I don’t consider it that unusual to have an author for All the Adventures so mysterious it’s unclear where they even lived; we’ve had plenty of one-shots, including from people who were teenagers and likely never went into a field resembling games. Where it starts to get a little more unusual is when an author is not only mysterious but published multiple games with five different companies, not including distribution by a sixth company in the public domain. I don’t even know with certainty what country Michael D. Wile is from; likely the United States given the choice of publishers, but Canada is still possible.
Wile’s catalog includes
Intercept (originally 1981 likely for TRS-80, later 1987 for a DOS release)
Mutant Invasion (originally 1982 likely for TRS-80, later 1987 for a DOS release)
Merlin’s Treasure (1982 for TRS-80, Adventure International)
Miller’s Cove (1983, Windcrest Software, both TRS-80 and Timex Sinclair 1000, apparently published later by Tab Books and republished yet again by Pyramid Electronics)
Medieval Quest (1983, Instant Software)
with the last game being for the exceedingly rare Panasonic JR-200. I can’t make a claim of certain comprehensiveness given I just learned about Miller’s Cove this week and it isn’t indexed on any of the usual sites, and I wouldn’t count having an entry on Amazon as usual. Only the first three are listed on CASA as of this writing, with the JR-200 not even existing as a possible computer platform to choose from.
Via Worthpoint.
Intercept, while given a 1981 copyright in the game, shows up to us now in a DOS format instead from later in the 80s; specifically, it was on PC-SIG Disk #911 in a compilation of four programs (“Mix It Up”). Intercept and Mutant Invasion are both included, as are PRO LOTTO and POKER by entirely different authors. You can check the entire disk on an emulator here.
Same page as NETHACK: An Adventure Game.
PC-SIG (PC Software Interest Group) were one of the groups that sold access to a “library” of “public domain” software (the terminology “public domain” being fuzzy in the normal 80s fashion). They started quite early, in 1983 by Richard Peterson, one of the first to actually think of transitioning public domain from internal distribution “user clubs” to paid copies, $6 per disk. As Nelson Ford (from one of the later competing groups) pointed out, “BBS denizens thought this was the equivalent of charging for free air”.
One slight difference with other similar catalogs is that donationware is explicitly encouraged as a possibility (“The donation in most cases enables the author to provide software support for the product”); on Mix It Up, while there’s no fee for either of the Wile games, $2.00 is suggested for POKER and $10.00 is suggested for PRO LOTTO. I do not know how much money actually arrived in such circumstances.
Welcome to INTERCEPT. I am agent 68, and I will be your guide through the adventure. You will give me two-word commands to get me through the various rooms. Make sure you have me look at all the objects in the different rooms. Sometimes an object may appear in the room which was not there the first time the room was entered.
Your mission is to recover the stolen pages containing a top secret rocket formula to Mission Headquarters.
Despite the DOS version having some personal flavor to the layout, the game is fairly Scott-Adams-like; “you are in ROOM”, “list of objects separated by periods”, “obvious exits”. In inventory you start with a watch (“346” on the back) and an ID card with your picture on it.
The game gets confused with the “car” and “id card” both in the same room.
The phone booth includes a “strange suit” with a “S” symbol in front, and if you put it on, leave, and try to get in the car, the police arrest you and lock you in a padded cell. I guess we aren’t in a Krotts game any more.
The 346 suggests you’re supposed to dial it in the phone booth, but games from this era insist on making combinations / codes / etc. as inconsistent as possible. Call 346, dial 346, type 346 don’t work; neither do the same commands with individual digits. You are instead supposed to spell out three, four, and six as words.
COMMAND—> look watch
346 is engraved on the back.
COMMAND—> dial 3
I can’t.
COMMAND—> dial three
OK
COMMAND—> dial four
OK
COMMAND—> dial six
I feel a sudden jolt!
This lands in an elevator and even more trouble with the parser (not LEAVE ELEVATOR, EXIT, etc. etc…. only GET OUT works). This leads to a desk with a security guard, and I got SHOW ID CARD in one try.
Inside is the Chief at a Desk; a little further is an Equipment Room with a pen and a hammer. The desk has a decanter with wine and the Chief, predictably, resists mightily being talked to. You can open the decanter (which lands a “glass stopper” in your inventory) but the Chief merely serves to take the decanter back if you walk about it. Uh, nothing about a briefing or whatever?
Heading back outside to the car, the glove compartment has a flashlight, and the shift is in park and stubbornly refused to move. Not actually physically, no: just it took me a long time (yet again) to work out the right combination: PUT SHIFT / IN DRIVE. (Even after getting this right, later in the game I often forgot the exact command and tried SET SHIFT, MOVE SHIFT, etc. a few times before remembering.) You then need to DRIVE DIRECTION although with no guidance where; there’s no “exterior view” so it isn’t even clear DRIVE is working. Also, be sure to put the car back in park before getting out!
Car runs over me!
So far there’s been five major “stop points” (putting in the number, dealing with getting out of the elevator, realizing the Chief will never talk and no command will work, changing the shift-stick, getting the car moving to the right place) and the plot hasn’t even really started yet! (Essentially, “false” puzzles where if someone was in the physical location they wouldn’t have a problem. I’m not even counting applying the watch number to the phone, there’s only one number around and one place for it to go.) How will things go when we have to deal with something intended as an obstacle?
There are four driving locations, including the start.
Starting at the theater, there’s a revolving door leading to a lobby, and a “girl” selling tickets.
Our player has no money (yet) so “buy tickets” doesn’t work, but you can “go stairway” (where a “soft drink bottle” can be found amongst the seats). Trying to “go entryway” leads to a “crowded theater” where an usher is getting tickets, and will throw you out without a ticket. You can see the stage and a “padlocked door” but that’s it for now.
The cottage (south of the theater, west of the starting place) has a “puddle” and a “closed door” that is locked.
Heading north leads to nothing but a window, and trying to “look window” results in death as an “agent inside” spots you and shoots you. So the correct starting place is apparently the “eerie house”.
Last up is the “eerie-looking” house. There’s no indication of if we’re even supposed to be here, other than it is a location in an adventure game. Ringing the bell activates a trap door and you fall into a “cellar”.
I am in a cellar. From here I can see:
Chute. Winding Steps. Large crate. Shovel.
The shovel can simply be taken (and I’ve tried “dig” everywhere after with no luck yet); the crate is described as locked but after chewing on what “large” meant I tried “climb crate” and got something useful.
Top breaks from the weight!
I am in a crate. From here I can see:
Oilcan.
Going up the stairs instead leads to a locked door at the top. The door has some hinges; you can apply the oilcan to the hinges, then pull out some pins inside in order to bust through the door. (The parser didn’t give me much trouble here, but this is “bread and butter” type manipulation for basic parsers. My basic principle has been that a not-so-fancy parser can work as long as the actions demanded of the player are relatively simple.)
Through the doorway, you can choose to go east or north. Taking east first…
There’s a “niche” with a “statue”; looking at the statue closer reveals a key (I assume it goes to that cottage from earlier, but I haven’t gotten back to it yet). Going upstairs it is dark and the flashlight (from the glove compartment) needs to be turned on.
The desk contains a paper that is marked “1 of 3” so I assume this is part of the plans we are supposed to be finding (where our “briefing” came before the game started and the Chief just got fussy about taking his wine away). Unfortunately, if you try to take the page, you get killed by the bats.
Going back to the branch and heading north instead…
…the mechanical spider here is guarding the arch. I tried poking at the bones but the spider pounced and ended the game.
To summarize, I am blocked by a.) a mechanical spider b.) some bats guarding a paper c.) a locked door at a cottage and/or an agent inside and d.) a ticket-taker who wants some money. It’s pretty clear there’s more to do at the eerie house but after my last (spider-related) death I figured it was a good time for at least an update. I’m hoping the author has gotten the tricky parser shenanigans out of their system and will stick with straightforward commands from here, but I know my chances aren’t good.
Renga in Blue 
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