In 1988, a contest was run by the Adventureland BBS out of Lexington, Kentucky called The Great American Adventure Search.
ADVENTURELAND, the largest public domain Adventure base in America, is looking for a few good adventures. And we are offering a prize for the best! From September 1, 1988 to October 30, 1988 we’re offering a prize for the best adventure uploaded! What sort of a prize? How about the Adventure of your choice? Want a copy of Ultima IV? How about Kings Quest III? You might choose a paid-up license for the Adventure Game Toolkit. Any adventure game you’d like (up to $70.00 in value) can be yours IF the adventure YOU upload is chosen as the best!
Adventureland was a BBS up from the mid-80s until at least 1995 which lived up to its name by housing a large number of adventures (over 10 MB in the same year the contest was run). The author, Douglas C. Rogers, also encouraged the writing of more adventures with software for the toolkit AGT called Adventurer’s Aid; in addition, he wrote a guide on how to write adventures in BASIC.
It seems to me that there have got to be others out there in modem country who have adventure running around in their heads. If you are like me, you are brimming over with plots, and just can’t fathom how to code them. Well, since I started writing adventures in 1981, I’ve learned alot about how to code.
The tutorial package I just mentioned includes, as a sample game from the author, The Case at KAXL. We played that game here already; it’s notable for trying to model a “real” environment as opposed to a puzzle-laden one, with locations that only exist because they’d be part of a real radio station and not in service of a story. At the time I didn’t have any other information on the author, but I now can say not only was Douglas C. Rogers responsible for all the BBS activity above, he was the one who wrote today’s game, Drive-In. My suspicion of his involvement with radio was correct; while running the BBS he was a professor at Eastern Kentucky University in Communications.
A news story where Doug Rogers discusses campus radio. Source.
Drive-In is a much different game than The Case at KAXL. It is, as The Adventurer’s Guild calls it, smut. In fact, I’m going to drop a not safe for certain work environments warning.
Beware of anything past the magazine cover below.
Adventureland BBS gets a mention in this 1992 magazine for being a member of Fidonet, a communications network for BBSes with different communities.
As Rogers was rather dedicated to the public domain model of adventure distribution, Drive-In didn’t need to follow the same path as Bawdy Adventure with sales in a New Orleans-published book; rather, Rogers himself could simply distribute the game on his own BBS once it got started.
Well, here it is! The big evening
Your buddy Arnie set you up with this little number named Andrea, and here you are
There are multiple versions as noted by CASA:
- the 1982 original for Commodore 64
- an incomplete version for Tandy CoCo
- a 1987 version for Coleco ADAM by “ADAMafic Software”
- a PC port in 1987 (almost certainly by the author himself, as he ported his other C64 adventure game Nectar of the Gods using the same company name, Program Dynamics)
- a port by Alan Pilon in 1988 called Passion Pit with a randomized female companion
- a shortened 1990 version called Crusin
I went with the Rogers ’87 port. (The C64 original has a moment mentioned in the Adventurer’s Guild writeup that the author clearly re-considered.)
Before moving on to “the big evening” I’m going to interrupt with a question: is this also “the first” text adventure smut? Not exactly: first of all there’s all the mainframe games we’ve now visited, like Castle ending in a three-way, or Haunt’s “touchdown”, but there’s a general lack of detail. The other early candidate is a game called Porno Adventure (1981) which I haven’t written about yet, and probably isn’t worth a post on its own, so here’s the sidebar–
This game is more a “simulator” than an adventure game and has serious customization involved as the player is able to have a “UNINHIBITED, UNCENSORED ADVENTURE” with “ANY WOMAN THEY CHOOSE”. Unusually, the game lets you swap who you are giving commands to, so while start as a man having an uninhibited adventure with a custom woman, it is possible to change to the woman at any time by typing “0”.
SINCE THIS IS A FREE ADVENTURE, WE SPARED ALL COSTS AND PROGRAMMING SHORTCUTS TO BRING YOU THE PROGRAM IN THE CHEAPEST, QUICKEST WAY POSSIBLE. THEREFORE THIS PROGRAM NILL NOT RECOGNIZE ANY ABBREVIATED COMMANDS.
You are then asked the woman’s name, measurements, clothing, what she calls you, where it takes place, and some other details. You then have a selection of items like “Vaseline”, “priest robe” and “whip” you can pick up before entering the scene.
GENTLY, I TAKE INSERTNAMEHERE’S FACE IN MY HANDS AND DRAW HER TOWARDS ME. SHE TREMBLES AS I PRESS MY MOUTH AGAINST HERS, THEN PARTS HER LIPS, INVITING MY EAGER TONGUE TO EXPLORE THE WARM AND SENSUOUS WETNESS OF HER SOFT MOUTH.
The reaction to KISS is shown above. Sex scenes are also possible. If you swap perspectives, the actions are still done from “I” perspective — it’s just you can specify the command UNDRESS or whatnot and see the result.
Again, this is really a “fantasy simulator” and anything you try succeeds (if the parser understands it). While you are still “in a world” delivering commands like an adventure game, it doesn’t play like one. I’m also unclear if Otto Bresser is a pseudonym. A DOS port in the late 80s changes his name to Dr. Otto Bresser. It does, for certain, qualify as “smut” far more than other games we’ve seen; I think the distinguishing factor is that there’s no “movie cut” past whatever scene gets initiated, and you instead can describe a sequence of actions in detail.
Drive-In is firmly an adventure game. Just like “Dr.” Bresser’s creation it has the player describe actions in detail, as they visit a drive-in with Andrea and attempt to score a touchdown. Very much unlike the Bresser game, you can’t just do whatever you want.
You are in the front seat of your car
You see: ANDREA, wearing halter-top and shorts. loudspeaker. radio (OFF).
Trying to turn on the radio led to a curious response.
WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO DO ? TURN ON RADIO
ARE YOU TRYING TO DEAL WITH THE LOADSPEAKER OR THE RADIO? YES
TRY A NOUN-VERB COMBINATION INSTEAD OF VERB-NOUN
The parser here wants LOUDSPEAKER OFF, RADIO ON, or RADIO OFF. The game comes close to understanding the command, it’d be nice if it went all the way! The game hints (when typing HELP, which I relied on quite a bit) that you want to switch from the movie sound (loudspeaker) to music, so the right acts here are LOUDSPEAKER OFF (“I dropped it out the window…”) and RADIO ON. You are then instructed you can HOLD HANDS…
SHE SLIDES CLOSER TO YOU.
…at which point the HELP feature gives no further direction. My other attempts at interaction were either not understood (the game does not understand conversation at all) or lightly rebuffed, so I got out of the car and went searching. (I thought possibly the game was one-room up to that point; the variation Crusin I mentioned puts all the action inside the car.)
You are Outside, next to YOUR car
You see: YOUR car.
YOU CAN GO: NORTH EAST SOUTH WEST
The map is essentially a straight north/south line. You can wander away from it but that either lands you in a VACANT space or LOST, at which point you are stuck there forever until you restart the game. I always like a little existential dread with my dating simulators.
Again, most locations let you go east or west but reach a vacant location or LOST. Once I found a not-useful broken speaker.
There’s a playground along the way with a slide, and on top there is a note via Arnie (who set up the blind date) saying “I forgot to tell you! Andrea is NOT on the pill! BE CAREFUL”; this is an indication a condom is needed.
To the far north is a “snackbar COUNTER” and I was unable to read the sign or find out any kind of menu. (It kept repeating the message on the note from the slide.) The player avatar has a billfold with a dollar and popcorn costs 50 cents, but that’s just by guesswork, I’m sure they have other items.
YOU ARE HOLDING:
shirt which you are wearing.
slacks which you are wearing.
briefs which you are wearing.
billfold.
.50 in CHANGE.
popcorn.
The change is enough to go outside, go to a men’s room (deceptively as a drawn arrow, but going “west” is VOID, sorry, you need to GO MENS) and buy a condom from the machine (except the game only understands RUBBER, by this point I was checking the walkthrough).
After all that, I had nothing left to do but go back to the car. Based on the walkthrough I was missing PUT ARM after HOLD HANDS; the parser is very finicky.
WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO DO ? PUT ARM
AROUND WHAT (1 WORD)?
The player is now free to start kissing. FACE isn’t a recognized word. Andrea isn’t into going for the lips right away, but she’s fine with neck kissing. From there the player can move into blowing into her ear, and then she’s fine with kissing lips.
Any further steps mention it getting “cramped” and the idea here is to (without any real mention this even counts as a location) GO BACKSEAT followed by CALL ANDREA.
From here I’m not going to go into intricate detail on each step after. I’m unclear how fixed the walkthrough is and how much is simply “freestyle” choices. (At least some choices the HELP command comes back, at least.) The idea behind the game is to avoid messages like “pushing you away” eventually finally getting to use the rubber. I found it interesting how many different body parts were accounted for (and how easy it was to nonetheless run into an error parser message with an unrecognized part) but the parser made it very difficult to get any progress.
The Case at KAXL was a much better game, but that was a game where the action all clearly fell within the parameters of standard text adventure commands; here, the author was trying something relatively new. The game opened up — due to its nature — a wide potential list of actions, but only understood a fraction of them.
Rogers might have played Otto Bresser’s game first given his TRS-80 background and voracious habit of collecting public domain software. There’s unfortunately no way to ask; while he made a brief appearance at the Adventurer’s Guild post about the game and posted contact information, he died a year later, in 2022.
Renga in Blue 