Adventure of the Week: Dragon-Quest Adventure (1980)

UPDATE:  Thanks to an informative commenter, I was able to reach Mr. Charles Forsythe.  He graciously confirmed that he was the author of Dragon-Quest Adventure, and that it was indeed published by the Programmers' Guild.  Some other sources cite it as a 1980 release, by the same author and publisher, so that information now seems reliable as well.  Mystery solved!

This week's adventure emerges from the dustiest of the dusty TRS-80 archives -- it's a text adventure called Dragon-Quest Adventure on the title screen, and Dragon Quest at the start of the game proper.  I have been able to find no verifiable information about its authorship or publisher.  I can say only that it's no relation to the 8-bit NES Japanese RPG series of the same name, and most likely predates the first of those games by about five years.  It's also no relation to Bug-Byte Software's Dragon Quest text adventure for the BBC/Electron computers.  The game is modeled on the Scott Adams style, and it's a quality effort, written in speedy machine language with fewer spelling errors than most games of its era.  A French archive site suggests that this was written as Dragon's Quest by Charles Forsythe for The Programmers' Guild in 1980, which is certainly possible, although other sources suggest that Forsythe's first games were for the TRS-80 Color Computer a few years later.  The game persists today in digital form, so clearly it was published or otherwise archived for history's sake, but its origins are shrouded in the mists of time. 

Ah, well.  I've never let uncertain provenance stop me before.  The game starts with a helpful display of the available verbs, a couple of which are unusual and provide a few hints about the puzzles ahead.  Oddly, only this vocabulary list is rendered in mixed-case -- the rest of the game is presented exclusively in old-school uppercase.

The plot is highly conventional -- in fact, this is probably the most generic adventure game I've played since I started blogging on a regular basis.  We are sent by the king... to rescue his daughter... from a dragon.  Innovative, this one is not.

The game is straightforward, as long as one does the expected things in the proper order, and it has a functional SAVE command (to cassette), so it's not hard to fight through the more difficult moments.  As always, if you plan to tackle this one on your own, you should do so before proceeding here.  Because there are dragon-esque, quest-ish...

***** SPOILERS AHEAD! *****

The game gets off to a bit of a shaky start, as it's not entirely clear how we should get the mission underway.  We can't TALK to the KING, as conversation is not a supported action.  We can FIGHT KING, but that only yields swift medieval justice as YOU ARE EXECUTED!  We can't wander outside of the castle grounds without being brought back before the King, so we're not free to do much of anything else.  But LOOK KING triggers his response, and the start of our journey, featuring a remarkably talkative dragon who conveniently announces a schedule for his maiden-devouring plans:

The passage opened by the King contains a number of traditionally important adventuring supplies -- a shovel, a lamp, and a flask of oil -- but not much in the way of armor or weaponry.  Our quest will consist in large part of tracking down suitable equipment for facing the dragon, as the Kingdom is clearly suffering an economic crisis or serious employee theft problem at the moment.

The game is coy about how NOT MUCH TIME LEFT! we actually have.  I found no means of telling time within the game, and by the time we start seeing ALMOST SUNSET, HURRY! warnings, we only have a few turns left.  The time pressure isn't particularly tight -- we have time to explore on our initial forays -- but it's best to figure things out, then start over and execute as efficiently as possible.

The two-word parser is a little idiosyncratic, probably based on the author's own adventuring habits.  Single-character directions are not allowed -- nor, actually, are spelled-out directions without a GO command; we have to explicitly type GO SOUTH, GO EAST, et cetera.  And TAKE is not recognized, only GET.  It does, however, handle GET ALL, which can be used to retrieve whatever's available in unlit areas.

There's a HELP command that actually works on occasion, and I like the way it's implemented -- sometimes a demon appears and gives us bad advice, sometimes an angel appears and provides good advice.  It's not hard to tell the good from the bad, so it doesn't really constitute a puzzle, but it's a fresh idea that works well in the context of the game and does a lot to make it solvable.

There's a ROWBOAT implementation that works fairly well, with ROW UPSTREAM and ROW DOWNSTREAM command requirements to give it some sense of authenticity.  The only strange thing is that the river consists of three locations, and somehow manages to have dangerous rapids at both ends.  I guess that's possible, as I imagine shallow, rocky stretches bordering deeper, calmer space, but whether we're rowing upstream or downstream, the game warns us that to proceed further would be TOO NEAR THE RAPIDS!  It seems that should only be a problem at one end or the other, as if we're rowing upstream, all we would have to do is relax to drift away from the hazard.

There are a few dark areas, of course, but the lamp itself presents an interesting puzzle.  LIGHT LAMP tells us YOU NEED SOMETHING TO DO IT WITH!, and LOOK LAMP indicates that THERE IS NO OIL IN IT.  We have a flask of oil, but we can't OPEN FLASK (THE SEAL IS VERY TIGHT) and if we BREAK SEAL, THE FLASK SHATTERS, spilling its oil wherever we happen to be standing.  I spent some time trying to find a way to scoop some oil into the lamp, or otherwise contain it, to no avail.  Eventually I realized that an empty box marked THE LAMP OF ALADDIN was meant to be a clue, though why the lamp's shipping box is stashed in a temple, placed in such a way as to conceal some food, while its original contents are in the royal storeroom, remains a mystery in anything but adventure game terms.  At any rate, I quit trying to LIGHT LAMP in favor of RUB LAMP and had greater success.

The oil is not a red herring entirely, as it does have a purpose -- the temple also contains a SWORD IN STONE,  and IT IS STUCK! if we try to PULL SWORD.  But if we spill the (hint hint) SLIMY OIL from the flask here, the sword slips out readily.  (I knew that punk Arthur was cheating somehow!  Pure of heart, indeed!)

The DARK WOOD is not actually all that dark -- we can see clearly without a source of illumination -- but it is a maze that must be mapped by dropping objects and experimenting. The "incorrect" exits always lead back to the first room of the forest; we must travel north, west, south, and west to emerge in a field leading to a few new locations.

In the graveyard, we can DIG to find... to make, actually... a HOLE.  We can then GO HOLE to enter a grave (whoops -- apologies to the deceased!).  OPEN COFFIN without suitable protection produces THERE IS A BLINDING FLASH!  YOU ARE BLIND!   This is inconvenient but not fatal -- we can actually finish the game blind if we navigate carefully, and brief flickers of location and action are visible before the game remembers that YOU CANNOT SEE.  YOU ARE DISORIENTED! and blanks the display.  But it's far safer if we bring the golden amulet, which absorbs the blinding light even better than that stuff football players put under their eyes.  (And, if we haven't noticed yet, clearly makes a liar out of Old Scratch, who's been consistently warning us away from the amulet when we ask for HELP.)

The golden amulet comes from the mouth of a manatee bathing in the river -- we must GO RIVER from the riverbank to find him.  DROP FOOD obtains the amulet; FEED MANATEE doesn't work. GO UP takes us back to the boat; we can't explicitly WEAR AMULET but carrying it is sufficient.

Another exchange of goods takes place with the Alchemist in the hut south of the graveyard, who gives us a *MAGICAL SHIELD* (this game uses asterisks to denote magic, rather than treasure) in exchange for the RUBY, if we were able to get it from the grave without being blinded.  When we DROP RUBY, he gives us the shield, and we also hear A DISTANT VOICE: THE MAGIC WORD IS "XAVAX". 

With sword and shield and glowing lamp in hand, we can assay the dark cave.  The entrance contains a 100 foot pillar, a skeleton, and a scroll containing the unfortunate adventurer's final words:  I HAVE SLIPPED OFF THE PILLAR AND AM DYING. TAKE MY AMULET OF FLYING MADE WITH GOLD OF ABSORBTION [sic, but I'll give a dying guy a break.]

If we try to CLIMB PILLAR the old-fashioned way, we fall immediately to our death.  Fortunately, the amulet we got from the manatee is the adventurer's amulet.  The FLY command works, but we can only carry the amulet with us -- everything else makes us too heavy for takeoff.  Fortunately, the GLOWING LAMP gets pulled up by the amulet's magic, automatically.  But facing the dragon without the magic shield proves a bad idea.  A little experimentation establishes that SAY XAVAX on top of the pillar drops a rope ladder down to the entrance, an interesting combination of magic and practical considerations that could actually be built in the real world using voice recognition (omitting, of course, the flying amulet.)  Perhaps this is all an elaborate advertisement for prescription medication, as in, "Ask your doctor if XAVAX is right for you!"

With all of our belongings recovered, we can enter the lair of the dragon for a brief and remarkably non-violent encounter, as these sorts of stories go.  The dragon's CLAW BOUNCES OFF YOUR SHIELD - YOUR SWORD GLOWS AND THE DRAGON FALLS ASLEEP.  We're free to enter the inner lair, where the princess lies sleeping.  We can't KISS PRINCESS or WAKE PRINCESS in the traditional fairy-tale style, and dirty minds are not encouraged either, but we can GET PRINCESS and carry her as an inventory item, returning her to the castle and the King.  Victory is ours!

I don't know what a gold piece is worth in this game's world, but if 100,000 of them constitutes HALF OF MY KINGDOM, then perhaps that explains the relatively empty secret storeroom.  Our travels through the land certainly didn't turn up much of a tax base; in fact, if the Alchemist has had any success with the land's sole commercial operation, he may be minting gold coins himself and diluting the currency of the realm.

So that's Dragon-Quest Adventure, by an author who remains anonymous for the moment; I found it to be a quick, pleasant little adventure, but there are lots of games like this one out there.  Below the fold is a full walkthrough, which I have also provided to the CASA Solution Archive.

***** WALKTHROUGH *****



LOOK KING
GO PASSAGE
GET ALL
GO EAST
GO SOUTH
GO EAST
GO DOCK
GO ROWBOAT
ROW UPSTREAM
GO WEST
GO STAIRS
GET BOX
GET FOOD
GO WEST
BREAK FLASK
PULL SWORD
GO EAST
GO DOWN
GO RIVER
DROP FOOD
GET AMULET
GO UP
ROW DOWNSTREAM
GO WEST
GO WEST
GO WEST
GO WEST
GO NORTH
GO WEST
GO SOUTH
GO WEST
GO NORTH
DIG
GO HOLE
OPEN COFFIN
GET RUBY
GO UP
GO SOUTH
GO SOUTH
ENTER HUT
DROP RUBY (get shield, magic word XAVAX)
TAKE SHIELD
GO NORTH
GO NORTH
GO EAST
GO EAST
GO EAST
GO EAST
GO DOCK
GO ROWBOAT
ROW DOWNSTREAM
GO WEST
GO WEST
RUB LAMP
READ SCROLL
DROP ALL
GET AMULET
FLY
SAY XAVAX
CLIMB LADDER
GET ALL
CLIMB LADDER
GO NORTH (dragon falls asleep)
DROP SHOVEL
GET PRINCESS
GO SOUTH
GO SOUTH
DROP SKELETON
GET LAMP
CLIMB LADDER
GO EAST
GO ROWBOAT
ROW UPSTREAM
GO WEST
GO WEST
GO WEST
GO NORTH (You are a hero!)