We’ve featured companies here before (like Adventure International and Sierra On-Line) that started their main development in games, with a few extra utilities being sold on the side. When Mark Pelczarski formed Penguin Software, their initial core product was (rather than a game) their Graphical Magician, which held them steady through their early years. However, they eventually became prominent for their adventure games: Transylvania, Crimson Crown, The Coveted Mirror, The Quest, and their re-published version of Oo-Topos (originally without graphics at all). Considered across multiple platforms, the adventure games are what sold the best for Penguin, but it took The Graphics Magician existing in the first place for those games to appear.
Back of the Graphics Magician box, via eBay.
Their first adventure game, Transylvania, came to them essentially by accident and didn’t originally have graphics. They got the author (Antonio Antiochia) an early copy of Graphics Magician to make it a flagship product alongside The Graphics Magician.
After The Graphics Magician was published, they got a call from a programmer named Eagle Burns at Stanford. Burns had been there as a programmer since 1959 (and their IBM 650), overlapping with the early computer science great Donald Knuth. Close to when he started his Apple II journey (1980) he worked some on LaTeX (one of Knuth’s projects) as well as Foreign language processing at Stanford.
Importantly for us, he decided to pivot to personal computers and specifically the Apple II, and using The Graphics Magician he had written a game using the tool with Michael Kosaka. (Michael Kosaka only has a small part to play in today’s game, but as an aside: of the people I mention today, he had the deepest involvement with later games, working on Skate or Die, Madden NFL ’94, and an unreleased Sonic game for 32X which would require a several-thousand word essay to adequately explain.) Quoting Pelczarski on Burns:
A great, creative person, he went on to make his mark at Apple Computer (on the Macintosh team), Micro Focus, and Oracle. But first and foremost he turned into a good friend who also happened to write, with Michael Kosaka, the first game with Graphics Magician: Pie Man. The game was loosely based on an I Love Lucy skit, with pies coming rapidly off a conveyor belt while you try to put whipped cream and a cherry on top and put the pie in a rack, while avoiding grease spots and obstacles. (Remember that these were the days when state of the art was Break-Out, Space Invaders, and Pac-Man.) A non-violent game with a bit of personality was very unique and new.
The non-violent part is worth highlighting; Scott Scram started writing games for Penguin with Crime Wave, and wanted to follow up with something “completely non-violent”; Mark Pelczarski suggested porting Pie Man to Atari.
People who play violent games excessively may do so for psychological reasons. Perhaps they seek a jolt of self-medicating adrenaline, or they need to feel powerful in the game world as opposed to feeling powerless in their real lives … I enjoyed porting the game, and it turned out well with the use of some Atari additions such as a 4 part musical soundtrack.
Unfortunately, the world was not ready to give up the really cool violent games that were coming out at about that time, and the game did not sell well. But, the popularity of Tetris, solitaire and others prove that there is a market for non-violent games and puzzles.
A video of some of the Atari version below:
Eagle Burns followed up Pie Man with an adventure game, The Coveted Mirror, working with his friend Holly Thomason (and a small contribution from Michael Kosaka, which I’ll highlight when I eventually reach that part of the game).
From the back of the later printing of the game using an updated engine, although supposedly it loses some minigames.
The story is set in the “Faraway Land of Starbury” where “people were happy and life was good”. However, there was a “villian” named Voar with a “heart of black poison” who sought to rule the kingdom as his own; however, he was stopped by the Wizard Munjistan who had a magical Mirror who could see all “troublemakers” who would cause destruction to the land. One night, Voar entered the realm of the wizard in a forest and tried to steal the mirror, but it broke into five pieces, and he was only able to steal away with four (how it got to the mirror in the first place without being spotted is unclear).
Thus it befell that with most of the pieces, Voar’s power waxed and overshadowed that of Munjistan’s. However, without all the shards of the Mirror, Voar’s power was yet incomplete. Munjistan knew he had very little time to secure the last piece against Voar’s craving, so he desperately searched his magic books for a spell to save Starbury. Alas, to no avail! The best he could find was one which required he hide the piece and wait for a champion born beneath future stars. If the champion is pure of heart and bests Voar in the race for the piece, the evil one’s power will be shattered.
Voar in the meantime learned to wield the other four pieces in order to spy on citizens and send people to the dungeons, but he could not find the fifth piece. The wizard managed to disguise himself as a court magician to stay close to Voar but has since passed away. This is where you come in. You (no biographical background) have been captured by Voar, and the action starts in the throne room.
The title screen animates the mirror shattering.
The essential gimmick of the game is that you’re a prisoner and get started by being sent into a dungeon, but it isn’t hard to escape; however, Voar “can generally find you easily with his mirror pieces” meaning you aren’t really free. A “prison guard” will “check on you regularly but you may find a way to cope with that.” Additionally there’s a time limit (given by the sands) where the guard will return to check on you.
Whilst you are doing all this, your job is to find various mirror pieces and assemble them into a rectangle.
This is all summarized directly from the manual and I admit I haven’t been this baffled by the premise of a game in a while.
a.) If the mirror let the wizard watch for trouble, how did Voar get close enough to steal it?
b.) Who was ruling over the kingdom before Voar? The Wizard? Maybe it was some sort of collective and the wizard was just keeping the peace? Is the wizard’s disguise going to be an important detail later, even though the wizard is now dead?
c.) If we’re aiming to find the fifth mirror piece, but Voar can always just watch what we’re doing, couldn’t he watch us going for the fifth mirror piece and stopping it?
d.) But if Voar has the mirror pieces, how are we able to find them around the castle? How are we able to keep them given the whole process of getting tossed into the dungeon?
e.) If we’re under surveillance, why is there a regular guard appearing with a timer? Why doesn’t the guard immediately know when we’ve escaped?
I ended up checking the later (1986) version of the game which has its own story book, and at least one of the holes gets filled up: Voar starts a crime wave in order to distract the Wizard, which is why he’s able to sneak to the location of the mirror. One other slight change: the wizard shares the secret of the fifth shard’s hiding place with “one other soul”.
This still doesn’t address how we are picking up mirror pieces despite Voar tracking us, or the setup behind the guard regularly appearing. With most media I am pretty tolerant of “plot holes” as simply things a story hasn’t bothered to explain but likely has some explanation; unfortunately with an adventure the interpretation of the plot can be important in puzzle-solving so I find the confusion more of a problem.
The king’s face is incidentally animated. Many scenes are, and it adds a feeling of polish to the game that makes it seem more like later-Apple-II graphics rather than depths-of-early-Sierra. (You can also contrast with The Hobbit. That game was made by four computer scientists with interests in systems and languages; this game was made by two people — with minor help from a third — that were more graphics-oriented.)
No matter what action you do (at least any action I could find) there’s the response…
I’LL HAVE THEE BEATEN FOR THY INSOLENCE
OFF TO THE TOWER!
(THAT’S 01 I’LL ONLY ALLOW IT 25 TIMES.)
…and then you appear in the dungeon. (The first immediate issue with the plot being sketchy rises up right here: are we supposed to do something at the king? Or was getting thrown into the dungeon just a “cutscene” so to speak?)
There is no more text than what you see (“YOU ARE IN THE DANK, DESOLATE, PRISONER TOWER.”) The game expects you to see items and refer to them by name from the picture, not from the text. It took me a while to realize the item to the right is a PITCHER (not a JUG) and even when I realized it the game told me that it’s just scenery when I tried to pick it up.
You can move the bed to find a hole, then GO HOLE into darkness.
Going west from here leads to the magician’s room with “mysterious odds & ends”, except all that’s visible is a flask which is too hot to touch and some books.
You can’t take the books (“THEY’RE NOT YOURS TO TAKE”) but you can READ BOOK, find a diary of the magician, and read multiple pages which give hints.
IF THAT OLD WITCH DOESN’T GIVE ME HER INVISIBILITY SPELL SOON, I’LL CHANGE HER INTO A STARBURY STRAWBERRY.
I thought the wizard was supposed to be the good guy?
I WONDER IF VOAR KNOWS BORIS LETS THE PRISONERS ROAM IF THEY OFFER HIM THE RIGHT THINGS!
I’m wondering if this means you leave a present in the room that the guard finds while you’re out. Otherwise there isn’t a reason for a gift (if you’re physically there, nothing bad happens).
BORIS KEEPS CLOSE WATCH ON THAT HOURGLASS, BUT SOMETIMES HE FALLS ASLEEP & PRISONERS GET EXTRA TIME.
IF BORIS WAKES TO FIND THEIR TIME IS UP BUT THEY’RE NOT BACK IN PRISON, HE REPORTS THEM TO VOAR.
SO VOAR USES THE MAGIC MIRROR TO WHISK THEM BACK & GLADLY PUTS THEIR BOOTY IN HIS TREASURE ROOM.
I’m guessing this is the sort of game where you can simply avoid this happening, but we have had some games where you have to hit the fail-state at least once (including how you need to have the pirate steal your treasure in Crowther/Woods before the pirate chest shows up).
BUT EVEN VOAR CANNOT SEE BEYOND THE IMPENETRABLE MIST.
Is this another way to hide from getting teleported away, or just a hint where the fifth mirror piece is?
I’m still trying to get a hang of the game’s norms (which seem to vary quite a bit from what we’ve had here before) so I’ll try to get a fair chunk of the map made before reporting in next time.
Renga in Blue 