A voice BOOOOMS out: Welcome to Adventure number 1 “ADVENTURELAND” … What shall I do now?

This is how you are first greeted once the game starts. You see Adventureland is, as cunningly as it is named, an adventure game set in a fantasy land. Instead of Space Invaders and giant centipedes whizzing over the screen, the computer describes where you are and what has just happened through the magical medium of words. In turn you respond with simple verb - noun commands to tell the computer what you want to do next, such as walk north or examine inventory.

If you’ve never come across a text adventure game before you might be wondering what on earth is going on and suspect you’d been diddled out of your hard earned cash. Stick with it though and you’ll get sucked into a magical fantasy world better than a book because you play a part in the story as it unfolds.

As is typical of adventure games, there are locations to explore, objects to collect and puzzles to solve. Sometimes the solutions to the puzzles are tenuous but it’s always rewarding to solve them. Adventureland is no different, that although shorter than later adventures, still poses a challenge and is great fun to play.

The aim is to collect a number of treasures and to put them somewhere safe. I won’t spoil it if you have never played it before. The commands are basic two words as mentioned but this adds a simplistic charm and something I prefer over the wordy sentences you must construct in later adventure games. In fact you can shorten all words to either one or three letters, partly to reduce RSI and partly to allow this massive game to be crammed in to a tiny 16K of RAM.

Suffice to say play this game now, examine everything and try to think as a hero would who faces dragons and chiggers (big fleas!) and who occasionally hears a big booooming voice. I wonder if anyone else can hear the voices?