You may have noticed a general pattern with my 1983 picks:
January 1983: S. S. Poseidon by Bill and Debbie Cook
January 1983: The Final Countdown by Bill and Debbie Cook
Might be 1982 or 1983: Cauchemard-House by Anonymous
1983, based on a game written much earlier: Nosferatu by Mike Taylor and Myles Kelvin
January 1983: Caveman Adventure by Dave Carlos
Intended for 1982 launch but slipped to 1983: The Dark Crystal by Roberta Williams
In other words, I was writing about games with at least a foot in 1982. I do not have a complete month-by-month breakdown of all 500ish games for the year and I never held the restriction that I have to be chronological by month, especially in cases like today’s game where I don’t know what month it was published, or if it was published at all. (Kevin Bunch at Atari Archive tries to get more exact dates with his chrono-playing, but even though the Atari 2600 had much wider audience base than any computer from the time, he still sometimes has an error bar.)
It notably uses the TRS-80 with 32K-of-memory only. This is non-trivial as the Model I generally went to 16K.
A 32K expansion interface for the Model I. They started being sold in 1978, and allowed plugging in more memory boosting the original 16K of the TRS-80 to 48K, but you would never assume a standard user had one of these in 1978 or even 1982. The Model III could be expanded internally. Source.
The instances we’ve had before of the 32K TRS-80 have nearly all had alternatives; for example, Asylum had 16K and 32K versions (with notable changes to the text) and while Hog Jowl Mansion was printed as a 32K game, it gave specific advice for condensing the code to fit on a 16k computer. Stuart Rush’s 1982 game Survival was intended to have two versions of the room descriptions printed in the magazine, except an error led to both of them having the “short versions” and the full code wasn’t printed until David Ahl’s Big Computer Games from 1984. Xenos (published in the tail end of 1982) is the big exception.
From a 1983 catalog. Both of these are 16K models, with $50 for each additional 16K. To adjust for inflation to 2025 money, prices should roughly be tripled.
In other words, authors have been struggling against the limits of their computers — or at least computers they expected their target market to own — but 1983 is when authors of home-computer adventures just might have a little more space to work with generally. The ZX Spectrum — with greater default capacity — now will notably be much more prominent than the ZX81.
In this specific case the increased space’s effect is less in allowing longer sentences and more in allowing a bizarre coding style, but we’ll get to that.
The text of the intro is clearly cadged mostly wholesale from the text in Scott Adams games, including, ironically, the bit about piracy. Such a line would normally indicate this game was sold commercially, and while I think this is possible, I haven’t found any print-magazine ads. It is also possible this was “aspirational” writing, although in this case, there is a second game in the Herrick Venture series (Land of Odysseys) and that second game mentions a third (Ghosttowns of Nevada). No copies of the third exist so it may be vaporware; still, on top of that there’s a second version of Escape, re-titled The Building and written in machine code. I stuck with the BASIC original to start, but then switched to machine code later for reasons I’ll get into later.
I have been unable to narrow down who Richard E. Herrick Jr. is from multiple candidates. It’d be fun if he was related to Richard J. Herrick, the first person to get a kidney transplant (with a donation from his twin brother in 1954; the surgeon Joseph Murray later won a Nobel Prize) but alas.
You are trapped in a building and your objective is to get out.
The start is fairly brisk. The door is locked and the rug is nailed down; checking the shelf (twice) reveals a SAW and HAMMER. The hammer can be applied to remove the nails, allowing removing the rug and revealing a hole in the floor.
This leads to a cellar (see above) which seemingly only has a brick wall, but some bricks can be taken, revealing both some planks and a key. The hole above is too high to reach but assuming you kept the saw, hammer, and nails from upstairs you can put together a LADDER with the parts, allowing egress back up the hole.
This leads to a wider-open space, but not too wide because this is a escape-building game and not a Roberta Williams landscape. There are multiple holes and passages that open up, but I’ll give the version of the map without any of those first:
You stumble from the ROOM out into a hallway and then a LOBBY with a PADLOCKED DOOR and STAIRS.
The machine language version adds a bricked-up door intended to represent the front door.
Wandering around the easily accessible spots: there’s a BEDROOM to the west with a CLOSET to the north and a BATHROOM to the south. The closet has an ELECTRIC CAN OPENER, the bed has a PILLOW and BLANKETS, and the bathroom has a sink, tub, and toilet, which all seemingly at first glance did nothing.
Upstairs, there’s a supply room (MATCHES, TIN CAN) and a maintenance room with a KEROSENE LANTERN and a window. You can BREAK WINDOW (the game asks WITH WHAT? and you need to respond WITH BRICK, using the ones from the cellar).
You can step outside to find some broken glass (not useful) and a security badge (useful later). You can also try to jump and die (I attempted to use the pillow and blankets to soften the landing, no dice).
Heading back downstairs, the padlock isn’t too hard to deal with using a tool from the start: SAW PADLOCK. This breaks open a library with a bookcase. After some parser struggle I managed to PULL BOOK, revealing a lever.
The book mentions A COMPUTER NEEDS POWER TO RUN (hint for something in the next room) but also says TRY HERRICK VENTURE #2’LAND OF ODYSSEYS.
The secret passage leads to a COMPUTER ROOM.
Doing FLIP SWITCH has no effect; doing MOVE DESK reveals a frayed cord and plug, but trying to insert the plug electrocutes you. While I’m at it, I should mention GO DESK lets you see a DRAWER which you can open to find a DISKETTE (grr things you can clearly see that the game refuses to mention unless you are positioned in a particular way).
Making progress now requires more unconventional thinking, or at least “I assume nothing is a red herring, so what haven’t I used yet”. For example, there’s a whole “room” dedicated to the bed: why? Well, because you can SLEEP, and then for no logical reason whatsoever, some insulated gloves appear.
This isn’t exactly “moon logic”, although it does hover near my prior definition (where effect doesn’t derive from cause). The author’s thought process seems to be that the player should try all things that seem linked to regular behavior (like sleeping in a bed); even if the cause isn’t immediately apparent it doesn’t seem that outrageous someone would do the action in the first place.
Keeping that in mind, there are three things you can do in the bathroom:
a.) RUN WATER to turn on the sink. This will spill out not water but some oil-like substance. If you take the can opener, use the plug at the computer to operate it, and open the can, you can fill it with oil.
b.) RUN WATER again while in the tub. Some keys come out. I needed to disassemble the source code to figure this one out.
c.) FLUSH TOILET will cause the toilet to lift up revealing a hole. The hole goes under the manhole in the street (seen earlier through the window) and it leads to freedom, with the small catch there are bolts at the bottom of the manhole.
So to recap, we now have: insulated gloves from the bed, oil from the tap (fracking, I guess), keys from the bathtub, and a way out which requires removing bolts. Now back to the computer room, where the gloves work to plug the computer in.
Pressing ENTER causes a secret door to swing open. Upon trying to enter, the game locked up, and I ended up restarting and retracing all my steps with the machine code version of the game in order to get farther. Past the secret door is a room with a lift.
You can SHOW BADGE (from up on the windowsill) to trigger the next part, but the machine isn’t quite working.
The lift has a gauge indicating it is empty of fluid. It took a lot of parser fussing to realize I could FILL LIFT (POUR OIL just pours it on the floor) and then the door will open, allowing entrance to the last room.
The final obstacle is simply a room with a file cabinet. It simply requires the SECURITY KEYS, and for some reason a WRENCH is inside. I did not have the miracle of trying RUN WATER in the tub, hence the source diving.
850 IFA=9THENWA=1:GOSUB3220:GOTO3420
860 IFA=10ANDOB(36)=0THENOB(36)=A:GOSUB3220:GOTO3340
(A = 9 is the bathroom, and 3420 displays a message about oil coming out of the sink, so I knew the command here was RUN WATER. Hence this told me I needed to RUN WATER while in the tub, room 10.)
With the wrench in hand, you can head back to the manhole, GET BOLTS, then PUSH COVER to go out to the street… and get hit by a car.
YOU FORGOT TO CHECK FOR TRAFFIC AND I GOT HIT BY A CAR!
The computer DID say to check for traffic. Unfortunately, in the machine code version of the game, the victory display at the end is confused:
It’s supposed to say
CONGRADULATIONS! YOU HAVE ESCAPED!!!
with that exact spelling. Having the hard lock crash and the mangled text suggest to me this wasn’t a commercial game but just aspirationally oriented that way, but it’s hard to know for certain without more information. I’m going to save off moving forward to game 2 (World of Odysseys) a bit just in case a magazine ad magically pops up.
Regarding what I said about the unusual source code earlier: it is structured with a bunch of manually-applied synonyms early on…
250 IFA$=”HIT”ORA$=”STRI”ORA$=”TOUC”ORA$=”FEEL”THENV=18
260 IFA$=”PRES”ORA$=”MOVE”THENV=17
270 IFB$=”OPEN”THENN=31
280 IFB$=”FLUI”ORB$=”OIL”THENN=38
290 IFB$=”PADL”THENN=54
300 IFA$=”LOAD”THENV=32
310 IFB$=”LAMP”ORB$=”LIGH”THENN=50
…and then the verb implementation proper has GOTO statements standing in for what normally would be PRINT statements.
1500 IFA=1ANDOB(1)=1THENOB(1)=0:OB(2)=1:GOTO3220
1510 IFA=1ANDOB(0)=AGOTO3290
1520 IFA=4ANDOB(18)=ATHENOB(18)=0:OB(19)=4:GOTO3220
1530 IFA=1ANDOB(2)=ATHEN3430:ELSEIFA=4ANDOB(19)=ATHEN3430
1540 IFA=5ANDOB(21)=ATHENOB(21)=0:OB(22)=5:GOTO3220
1550 IFA=5ANDOB(20)=ATHEN3290:ELSEIFA=5ANDOB(22)=ATHEN3430
1560 IFA=19AND(OB(68)=AOROB(69)=A)THEN3930:ELSEIFA=19THEN3430
1570 IFA=17ANDOB(63)=ATHEN3430:ELSE3330
The idea is that then all the messages are sorted together in a big list.
3520 PRINT@PP,”AND THEN GOES OUT.”:RETURN
3530 PRINT”LANTERN IS GOING OUT. KEROSANE IS LOW.”:RETURN
3540 PRINT”LANTERN WENT OUT.”:RETURN
3550 PRINT”LANTERN HAS NO KEROSANE.”:RETURN
3560 PRINT”I CAN’T, IT WON’T IGNITE.”:RETURN
3570 PRINT”LANTERN IS FILLED AND READY FOR USE.”:RETURN
3580 PRINT”WITH WHAT?”:RETURN
3590 PRINT”IT DOESN’T SEEM TO WORK.”:RETURN
The indirection made the code quite tricky to follow, and quite notably “wasted” a lot of characters. Rather than just printing LANTERN HAS NO KEROSANE where it ought to go in-game, there’s an extra four characters used for jumping to the appropriate line, characters are wasted at the start of the line, and then the code needs a “:RETURN” after the message is displayed. It’s more common (and tighter on character count) to avoid the jump. It appears the author was enamored with Scott Adams, all the way up to how the messages get sorted together in a Scott Adams database file, but didn’t know how to copy the implementation so just simulated the same thing with BASIC source code. There’s still some savings because of re-used messages, but sometimes parts you would think you’d re-use a message (and Scott Adams surely would) but there’s repeats of text nevertheless:
3240 PRINT”I’M NOT THAT STRONG!”:RETURN
3250 PRINT”I ALREADY HAVE IT.”:RETURN
3260 PRINT”I CAN’T, I’M NOT STRONG ENOUGH.”:RETURN
This is the sort of luxury of space only enabled by working with 32K of memory rather than 16K. Rather than thinking of the fact that items could now be described in fuller prose more akin to Infocom, the author copied what they knew; that is, the original system that was written to fit a particular technological form now had its form outdated, but was being mimicked anyway.
Coming up: The proprietor of El Explorador de RPG has taken some broken source code from a game I wrote about 7 years ago and fixed it. It happens to also be in Scott Adams format, so I’ll cover the history of what I think happened.
Renga in Blue 