BETTY CARLSON'S BIG DATE
     A text adventure by Betty Carlson / Dave Malmberg
        Available on SynTax disk PCPD 167 / STPD 262

                    Review by Bev Truter

Big Date is another elderly text adventure, ported by Dave
Malmberg into AGT from an earlier LADS game by Betty Carlson. In
its AGT incarnation the game was unfinishable as one of the items
you need to collect for your night out is a bottle of perfume,
which didn't exist as a noun in the data file. So I took the
liberty of fixing it and embellishing it a wee bit, so now you
*can* win the game. Despite being programmed some time in the
eighties with what I think was the very first version of AGT
(1.16), Big Date has aged very well. In comparison with other
ported games of a similar vintage (e.g.  "African Adventure") Big
Date looks marvellous; and it would be grossly unfair to compare
it to any recently written text games in TADS and Inform. So if
you play Big Date accept it for what it is - a fairly good example
of what the early versions of AGT could produce.

In Big Date you play the role of Betty Carlson, trying frantically
to get ready to go out on a date with your boss. You must collect
all the items you'll need for your big night out - e.g. lipstick,
earrings, perfume - and since you have three children some of the
items may be scattered about your house and garden, and difficult
to find. One bit of finery is broken, and will need to be repaired
before you can use it. There are 12 bits and pieces to find
altogether before you can start preparing for your date, and you
have to return to your bedroom with all 12 objects to win the
game.

Size-wise Big Date is fairly small (35 locations) and you'd
probably play it through from start to finish in a couple of
hours. The total score is 190 points, with each item you need for
your date worth 10 points. I found the plot of Big Date
entertaining - scurrying about searching for bits of lost clothing
and make-up certainly made a change from hunting for gold ingots,
swords, coins, etc., which seemed to be the standard sort of fare
to track down in many text games of yesteryear.

Finding the 3 items necessary to repair my necklace proved the
biggest challenge, and finding another item of jewellery wasn't
all that easy either; but the remaining 10 items shouldn't prove
too hard to discover. Although Big Date couldn't by any stretch of
the imagination be described as one of the "great" games to play,
it's still amusing and interesting enough to provide a bit of a
challenge and some entertainment.











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