Game Review: The Quest For The Holy Grail (Commodore 64, Mastertronic)

There can’t be many people living in the UK who grew up with Mastertronic games in the 80s who hadn’t heard of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. The British comedy team were lauded for their unique style and while not everything they produced has stood the test of time, much of their work is still regarded as being truly classic. Their films were no exception including the amazing Monty Phython’s Life Of Brian, and the 1975 movie Monty Python And The Holy Grail. And as was the norm for the games industry in the 80s, it’s no surprise that the movie became the “inspiration” for a game and thus The Quest For The Holy Grail was born…

Brave Sir Tappin and The Quest For The Holy Grail

This isn’t actually an original Mastertronic release and like many of their early titles, this was actually first released in 1984 by Dream Software. Still released with the same title that Mastertronic used (unlike some other games that they chose to rename), it’s based loosely on the Monty Python movie and you take on the role of Sir Tappin.

As the title suggests, you’re off on a quest and yes, you’re in search of the legendary Holy Grail. Along the way you have to survive attacks the deadly White Rabbit, an encounter with the three-headed knight and avoid all manner of hazards and others who are set to stop you on your adventure.

As is the norm for the genre, it’s played by entering one or two word commands – most of the usual ones you would expect with text adventures of the time – and you have to solve puzzles and find various objects scatterede around the different locations in order to progress and ultimately find the Grail and complete the game. For some strange reason, the inlay makes no mention that this is a text adventure or how to play the game or even gives you basic information about some of the key commands you can use although thankfully there are screenshots so you know what to expect.

Let’s Make An Adventure

The game was first developed for the ZX Spectrum and that version was created using Dream Software’s adventure creation package The Dungeon Builder. Released in 1984 (a year after the release of The Quill and one year before the launch of The Graphic Adventure Creator) it was released at a price of £14.99 and allowed users to create a text adventure using a grid based system building adventures using a series of inter-connected rooms basing games around a map.

As with similar packages, games could be developed to run independently of the software and Dream Software used it to create the Spectrum version of Holy Grail. While the Commodore 64 version never had a commercial release of The Dungeon Builder, it would appear that it was developed for internal use as this version of the game has all the same design characteristics of the original version.

It’s Only A Flesh Wound

Probably my biggest pet peeve when it comes to text adventures are situations where places face unavoidable instant death during gameplay. There’s nothing I find more frustrating than going to a location, reading the description and before you can do anything at all, an event is triggered and you’re told that you have been killed, either because you’ve walked into something or a character has attacked you.

Even back in 1984 this wasn’t really acceptable in any game, especially as there was no way to recover your game at that point. It basically forces players to not only map games out to the smallest of detail while playing so you can avoid these situations as you replay them, but also it means that continuous saves become an absolute necessity.

While it’s not such a problem in the early stages of play as you don’t mind restarting after a dozen or so moves (and it’s actually possible to die within a few moves in The Quest For The Holy Grail) if you’ve played for a while and haven’t saved it’s quite easy to just feel like giving up on the game completely.

Leave The Jokes To The Professionals

Developing video games of any genre and successfully incorporating humour into them rarely works. Arcade games can pull it off more through the use of sound effects and surreal visuals that will generally put a smile on your face rather than having you laugh out loud while playing. One of the best examples I’ve ever encountered is the PC arcade shooter Chicken Invaders – a single screen sci-fi shooter that sees you under attack from wave after wave of space chickens. As you shoot them, each one squawks! Sounds absurd but you can’t help but laugh at how crazy it is.

But text based games are another thing altogether. Humour derived from witty dialogue can work well, but poorly crafted jokes, sarcastic comments or abuse hurled at the players just isn’t entertaining to read. Even more so when you have to read the same thing over and over again as you revisit locations or are given the same verbal attacks while fighting with the game’s parser.

Do You Understand The Words That Are Coming Out Of My Mouth

One thing that frustrated players of early text adventures was the limited parsers present in many of them. And sadly The Qest For The Holy Grail can count itself amongst them. It seems to have quite a limited vocabulary and even the most basic words that you would think that it should know are missing. Whether it’s a case of trying to interact with objects in your posession, or examine specific items or characters that you are told are in the locations you are visiting, more often that not you’re simply not able to do so.

Instead, once again the game hurls abuse at you when you try to do these things rather than gives you an indication of whether it’s an issue with the parser or simply something that you are unable to do, leaving you wondering if it’s simply a case of you trying to do the impossible.

On A Road To Nowhere? Not This Time…

I know I’ve complained about maps before in adventures, especially in some of the games by Scott Adams and Infocom, but one thing I do have to say here is that the map layout in The Quest For The Holy Grail has been set out quite well. In part I’d say this is down to the way the Dungeon Builder engine works, creating games using a room based system with a grid system for its map.

Taking this approach prevents it taking a seemingly random nature for traversing the game world and makes finding your way around a more enjoyable gaming experience. While mapping the game is still advisable, it is possible to find your way around from memory without going around in circles.

Ministry Of Silly Copyrights

At the beginning I mentioned that The Quest For The Holy Grail is “inspired” by Monty Python… but Mastertronic’s release goes further than that. The inlay makes a clear reference to Monty Python on a couple of occasions, and the game itself is more of a copy of scenarios and characters from the film rather than an inspiration or parody (which would have been safe legally under “fair use” terms.

But it doesn’t stop there. Even the physical cassette treads on questionable ground as there are multiple variants of the cassette label in circulation. Some refer to the game as Holy Grail while others go further and call the game Monty Python’s Holy Grail – it’s astonishing that Mastertronic didn’t find themselves facing another legal challenge as they did with Chiller.

Playability

Ignoring all of the technical details, the most important thing you want to know is how does it play. Well, to be completely honest its frustrating more than anything else. As I said earlier, the limited parser leads to frustration at every turn as does the frequent instant deaths you’ll encounter which at times feels like they happen at almost every turn.

Beyond those frustrations, many of the puzzles are quite basic – there aren’t as many of them as you might think and some are simply a case of finding items in the game. Seeing an object on the ground in a location and picking it up is enough to complete it, and in another you simply have to open a locked door with a key you can pick up from your starting location!

Presentation

When you look at any text adventure, graphics are always secondary to the way everything is set out on screen and how easy everything is to read. Here The Quest For The Holy Grail is split into two windows – the top section is used to display the graphics, location description, and information on what items you see. The bottom section is used primarily for entering commands and where you see responses to them.

Just like titles produced with The Graphic Adventure Creator, the illustrations are quite basic and do take a few seconds to draw. It does give the impression that The Dungeon Builder uses a similar line drawing system for producing it’s visuals, although it does seem to allow for slightly more complex illustrations and allows for text to be added. Images are limited to just a few colours though and and they really don’t enhance the game in any way.

Overall

Being a huge Monty Python fan, I really wanted to love playing this. In fact, before I loaded this up I had memories of playing it when I was younger and thought that I enjoyed it. But no, that was just looking back at it through rose-tinted glasses and it just wasn’t a particularly good adventure back then and it’s no different today. Strip away the Python references and The Quest For The Holy Grail would have struggled to have been noticed at all when first released. Even at a budget price this is more of a gimmick title than anything else as it simply doesn’t make the grade as an text adventure.

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