tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7274560874062585311.post142538106962335241..comments2024-03-28T06:43:37.598-07:00Comments on Gaming After 40: Adventure of the Week: Death Dreadnaught (1980)StillGaminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18366215127642090500noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7274560874062585311.post-38928392410334891442018-05-05T19:50:08.127-07:002018-05-05T19:50:08.127-07:00I recall this game very well. It had a "bad ...I recall this game very well. It had a "bad reputation" -- so of course, I had to play it! Part of the appeal is actually the fact that it was so capricious, with no save game at all... and not nearly as well-done as the Scott Adams games. So, of course, you ended up seeing the same territory over and over again as you learned every little way to die. Completing this somewhat dysfunctional game gave me great satisfaction at the time.gmhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16865045312825535716noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7274560874062585311.post-56734751347769752322012-01-15T03:32:22.442-08:002012-01-15T03:32:22.442-08:00This was a machine-language game, but it's pos...This was a machine-language game, but it's possible it was published as a BASIC type-in and then later commercially released in a speedier improved version; that happened with a couple of TRS-80 adventures. But it's also very possible that a couple of your memories are conflating themselves -- if I've learned one thing writing this blog it's that human memory is a lot more malleable and less reliable than we think it is. :)<br /><br />I remember typing in programs on the TRS-80 very well myself -- before modems were commonplace, it was the only way to publish software, so we'd get books and magazines and type the programs in ourselves. It actually taught me a lot about programming in the process. And yeah, today I'm grateful that the Java compiler has such strong typing and checking -- when I've made a change and it won't compile, it's usually not too hard to find the hyphen that should have been an underscore. Thanks for commenting!StillGaminghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18366215127642090500noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7274560874062585311.post-79865943722835590352012-01-14T15:34:55.893-08:002012-01-14T15:34:55.893-08:00Yea! I remember a friend and I playing this on hi...Yea! I remember a friend and I playing this on his TRS-80. Not the first, but one of the first text adventures we played. <br /><br />The corpse screaming "Wash me!" is what stuck with me.<br /><br />And, maybe I'm mixing it up with another text adventure, but didn't the source code for this once appear in some magazine? I remember, with some text adventure, my friend and I laboriously took turns typing in the code from the magazine, he'd do a page, then I'd do a page. Amazingly, since at that time I doubt we had much in the way of debugging skills, it worked when we ran it.<br /><br />I say amazingly, because today, when I'm pouring over some TEACH YOURSELF A NEW PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE IN 24 HOURS book, I can't type 3 lines of code without ending up with 3 typos that take me an hour to debug.<br /><br />I can only chalk it up to our enthusiasm at age 14 to play whatever text adventure this was to obsessively type in the code without making any mistakes.planettomhttp://planettom.livejournal.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7274560874062585311.post-34682025151233390002011-02-15T19:37:24.631-08:002011-02-15T19:37:24.631-08:00No truth in that that I'm aware of, but it'...No truth in that that I'm aware of, but it's possible that Robert Arnstein was one of the Dog Brothers, who have remained anonymous all these years.StillGaminghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18366215127642090500noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7274560874062585311.post-61869010660278656452011-02-15T15:29:58.605-08:002011-02-15T15:29:58.605-08:00Unless I am mistaken, this game is sometimes credi...Unless I am mistaken, this game is sometimes credited to Robert Arnstein (Raaka Tu etc) - Any truth in that do you know?raakatuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06035436462762176841noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7274560874062585311.post-32660617444406584422010-11-22T15:00:35.697-08:002010-11-22T15:00:35.697-08:00Chipotle,
Thanks for the insight! Promoting it a...Chipotle,<br /><br />Thanks for the insight! Promoting it as a sequel certainly explains the similar monsters in both games -- and might make it more likely that the first one was written by an uncredited Alex Kreis.<br /><br />Thanks!StillGaminghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18366215127642090500noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7274560874062585311.post-11283070211803956402010-11-22T14:16:16.124-08:002010-11-22T14:16:16.124-08:00While I wandered here by virtual accident (I was d...While I wandered here by virtual accident (I was doing a Google search on "Captain 80 Book of BASIC Adventures," which I actually still have a copy of!), I wanted to pop in and add credence to your suspicion about this game's authorship, if not outright confirmation: "Domes of Kilgari" was explicitly advertised as the sequel to "Death Dreadnaught."Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com