Today’s post you could think of as a “bonus game”. It appears in the April 1983 edition of Personal Computer World, followed by the first issue of Personal Computer Games that summer (same publisher) and is directly next to the game I was going to be writing about next.
To explain in context, when the Sinclair ZX80 (and ZX81) came out, they had only 1K worth of memory by default, an absolutely miniscule amount to do much of anything with. Companies still put out tapes and books intended for that target memory size, the most significant from this blog being from Alfred Milgrom (of The Hobbit) and the duo behind Pimania, who started their game publishing with experimental 1K games. Adventure in Murkle was in the same spirit but in a much more generous 4k.
Adventure in 1K is the only game, article, or product of any kind I can find by Ian Stansfield which will “run on any micro you care to name”. Instead of being like the games above, well, let’s just give a transcript–
YOU ARE IN A CAVERN…
NORTH, SOUTH, EAST OR WEST?
E
YOU ARE IN A CAVERN…
NORTH, SOUTH, EAST OR WEST?
W
YOU ARE IN A CAVERN…
NORTH, SOUTH, EAST OR WEST?
S
YOU ARE IN A CAVERN…
NORTH, SOUTH, EAST OR WEST?
E
YOU ARE IN A CAVERN…
NORTH, SOUTH, EAST OR WEST?
E
YOU ARE IN A CAVERN…
NORTH, SOUTH, EAST OR WEST?
Q
YOU ARE IN A CAVERN…
NORTH, SOUTH, EAST OR WEST?
X
YOU ARE IN A CAVERN…
NORTH, SOUTH, EAST OR WEST?
You get the idea. It’s simply printing the text, taking an input, and then looping, without even bothering to read what the player entered. As a courtesy, both BASIC and C source code are provided. (This is the first time I’ve ever seen source for a type-in given in C!)
“Hours of fun and entertainment for all the family.” So yes, this is a joke game, not just on adventures but on the concept of selling 1K games, but it’s the sort of meta-textual joke came I had thought (before embarking on my journey) would not show up until much later, as a Usenet joke from the 90s or an entry into the TWIFcomp (which asked competitors to fit an interactive fiction game into a tweet, 140 characters). However, by this point I’m not surprised, because we’ve had…
- Crystal Cave include a “realistic” cave where the treasures break if you touch them and a park ranger throws you out
- Stuga drop into a choice-game section involving the Muppets
- Acheton put in the classic grate-opened-with-keys to start, but where entering immediately kills the player
- House of Thirty Gables skewering multiple adventure game conventions all at once, including a troll you aren’t supposed to kill
…such that meta-textual play with the whole concept of the adventure happened almost immediately. It’s with this sort of metatextual play that you eventually get the “escape room” concept (where the entire game plays out in a single room, like Suveh Nux) or the “single turn” concept (where the game resets after a turn, allowing many stories, like Aisle) or even the “one puzzle” game where there’s no limit to moves but the only obstacle is a single puzzle (my own game More fits in that category).
So this is worth marking down as a historical footnote, at least. (We incidentally will see not just one but two serious “single room game” efforts in 1983.)
COMING UP: The actual type-in I meant to do, followed by Suspended.
Renga in Blue 
Also the first walking simulator!
I couldn’t believe it. I mean, both listings don’t leave any doubt, but.. well.
Even with only 1K I bet you can do something… Not much, mind you, but something.
Obviously it would be possible to do a real game in 1 K by only implementing TAKE and DROP and letting the player look up all messages and room descriptions in a separate document. It would surprise me if nobody has tried that.
You don’t even need a separate document if the game takes place in a maze where all room descriptions are identical and the goal is mostly just to collect a bunch of treasures. Sure, it wouldn’t be *much* of a game, but I think Jason has played worse.
Spelunker did separate room descriptions:
https://bluerenga.blog/tag/spelunker/?order=ASC
Didn’t Kim-Venture almost break the 1K barrier? That’s a proper adventure, too.
Yeah, off by 100 bytes or so. Assembly language + super short calculator-style text + absurd chutzpah
I found this mini-adventure from 1981 while reviewing a H&E Computronics magazine, and I believe it is undocumented (Sword of Raschkil, pg. 50):
https://colorcomputerarchive.com/repo/Documents/Magazines/H&E%20Computronics/H&E%20Computronics%20-%20Issue%2057%20-%20May%201983.pdf
that one is indeed not on my list (nor does it even seem to be typed in by anyone!)
I just OCRed, fixed, and tested it.
https://codeberg.org/gschmidl/interactive-fiction/src/branch/main/SWORD
Please let me know if you find any remaining errors – it is fully solvable, though.
I also found this one in a Color Computer News magazine (Tunnels of Terror, pg. 54):
https://colorcomputerarchive.com/repo/Documents/Magazines/Color%20Computer%20News/Color%20Computer%20News%20%2320%20-%20May%201983.pdf
Someone should ping Jim Gerrie about the Coco one. Seems right up his alley.
Working on the CoCo one as well. Is there some kind of syntax checker/tokenizer that can help me proofread?
Replying here so it doesn’t get buried too deep.
I’ve OCR’d and fixed (to the best of my abilities) Tunnels of Terror as well. The game is winnable, and I’ve included a map – but I think there’s some errors left in the original listing – I couldn’t figure out how to get rid of the vampire, and the final challenge was a rather silly battle of attrition between two people who’ve never hit anyone in their life – I assume something more should happen there based on the code.
There’s also a room that seems to warp you with no warning, a scroll that should disappear but doesn’t, a magic spell that doesn’t seem to be used at all despite being mentioned in the HELP… if anyone wants to try and fix it more, you’re very welcome.
https://codeberg.org/gschmidl/interactive-fiction/src/branch/main/TUNNELS
this definitely feels like the sort of game Jim would have fun figuring out
I’ll ping him later in case he hasn’t seen the thread yet
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