Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

Daniel Kitchen published two adventure games in 1982 through Hayden Books. One of them, Crime Stopper (written with Barry Marx), I’ve already covered here. While I’ve discussed Hayden before, I haven’t really talked about Dan Kitchen himself. To do things properly I should discuss the whole trio of Kitchen brothers: Steve, Garry, and Dan. So before we start looking for caverns, let’s go back to the late 60s–

The Kitchen brothers lived in New Jersey with a father who loved electronics; enough supplies were lying around that Steve (the oldest) built a home-made computer from parts in the basement. Steve went on to work for Wickstead Design, an electronics design firm; Garry (the next oldest) followed. Garry had inclination more as an artist and

I had no engineering experience so I joined the company as low man on the totem pole, getting lunch for people, running errands and learning how to solder and build electronic prototypes.

He started attending college the same time with a major in art, but became engrossed enough in the electronics side he switched to electronics engineering in his sophomore year.

Wickstead as a company became interested in electronic games in 1977 due to the release of the mega-hit Mattel Football.

Via eBay, $1499.99 or Best Offer.

Wickstead bid on — and won — a project from Parker Brothers to develop the product Wildfire, an electronic pinball game. Wildfire was originally invented by Bob and Holly Doyle using a microcomputer but the Wickstead’s commission was to turn it into an inexpensive toy going for $7. While the Wickstead had software expertise they didn’t have hardware, so they hired a contractor for the code:

The engineers started working on the hardware while the software consultant (who had a full-time job) wrote code on paper by hand, dropping it off at our office in the evening. My task was to type his code into the microprocessor development system. As the deadline approached, we still did not have running software, though the contractor assured us that the program was almost complete. Finally, he came to our office one night announcing that he had the last hand-written sheets, which he gave them to me to type in the system. We programmed a chip with the program, plugged it into our circuit board and nothing happened. No lights, no sound, no flippers, no ball. He pronounced that he knew what was wrong (Eureka!), changed a few lines of code, and we tried again. Still nothing. This went on for hours and hours and then days and days and we began to wonder if this guy had any idea how to write software.

Garry ended up having to step in and learn how to code and Wildfire managed to be finished on schedule.

Dan followed his brothers to the company in 1979, and was also there while Garry designed his next product (Bank Shot), an electronic pool game which seemed like the next logical step after pinball.

Around this time the oldest brother (Steve) left for California, and Garry obtained an interest in the Atari 2600. He reverse-engineered the system, and using an Apple II, made the game Space Jockey as a test in 1980. (This game was eventually published in 1982, but that’s ahead of our story.)

A few months later, in the basement of Garry’s home, Dan and Garry founded a company: Imaginative Systems Software. They wanted to focus on the Apple II, but their first paying job (through Hayden) was a port of Reversal (an Othello clone) to the Atari 400. This led to a more lucrative contract after for six Apple II games, which ended up being Crystal Caverns, Crime Stopper, Laser Bounce, Bellhop, Shuttle Intercept and Kamikaze.

Dan had gotten an Apple II the same year he joined Wickstead (1979) and was able to help crank out the games in assembly language. He was a “big fan of Microsoft Adventure and all of Scott Adams’ games”, hence the text adventures. Crystal Caverns earned him $6000, and one of Garry’s friends (Barry Marx) came up with the concept and story for the follow-up game, Crime Stopper.

Softalk, November 1982.

Crystal Caverns is more of a classical Crowther/Woods style romp. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; while the originality of Crime Stopper was refreshing, the complex series of events ended up breaking and not only was I unable to finish the game, the walkthrough I was using (via The Book of Adventure Games) only was able to trigger the ending on two out of six tries. A classical Treasure Hunt (find the valuable objects, drop them in the right room) is less likely to break.

CRYSTAL CAVERNS is an adventure game for the sleuth with an appetite for mystery, danger and buried treasure. Somewhere buried in a deserted old mansion lie treasures of priceless value. But to find them you must embark on a perilous journey riddled with pitfalls, dead ends, and deadly surprises.

In order to complete the adventure you must seek out the treasures hidden throughout the mansion and caverns below and stash them in just the right spot in the mansion.

While the Kitchen original was for Apple II a port was eventually made for Commodore 64. I am sticking with the original.

While the very original Apple II had only a very tiny amount of memory (4k) it tended to be expanded to 48k, that is, 3 times the capacity of a TRS-80. So while Dan Kitchen liked both Scott Adams and Adventure, the capabilities of the Apple meant he didn’t have to stick with super-minimalism, and in fact the start of the game has a bunch of rooms just for scenery which revels in long descriptions.

For example, heading straight north from the starting point leads to a vivid room description which could represent a hint of sorts but mostly is an opportunity to drop some long prose along the lines of the volcano room in Adventure.

It’s a nice contrast after playing a VIC-20 game! The starting outdoors map is the sort where the author is loathe to have some exits get blocked off (because why would they be blocked off outdoors?) but the general effect is a lot of confusing one-way exits:

I’m keeping my map with these in case the exits become important later (for optimizing moves, maybe) but here’s a simplified version:

The only important parts (so far) are a room with a “hard disk”, a parachute in a room with a message…

…and a path ending at an “odd shaped key”.

The stump in the screenshot looks like it might be important, but it has rebuffed my attempts to interact with it.

The key can then be taken to the front gate to unlock in, revealing the inner area by the mansion.

Most of this seems to be just meant to build atmosphere. In the environs you can scoop up a busted pair of pliers, as well as a can of oil and shovel from a shed.

The boarded up back door has a carving; I don’t know if it is intended to be busted through later (if so, probably from the other side).

The hint indicates you can knock at the front door.

From here the map gets fairly expansive so this is a good place to pause until I’ve got the lay of the land. Despite bog-standard gameplay I’m enjoying myself a little more than Crime Stoppers so far; I’m not being paranoid about a time limit or softlocking my game early and there’s no need to wait for a subway to pass. It’s less of a “regular story” but pure exploration still can hold my interest in games that put effort into their atmosphere.