to run the edited file without various errors, or the code LISTing out as only contaning the first few lines that I edited, and not the whole rest of the program.
So yeah, long story short, my technical skills suck and I’m thoroughly embarrassed with myself. Any advice on how you usually do these things? Sorry for being dumb.
On a related note, that Gaming Alexandria page you mentioned on how they’re handling the Japanese type-ins was really interesting (especially the video tutorial). They haven’t done any text adventures, so I’m seriously considering giving it a try, but as above, I fear my technical ineptitude may cause some headaches…
kind of funny to see that your “almost done” list still consists of 40+ titles! 😁 Still, way to go man, I admire your dedication and always enjoy reading your takes on the games. (Really looking forward to your take on Geheimagent XP-05, it’s been ages since I tried my hands on that one myself)
it’s past the 3/4 mark, which is where I did a similar post with 1980 and 1981
obviously more games! but this feels more like a manageable list than it has before
Jason, I think it would be fun if you covered this one:
https://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-bawdy-adventure-in-the-magic-caverns_32206.html
On my list! For 1981. (I am pairing it with another game on the 82 list when I get there.)
Thanks, keep up the good work!
Imagine screwing up so much in one comment that you inspire a post on another blog. ;p
I could have sworn you already covered The Hobbit, but I guess myself and others bring it up so much that it already feels like it’s been covered.
I also could have sworn there was another Japanese adventure game, not the one you have on the lost list, but I guess I’m wrong. Or I forgot about one of the ones you already covered. Reminds me that I should probably make a list of Japanese-made ones myself, since there are quite a lot of them.
I mean, from your perspective it was a perfectly legitimate comment, since I had the list but I hadn’t shared it!
There is another Japanese game (discussed w/ Rob in a past thread where he puts it at December 1982) called オデセイア. It is in the weird a-copy-technically-exists-but-I’m-unable-to-play nethersphere like Testament so it won’t make this list for now.
Odyssey, in English? Never heard of that one. If you’re willing to send me a link, either here or via e-mail, I can take a crack at getting it to work.
Out of interest, do you have an end point in mind?
I ask because I listen to the “A History of Rock Music in 500 songs” podcast where it’s becoming increasingly obvious that it will never reach episode 500 due to the amount of time each episode takes to research and record.
until either I finish all the adventures
or the heat death of the universe
That’s what happens when you’re a tad more scrupulous than The Adventure Gamer. It blows my mind how Beyond Zork was a “Missed Classic”
I’m fine with whatever method people want to in order to pick a slice of gaming
I am of course supportive of more text adventure (but I know their audience isn’t necessarily as into that as y’all are!)
btw, Captain Blood, which Trickster tried early, is _not_ on my list (I think it leans more to the Spaceflight end of the spectrum)
Speaking of obscure/unavailable Japanese games, and looking forward to 1983, one thing to look into if you haven’t already is the explosion of type-ins. On the downside, although there were dozens of these from many different magazines from around 1983-1987, I’m not sure if a single one of them is listed in a western database or is publicly available in a software archive, and even in Japan they’re poorly catalogued for many systems. But the upside is that a lot (although certainly not all) of the vintage Japanese mags have been scanned in recently, so if someone wanted to put in the time, they could conceivably be made more widely available.
Here’s a selection of 1983 titles, off the top of my head (Memo Satsujin is especially amusing):
https://archive.org/details/Io19834/page/n226/mode/1up?view=theater
https://archive.org/details/19836/page/361/mode/1up?view=theater
https://archive.org/details/technopolis-volume-13-august-1983/Technopolis%20-%20Volume%2013%20-%20August%201983/page/124/mode/1up?view=theater
https://archive.org/details/Io19834/page/n216/mode/1up?view=theater
https://archive.org/details/micom-1983-12/page/384/mode/1up
http://mio.servequake.com/~takky/p8/login/alienadventure.html
http://mio.servequake.com/~takky/emuz2000/ohmz/irohautanonazo.html
http://mio.servequake.com/~takky/emuz2000/ohmz/mnohigeki.html
Just posted here with a bunch of links, but the spam filter won’t let it through, even with the beginnings removed. Hopefully you can retrieve it from the abyss…
I’ve seen a few of those
the fun one are going to be the ones that are all hexadecimal!
there are some folks on the Gaming Alexandria discord who have been picking at the giant backlog of type-ins, there’s a big list here of the ones they’ve done so far
https://www.gamingalexandria.com/wp/type-in-programs/
includes, for example, a puzzle game from Square that was only published as a type-in
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I was searching for some other stuff, and these titles happened to pop up, which seem like they should be on your 1982 list. Maybe you have them marked as 1983?
https://archive.org/details/commodore-power-play-03/page/n24/mode/1up?view=theater
https://solutionarchive.com/list/company%2C1618/
I have Compumat Adventure
https://bluerenga.blog/tag/adv-caves/?order=ASC
looks like I had Caves of Silver as ’83 maybe? probably just going by it being on CASA that way at some point
still going to toss it on my loop-back list, and given Adventure was literal stolen code I don’t have high hopes for it
ok, I checked, and Caves of Silver is just Chaffee’s Quest, again
text changes just like the Dutch game (it’s an “ORC” now in a “CHAMBER OF HORRORS” blocking the entrance after you get the treasure) but nothing urgent to cover, I wouldn’t do it as its own entry
Wow, that’s really funny! I think I did read the Adventure Caves entry long ago, but I must have blanked out on it. It’s impressive that you were able to untangle such a convoluted mess. Even by the murky standards of early shareware, it seems like William was being pretty unethical here. Makes it even weirder that the company’s Rebel Force game from ’83 appears to be an original.
I wonder though, was Chaffee’s Quest the second-most cloned adventure after Colossal Cave? It seems to be popping up everywhere…
one of the CASA folks would probably know for sure
there’s also a graphical version!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Nh5wXP8eUMmBQe4QFo5m4JTIWzgYiSDg/view?usp=sharing
I’m not even sure where to find this one online otherwise, it got sent to me by the historian Alex Wellerstein
Thanks for the link. That’s a real obscurity, for sure. Oddly enough, Stevens Institute of Technology, where Wellerstein teaches, is fairly local to where I grew up, and I think my mother had some friends who went there in the ’60s.
I don’t think Chaffee’s Quest would get the award for most ported or most passed off… not when you’ve got contenders like Dog Star Adventure.
I think we need to do some work linking some entries on CASA though (I’d usually condense them into a single entry but at this stage it might get confusing) given we’ve got separate entries currently for Quest, Caves of Silver, and Pirate’s Quest (the TRS-80 CoCo version that the DOS game linked to above was adapted from). And that’s without chasing any of the other versions of the game possibly mentioned on the blog.
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I just came across this type-in that should probably be on your list:
https://archive.org/details/your-computer-magazine-1982-01/page/n29/mode/1up?view=theater
https://solutionarchive.com/game/id%2C10604/Treasure+House.html
The date should actually be 1981, since it’s from the January ’82 issue. Interestingly, this may be (pending further research) the first adventure type-in from a commercially distributed UK magazine. City of Azlan was from a book, and 6 Keys of Tangrin was in a company newsletter.
this one’s a Wizard’s Castle-style game (I wouldn’t call it a clone exactly)
https://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2013/02/game-90-wizards-castle-1980.html
I consider them on the RPG side of the fence but I find them interesting (if you look at CRPGAddict’s playthrough of Mission: Mainfame, he put up a cash prize for being able to beat the game — which I won, you can see the comments how I figured it out)
That was very interesting reading! I wasn’t really familiar with that sub-sub-genre, so I just took it as a typically quirky old type in, saw it had been recently put up on CASA and sent it along. Sorry!
This reminds me though: I was recently fiddling around with the Apple II game Survival (aka Diamond Hunt), and in poking around saw thay you had it on a 1980 or 1981 summary post as “probably more of a strategy game, but I need to play it more” or something along those lines. Did you ever get back to it? While the mapping/simulation aspects are strong, I also found that it had a lot of traditional adventure elements in it. Two word parser, having to examine items to find other ones, a traditional “bring the treasure back to the starting point in X turns” structure, etc. Interesting one, nonetheless.
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A couple of ZX81 items I recently noticed, just in case you haven’t seen them:
The first adventure from Bug-Byte, House of Gnomes (sounds like the name of a gardening supply shop), from early ’82, was just preserved and uploaded last month:
https://planetasinclair.blogspot.com/2024/12/house-of-gnomes-zx81-mia.html?m=1
This one is still lost, and who knows if it was an adventure, but it looks like yet another mysterious treasure-hunt contest game. Tamworth Manor, from Holdco:
Getting an error here trying to link to the scan, so just check Sinclair User, June 1982, p. 56.
Speaking of ZX81 stuff, I was wondering why Pharaoh’s Tomb and Magic Mountain aren’t on your ’82 “final stretch” list here? I know that you already covered Greedy Gulch a while back.
hmm, I think since I meant to cover all three at once I had them sorted together on my sheet (until I had so much misery with Greedy Gulch alone), but it meant they didn’t land on the 1982 post
I still have them slated to go be played, through
Yet another of my annoying “should these be on your 1982 list?” posts. Sorry!
Sledge of Rahmul/Merlin’s Treasure (Adventure International) – You mentioned you’d be covering these in the Spook House entry. I’m guessing you may have kicked them to ’83 due to them not showing up in ads and catalogs until later that year? They do have internal dates of ’81/’82 though, I think.
Intercept/Mutant Invasion (Michael D. Wile) – Both by the author of the above-mentioned Merlin’s Treasure. Only late 80s DOS ports of these appear to survive, but they also have internal ’81/’82 dates, and seem fairly certain to have originated as TRS-80 titles. See the CASA entries for an exchange about this between Strident and Exemptus.
Fairytale/Dreamworld (Molimerx) – This one seems to have a bit of a confusing history. It appears to have originally been released in late ’81 as Dreamworld, then reappeared in ’82 with the name Fairytale. It was then ported at some point to the BBC, and much later to the Archimedes (you mentioned this in your Dragon Adventure post, but I don’t think you realized the earlier origins of this game at the time). Just to add to the confusion, this ended up being the first of a trilogy, and they also named the third one Dreamworld! These latter two titles seem to currently be lost, though.
Wile I have on loop-back for when I do ’81 things.
Fairytale etc is ’81
Merlin’s etc I’m putting at ’83
Here’s another “probably belongs in the 1982 pile” update:
The “Nigel Venture” series of Vic-20 games, by one Nigel Dunk. CASA and other sources differ on whether they’re 1982 or 1983 releases, but I checked the code and the second game, Werewolf, says:
“NIGEL VENTURE 2 WEREWOLF BY NIGEL DUNK THURS’ 9/12/82”
There’s also a nasty bit of racism in there, that I’m surprised got by the CASA folks when they put up one of the screenshots. It’s unclear whether this “joke” was part of the original code, or if someone snuck it in there later.
I should also mention that while CASA lists a lost third entry in the series named Castle Crown, the Werewolf code actually says:
“INCIDENTALLY, LOOK OUT FOR NIGEL VENTURE 3 :DREAMWORLD; A REAL NIGHTMARE”
yow, that strikes me more as vandalism rather than the author attempting a “joke” with their own name
Here’s an oddity I came across that you can throw on your 1982 loop-back list:
https://archive.org/details/80-microcomputing-magazine-1982-05/page/n90/mode/1up?view=theater
Marooned Again is listed on CASA, Mobygames, etc. under its later PC port, but everyone except Goldklang seems to have missed the TRS-80 original, which appears to be lost.
You’ll see another one in that ad, Dragonlair (presumably also by Dennis Drew), that should go on the Lost Media list. The “this is not an adventure game” bit was clearly sarcasm.
I’m not sure if the “this is not an adventure game” is necessarily sarcasm. It could just be saying it isn’t an adventure game.
The same phrasing is used in Futureview’s advertising for “Phase VII” which isn’t an adventure game. See here: https://archive.org/details/80-microcomputing-magazine-1980-06/page/n123
Phase VII seems to be a 1980 computer implementation of Dennis Drew II’s table top RPG; which received the Space Gamer review: “Phase VII is one of the weakest efforts on the role-playing market today. From a complete lack of playtesting to shoddy production, the game and its […] pricetag can only be considered a very bad joke.” according to Wikipedia. Probably a little harsh for a game that had been around for some time and advertised some revisions in that very issue… The Internet says the tabletop version was published in 1982, but these adverts clearly reference it dating from 1978. Version 3 of the computer version seems to have been released from 1982 as it’s listed alongside Marooned Again.
That 1980 Futureview adverts credits “calligraphy by Dennis”, so I guess he was involved in some capacity with Futureview itself. Dennis appears is some contemporary magazines at the time writing articles too.
Yeah, it’s possible that it’s an RPG, but the whole ad has a very jokey tone, and the description sounds pretty adventure-ish, so I took it more as sarcasm based on how difficult he’s implying the game is.
Explorador covered Phase VII on his site and got into some of the history behind it. Looks kind of entertaining, actually!
Made a comment here earlier, and while it’s showing as the latest entry on the “recent comments” list, it seems to have disappeared from this thread. Just doing this one as a test, and a heads up, in case WordPress is having some kind of issue. I do seem to recall this happening once or twice before. I’ll re-do the original later if it really did vanish into the void for good.
Huh, that’s a new one. I saw it and read the comment, and then some time _later_ the spam filter triggered. I dug it back out.
Here’s another for the 1982 loop-back list, under similar circumstances to Marooned Again above, but even more obscure this time. You’d imagine that he may have expanded or altered it somewhat in the five plus years between the conversion, but who knows.
The Castle of Cire-Nampahc (Microtan/Atari 800, Eric Chapman, 1982/1987) Computing Today 8/82 p.86, 10/82 p.103, Page 6 11/87 p.21
Quick question: Do you have the mainframe game Aardvark on your loop-back list? I was poking around the UCLA Unix archives, and noticed that the original release of both that game and the DDL system dates all the way back to April, 1980 and was credited solely to Mike Urban at that time. The smaller “Sample” adventure and credit to three other authors both seem to date from 1981. But it looks like this stuff has mostly been misattributed online to Ross Cunniff due to its use in ADL years later.
Not on ifdb, casa, or mobygames, and I don’t have any good alternate sites to check mainframe stuff, so no
Go here and enter “ddl” as the search:
https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl
Then check the file:
4.1cBSD/usr/src/games/ddl/doc/wishlist
That dates the first release of DDL itself to April, 1980.
The earliest dated Aardvark files, including the full game, are dated 1980-07-31 in the burst files of the 1983 4.1 BSD Unix tape from UCLA, available on Bitsavers.
The full original game is viewable in those DDL files, as well as the 1981 Sample game and other stuff, so you can compare all of it against the later Cunniff ADL versions to see if he made any changes.
Lol. I refreshed the page to add my comment and you’d already popped in the details. :)
I’d clocked (and logged) the fact that the ADL version was potentially just a reimplementation of the DDL game, but only had the 1981 date from the DDL specification document. I can certainly spot references where Mike Urban is attributed as the author. I don’t think I’ve yet found the earlier 1980 references.
I wonder if the other ADL demo is Ross’ work or based on an earlier DDL game? It’d be nice to hear of any other DDL (or even ADL) games. Definitely underutilised systems. One of our community is still a big fan of ADL to this day and is probably the only person really to have ever released anything substantial made with it.
(As an aside, Rob, if you’ve got any corrections or updates to info on CASA then I’d be more than happy to update entries there. It’s primarily a solutions & hints archive, but some of the volunteer editors (like myself) do have an interest in text adventure game history and try to add & fix info of that kind).
Looks like “MPU” is in that archive as an original DDL game too, so I’ll fix that reference later when I’ve had time for a proper nose in the archive.
“MPU” seems to be the same game as “Sample”, so I’m not sure what’s going on there. Check out the “Ideas” file for Sample, btw. There’s some odd stuff in there about pagan temples, being kidnapped by Calvinists (?!), etc.
I also found an old USENET thread where someone recalled playing Aardvark a Unix system, and the main thing they remembered was a location that had a tandoori oven!