@~More articles on how readers got interested in playing @~adventures, this issue from Alex van Kaam and Brian Burke. ------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. How I Started Adventuring By Alex van Kaam I read the part from James Judge and how he got into adventuring, it's funny, he didn't really like DM but he loved Bloodwych, (if I read it correctly). I also finished Bloodwych and its data disk (you have the solutions on your PD) but after that I never touched them, but I must have completed DM 6 or 7 times by now, with all kind of characters even with only one (Hisssa, he also completed Chaos Strikes Back alone !!!). And I still compare other games (like Might & Magic) with it...... As for the first adventure I ever played, it was on my Atari 800 XL, and it was called Crash Dive, it was written by ***** Moriarty, it only had a few locations but, boy, was that one difficult (for me) After that came, of course, Colossal Adventure and Zork 1 and a lot of small ones, I can't remember from who, but they all looked similar. The one I remember best is one about old Greece, with those characters that appear in those legends, then of course Knight Orc, from Level 9. I wrote my first solution for this game, but the Dutch mag. never placed it. Also from Level 9 was Ingrid's Back. Then came Alternate Reality, the City, this was my first experience with RPG, (I think if I would see it now I would laugh about the graphics and playability, but still it had something.....) After that I sold my Atari 800 XL and I bought an Atari STFM, I never found any RPG that had me hooked as much as Alternate Reality but then I saw a review about Bard's Tale in a Dutch magazine (a bit like Page 6), the reviewer gave it 10 out of 10 (at that time). I wanted to buy it but I couldn't find it in any Dutch shops, in the next issue of the magazine the same bloke reviewed Dungeon Master, he gave it 11 out of 10.... He offered to buy DM in the UK if there were enough people interested, of course I wrote him and a few months!!!! later I got it. And the rest as they say is history, there came of course a lot of clones to DM, some very bad (Bloodwych), other almost as good (Knightmare), but never any that beat DM in my eyes..... Of course I also tried a few Ultimas, they were okay, but I never found them special. And then, after a lot of thinking what will it be, a Falcon or a PC, I bought the PC. With it I bought Might & Magic IV, it was lucky I had a week free from work, I must have played it at least 12 hours or so a day, I finally found the game of my dreams..... ------------------------------------------------------------------ 2. HOW I STARTED ADVENTURING (or How to stop smoking and spend twice as much on your Computing habit). By Brian Burke I've never owned a Spectrum or caressed a rubber keyboard (a'hem). I've almost never played a text adventure (gasp) and the one I did start on I never finished (Jinxter). Is this Adventure Players' heresy? Please don't cast me out 'cos there must be loads of folks like me out in Joystick Land. I survived quite happily in my teens, twenties and, yes, even my thirties boozing, playing squash, golf, jogging, womanising and generally faffing about. The nearest I got to playing an RPG was as a couch potato when watching loads of TV. Then one day at work I spotted a guy playing a Chess game (in his lunchtime of course - in those days I was the boss) on one of those new fangled computer thingies and I thought - that looks good. The guy said "did you know that there are even games that go on for days called Adventures?" Now my daughter was to be seven years old that Christmas back in '87 so I reasoned that a computer's a good thing for a growing mind right? I had every intention of buying an Amstrad as they seemed to be the most reasonable value. I had no inkling that there were several different formats or operating systems and so on. A friend told me about a newish computer called an Amiga so I abandoned my Amstrad investigations (thanks goodness) and went and bought Commodore User magazine and studied the adverts. Me and my flexible friend duly acquired said Amiga (PCs were an enormous price back then and I'd never heard of an ST except in a Roger Moore TV series (no offence meant, Master Bitmap)) plus a game for my daughter, which we still have, called "Winnie the Pooh." This kids' game was almost an adventure cos you have to find objects and take them to their owner, sometimes a wind blows and mixes all the objects up again. Christmas Eve saw me setting up the Amiga and I was head deep in the manual till four o'clock in the morning (loved every minute of it) in an attempt to get it to say "Happy Christmas, Karen" when it booted up. Happily she took to mouse manipulation without any trouble and we had fun with the Mandelbrot program on the PD demo disc the Amiga supplier had provided. Of course I was keen to get programming on my, sorry, Karen's, new toy so I bought a book called "Elementary Amiga Basic" and sat down to learn. Hah! That didn't last too long. Nosing past the Record section in Virgin one weekend I spotted the King's Quest Triple Pack on offer. Spellbound by the box graphics my flexible friend, still bowing under the weight of the recent disk drive and monitor purchase, and I bought King's Quest 1, 2 & 3. Never being one to read manuals unless absolutely forced to I played KQ1 for hours and hours without realising there was a save game feature. Each time I slavishly went through all the rigmarole of regaining my previous position until it dawned that there must be a better way! I was too thick in those days to write down anything I'd done and mapping was still a distant milestone too. I got stuck of course, like I'd eat the carrot instead of using it on the goat, frustratingly often. I pondered what to do. Magazines seemed to take so long to reply. ACE magazine had a helpline section and I ended up writing to a very helpful chap in Stoke-on-Trent, I think it was Bruce Marshal who some of you may know. I was so embarrassed at the time to be playing what I thought was a child's game that I wrote in my daughter's name. I couldn't wait to open the envelope when it appeared, well, I felt like a child - you know - all thrilled and full of anticipation for what would happen on screen once I'd entered the correct responses. I knew then that I was hooked. My Amiga Basic manual was permanently filed. A promotion in my job at work (downsizing and recession were words that hadn't been discovered by Industry gurus then) enabled me to fund an extension at the back of my garage to house my precious computer and an organ for my daughter (well, she had to have something to do whilst I pinched her computer time, happily she's now on grade 7 and doing fine). Shelves were erected for game boxes and disks galore. After the King's Quest games I played a series of adventures from Icon Simulations - Deja Vu 1 & 2, Shadowgate and Uninvited. These were great fun and are still around today, recently being re-released for the Apple Mac. The first RPG I played was a cracker - "Questron II". A great mix of map wandering, single level buildings and multi-level dungeons, AND all that gambling to acquire cash. Next I played "Faery Tale" whose scrolling has only just been equalled by Amberstar. I'll never forget the wonderful soothing music in the end sequence where you have to follow the triangle, circle and square. As usual with Adventurers it was late at night and the atmosphere, coupled with the knowledge that I was near the end, was fabulous. But I'd guess it was "Dungeon Master" that finally persuaded me to concentrate my computing activity into CRPGs. Real time combat plus characters to nurture and develop. All that mapping to do whilst wondering just what that clanking noise was round the next corridor, The utter delight when a promotion was achieved and the way Fireballs grew ever larger the more powerful the characters became. Absolute magic. Just to expand this section a little. I used to buy about six Amiga magazines a month in a desperate search for Clues and Hints 'n Tips. Eventually I discovered "Spellbreaker" via the Special Reserve mag, Official Secrets, and of course "Adventure Probe" a little after that. The problem, for me, with them both was the concentration on 8 bit text adventure games. It was only after Spellbreaker folded (glad to know Mike Brailsford's on the mend) due to the ill health of its Editor, that I subscribed to SynTax. A major reason for this was an excellent tip that Sue had sent into Spellbreaker for Dungeon Master - stick on Level 4, said she, and build those characters up, there's food aplenty and you can close doors to rest. I slayed Pink Worms and Rock Monsters for a week or so and never looked back. Needless to say I was suitably impressed, and still am, by SynTax's Editor and the magazine's content. Looking back over the last few years at my newly acquired hobby I am of a mind to wonder what my life would have been like if computers had been around when I was a lad. Would I be all pale and wan from incessant playing of RPGs? Would my bachelor days have been considerably extended by replacing the old "I'm washing my hair tonight" with "I've just got to get my characters up a level"? Would my taste for Murphys' Stout be replaced by shots of mead and regenerative potions and so on? Alas until the ultimate RPG format of all appears - Virtual Time Travel - we shall never know! @~More 'How I Got Started' articles next issue! - o -