Game Review: Classic Adventure (BBC Micro, Melbourne House)

When you look at games that are released across a wide range of formats, some platforms like the BBC Micro often struggle when compared with their 8-bit rivals like the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum. Thankfully, the system was blessed with more than a few games that took advantage of the hardware and delivered games that put the other machines to shame like the classic Elite. And then there was the text adventure genre – one where the BBC was able to compete on a level playing field. So with that being said, how did Melbourne House’s release of Classic Adventure hold up against the other versions?

Classic Adventure – How It All Began…

While Classic Adventure was published by Melbourne House, it was actually written by Abersoft and was first released back in 1982 for the ZX Spectrum under the name Adventure 1. However, the game itself is much older, as its origins can be traced back to the 1970s with the original Colossal Cave Adventure created by Will Crowther and Don Woods. Even though Classic Adventure isn’t an official conversion of that game, it is based on what most adventure enthusiasts regard as being one of the pioneering titles in the genre.

But back to Classic Adventure itself. The game starts off simply enough, leaving you out in the open air on a road near a stream, forest and a non-descript building and from there you’re on your own. You’re left to discover a hidden laybrinth of caves, find treasures while avoiding any hazards that lurk within, and return them safely to the building, scoring points as you drop them off.

You Can’t Do That…

The whole premise of playing a text adventure is interacting with the game’s story by typing in commands and directing your character to further the game’s narrative. While Infocom were regarded as being one of the master’s of the genre with their complex parser allowing a wide range of complex sentences and options for what you could type in, Classic Adventure is the complete opposite.

Moving around is simple enough using the normal N, S, E and W options and you get pick up objects using the standard GET and DROP commands. But things soon fall apart after that point. Basic commands that you would expect to work just don’t and all you are presented with is the response “I CANT” to pretty much everything you try.

The final frustration with the interpreter is that you’re unable to USE or EXAMINE items in your posession or anything that you see around you. So when it comes to any item you encounter in the game, what you see in the basic item name is generally what you get to know about it.

Help Me Obi-Wan Kenobi, You’re My Only Hope…

One of the most important features in any text adventure is the HELP function. Being stuck when trying to solve a puzzle can be a real game-breaker for many, and can leave a game being consigned to the cupboard for eternity. When developing all of his text adventures, Scott Adams simple told his players to order a hint sheet from his store when using the HELP command. Others offered cryptic but often useful hints to solve a location-specific puzzle.

Now, when I looked at the Commodore 16 version there was no HELP feature available and while there’s no context sensitive help in the game, what is on offer is quite useful. When you type in HELP you’re given a quite lengthy paragraph explaining the game’s controls, some of the key commands and a solution to one of the puzzles you’ll face in the game as well as mentioning a quirk about the game’s map…

We’re On A Road To Nowhere…

One of my biggest pet hates in text adventures are game maps that make no sense. I experienced this with the second game in the Questprobe series, Spider-Man when you explored the series of airducts inside the Daily Bugle building. I never thought I’d say it, but Classic Adventure is even more frustrating.

First, when it comes to the location descriptions, the majority of them give absolutely no indication whatsoever as to the directions of travel that are available to you. All you get is the description of the location and that’s it so it’s a case of trial and error to find out which way you can go. But once you do find a direction that you can go it, it gets more frustrating…

It’s quite possible to walk in one direction endlessly and have the map wrap on you several times. But then you can find yourself going west to one location, go east to explore somewhere else, and then upon heading west once more you find yourself somewhere completely different as if the map has re-designed itself while you are walking. This makes parts of the game frustrating in ways I haven’t seen in any other text adventure before and it becomes a case of luck more than anything else that you’ll arrive where you want to.

As I said before when I mentioned the HELP function, Classic Adventure does tell the player about this in advance. While it’s good to be pre-warned about this, it still doesn’t help when it comes to exploring the game world so patience is essential while playing.

Language

I will be honest here and say that the first version of Classic Adventure that I played was the Commodore 16 release. While the parser itself is the same – and it features the same grammatical errors in places – this BBC Micro release is a vast improvement. The location descriptions are detailed and vibrant and really bring the game to life.

It’s not going to win any literary awards for the way they are written and I’d say they’ve been written more by a programmer than someone with a flair for creative writing, but they’re far better than the one-liners found in the C16 incarnation of the game.

Playability

One thing I did notice while playing is that I did enjoy this version of Classic Adventure more than the Commodore 16 release, even though it’s essentially the same game. Even though it presents players with a limited parser compared to others in the genre and has one of the most frustrating game maps I’ve ever encountered, it still seemed to have something worth trying to persevere with. I did feel that the parser still let the game down though as I was never fully sure whether I was trying to do something that I simply couldn’t or if I was just using the wrong commands and just needed to find the right words to use.

One thing I found frustrating throughout is I often tried the USE command with objects, either to solve puzzles or to make use of them and found that the game just wouldn’t allow me to do so. Whether the command existed in the game, or if the tasks needed me to use specific words was never clear but it just left me feeling that I was wasting time on menial tasks that could have been done far quicker with a simple fix to the parser.

Graphics And Sound

As you would expect, Classic Adventure is played in complete silence with no music or sound effects during play. It’s also text only to allow for more lavish descriptions for locations and keep the game as true to the original as possible. In terms of the display itself, no effort has been put into it, keeping everything to a plain black screen with single colour text. While I wasn’t expecting anything elaborate, I would have welcomed different colours at least for location descriptions, player commands, and responses to make things easier on the eye.

Overall

Classic Adventure is one of those titles that is more a historical curiosity than a must-have adventure. By the time this finally made it to the BBC (and even most of the other formats it was released on), the adventure genre had moved on far beyond what this offered to the player. Games were more complicated, maps were more logical, and more attention was being paid by developers on creating parsers that would allow players to interact with games in the way they wanted to.

Because of this, Classic Adventure looked dated as soon as it was released and looking back on it now, it’s really one for die-hard adventurers only.

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