Genesis Software — at least the version of the company we’re talking about here, not the business software company from Washington — started advertising in The Rainbow in October 1982.
The magazine was, essentially, the central information outlet for the TRS-80 Color Computer all the way up to 1993. Nearly everything for Color Computer went through its pages. The only evidence of Genesis Software’s existence outside of its games is from its ads in the Rainbow. They were based in Manchester, Missouri, and since they used a PO Box and no other identification in their source code that’s all I can say. In addition to Enchanted Forest which we’re playing today, they also published two more adventure games in 1983 (Bigfoot, Secret of the Crypt) but neither is currently available on any archive.
While we’ve had adventure games dating back to Mystery House that imply objects solely through their pictures, there’s still text scattered throughout. This game has the unique aspect of wanting to show all the action solely through pictures.
This might be completely fine with a high-end enough system (or even an Apple II with a skilled enough artist) but let me give an example of what I was dealing with in Enchanted Forest:
Is it a jellyfish? Tiny yoda? An alien blob? This is a TREE FROG. Fortunately the game gives an extra command (WHAT) to let you know what’s nearby, but the fact an extra step is required suggests the author genuinely hoped it’d be unnecessary.
So if the TREE FROG is there, where are the lake, stump, and mushrooms in the picture? This game also features directionality, akin to The Haunted Palace: you can LOOK NORTH, LOOK SOUTH, LOOK EAST, and LOOK WEST. Most directions just have the three trees; in the location above typing LOOK EAST shows a different scene.
If you walk a direction (north, south, east, west) you will automatically be facing that way when you enter a new location. In the place you start, where there is a castle in the distance, you start facing south; you only see the castle if you re-enter the same room going from south to north or LOOK NORTH while standing there.
Here’s the overall map I was able to reach:
My particular phrasing of “was able to reach” usually indicates this is going to be a part 1 of x post. Unfortunately, I was stopped because the game — at least the copy of it available — is very broken. There are numerous crashes at essential points and it is clear there’s something corrupted in the lines preventing progress. An picture to illustrate, where the game crashes in the middle of drawing a graphic of an open trunk:
This is followed by
SN ERROR IN 1255
which is just a long list of drawing commands.
I can at least give a general idea of the gameplay. You start with a rope, sword, and food; your inventory limit is 3 so you can’t pick anything up without dropping something off first.
The Enchanted Forest of the title is very open; available just from walking around are a lantern, old urn, fishing net, and hip boots. One room has Shinva the Wood Nymph (where I would love to ASK SHINVA but that command crashes the game)…
…and a troll guarding a cave (which is easy to KILL while holding the sword from the start of the game).
Unfortunately, entering the cave kills you with EXPLOSIONS.
The princess we’re looking for is out in the open, past a sign that says BEAST IS EAST.
Because of the directional views, if you approach this room from the south (and don’t LOOK EAST) you won’t see the sign.
The tree frog I mentioned earlier is a wandering creature, as is an ORACLE who can appear in any the normally empty rooms.
ASK seems especially pertinent here, but again, game crash.
I tested this with all the different CoCo versions and multiple emulators but no dice; the crashes feel “authentic” to me in that I think the emulator is reacting appropriately to the code that’s in the file. That is, something went wrong in the process of dumping the disk. It might even be possible to repair the damage but it isn’t just a single line causing the crashes, so this goes back on the technical issues pile for now.
I did want to document this game, because directionality-graphics are quite rare for this time and it seems like everyone who used them came up with idea on their own (the only game in the category that because famous was Asylum II; however, that was designed around an RPG-style maze so isn’t quite the same gimmick as Haunted Palace and this game). Rather than the graphics being like pages of a book giving a full view of a location, they resemble more the actual perspective of the avatar in the world.
Coming up: Geheimagent XP-05 — Abenteuer-Spiel in deutscher.
Renga in Blue 
It’s baffling to me why line 760 doesn’t work; not even splitting it in two does. The manual for this game on the CoCo archive mentions that it’s buggy and wonders if someone messed with the code.
As usual, I couldn’t leave well enough alone. According to Wikipedia, of all places,
And indeed, using AK instead of ASK in all the places the variable is used fixes this particular bug. I’m not sure why AS is reserved, but just trying to do AS=0 in plain BASIC fails.
The image for ASK SHI shows the nymph saying “Translation of five will get you cash”.
Interesting (and thanks for the great work)! That would mean that the game could never be finished to begin with, which seems very odd to me. Maybe this was some attempt to modernise them or make them more readable by a third party? Weird that this would have found its way into an archive no matter how the bug came to be – it’s highly unlikely that this was caused by a bad crack/copy or deliberate sabotage.
I had beat this game some years ago, I remember I had to correct some bugs.
The problem is, as mentioned above, variable ASK which is a reserved basic word ASC.
I’ve changed it to AASK.
Also, in lines 2730-2760 there were some bugs, I replaced “!” for “ERR” in those lines and it seems to run fine now.
I’ve upload the fixed .DSK to my drive space, just run the file “FIXED.BAS” and let me know of any more problems.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yKTdIrUS69R33W3SFLMP-nEulSYFNP7h/view?usp=sharing
I love the way the game just throws the word “EXPLOSIONS” at you instead of even attempting to draw something. Pythonesque!
A bug whilst attempting to draw an open trunk; and that’s just one case.
I don’t think these two are related. The drawing bug appears in a completely different place than the EXPLOSIONS.
Yeah, the EXPLOSIONS from entering the cave cause you to die and the game to end properly.
The TRUNK just crashes.
I mucked around with this a bit in Xroar, got myself killed by an “ogre” (looks more like an angry shirtless guy in a grass skirt), then the resurrection routine gave me EXPLOSIONS over and over before finally depositing me back in the woods. Couldn’t tell if that’s a bug, but it was kind of unintentionally funny, like most of this game seems to be in general…
OK, this is hilarious — in the trunk is a smaller CHEST (that’s what the graphic was) and if you open the chest, *then* you get EXPLOSIONS and die.
I’m wondering: Are the other items lying around (lantern, net, etc.) supposed to get drawn in, but a bug is preventing it? Or are you actually supposed to constantly type in “WHAT” just to know if an object is in that room? Also, what’s with the “WHERE” command? No matter which room I used it in, it just says “Look in all directions”, which seems pointless.
You have to LOOK WEST, LOOK EAST, etc. for them to show up. Which is what WHERE’s trying to tell you ;)
Yeah, I already knew that from looking at the instructions on the Coco archive, but I just don’t understand why “WHERE” is even a command if it’s always just going to return that one response. I guess he knew his whole movement/display system was weird and confusing, so he just threw that in there as a general hint.
I beat the game, but
a.) there’s still a crash if you ASK PRINCESS after killing the ogre, which gives a pretty important hint
b.) I don’t understand getting by the rock, I had a word from needing to check the source code to find WHAT etc but I don’t know why it’s the word. There’s clues from the urn, nymph, and oracle that I assume get put together but I don’t know why you’d get the result.
If you can give the full walkthrough to get there, or a line number, maybe someone here can figure it out?
1255
busy working on a post so you can also make your way there too
Ok, T$(10) and T$(11) fail to draw, 1-9 and 12 work. T$(10) (line 2275) has no ” at the end of the line, which seems to make no difference, and T$(11) (line 2276) is weirdly short.
T$(10) is assigned to S8$ in line 1420, which is indeed something to do with the princess. T$(11) is unused.
bizarro errors
I can understand a bad dump
I can understand (and be somewhat grumpy about) a single bug that makes the game broken, maybe a last-moment edit before putting on cassette/disk?
But what happened here? These errors don’t seem like read mistakes, or vandalism, or even being sloppy with playtesting, it’s more like the author stopped long before it was playable and then started selling the game
I think T$(10) is simply too long, it’s toeing the line at 253 characters. Removing the last bit draws the rest.
T$(11) is D2R2U2B2XS3$; – the B2 is illegal. Removing it or replacing it with L2 works.
It’s indeed very odd if this level of brokenness is inherent to the game itself rather than just being from a bad dump, because he advertised this thing (and then it’s sequel, which sounds like it would have used the exact same code base) every month for like a year and a half in Rainbow, so he must have sold some. They even gave it a positive review in the 12/82 issue. So if it was always so broken, why do there never seem to have been any contemporary complaints that made it to print? Understandable if this was just an obscure homebrew advertised once in a classified, but this thing was promoted heavily in the platform’s main news source for an extended period of time, which means that he and presumably at least more than a handful of customers had to have spent real money on this.
FYI, they also reviewed his Bigfoot game in ’83. It’s some weird mixture of Wumpus and a boardgame, with play sessions only lasting a few minutes and everything being randomized.
Is it possible there was a manufacturing error? Like, someone printed off a batch of copies from an earlier draft rather than the finished master. Could have been caught in the second printing, but the dump we have is from the bad one.
This does give the feel of final_master_3_final_final.doc where it’s very close to there but a couple last bugs but they happen to be fatal ones.
The tester never found ASK so that was most of the crashes, but maybe they also never thought to OPEN the TRUNK? Seems unlikely but it’s a pretty hand-wqvy review.
Replying to Ross:
Yes, I think a very early, buggy version happening to be the only one preserved is a definite possibility. There’s a previously lost game I sent over to Jason that I think (for various reasons) has the same issue, although much more minor in that case. This definitely happens sometimes with obscure older games where there’s only one source available. The fact that the author of the early review in Rainbow clearly didn’t play that far into the game, yet Genesis sold it through there for a long time without any public complaints, would indicate a good possibility of there having been a revision fairly early on in its lifespan.
Pingback: Enchanted Forest: Circle Thrice | Renga in Blue