Missed Classic 131: Sherwood Forest (1982) - Introduction

Written by Michael

Back in the early years of graphic adventure gaming, there were many releases of games that were often no more than a disk and a paper in a plastic baggie on a spinner rack at the local computer shop.  There’s so many stories of the varied quality of these games.  That’s the history of the predecessor to Ultima and also the first release of Mystery House.   It’ll be fun to explore some of the games of that time.  

My choice today was packaged a little better than that.  As best I can tell, it was a professionally-printed cardboard folder holding the single disk and a double-sided instruction card.  The game was Sherwood Forest, a 1982 release from Phoenix Software, Inc., of absolutely no relation to the then-growing Phoenix Technologies, responsible for the BIOS in many early IBM PC clones that helped make MS-DOS a standard and Bill Gates very, very rich.

Veil of Darkness - A Good Ol' Coffin Hunt

Written by Zenic Reverie

A small correction from my last post. The Rowan staff is used to kill the Will-o-wisps, while the zombies are damaged only by the silver sword. Also, I thought I had killed Andrei to gain a crystal, but when I loaded the game up he was still alive. I attempted to kill him and realized why I didn't save, the disease zombies give is devastating. It drains continuously increasing damage, isn't cured by the gypsy woman, and I haven't found a cure for it yet. I'm not sure where I gained that crystal, but Andrei has a diamond specifically.

The machete I found by the plane proved the bane of these plant monsters.

Unlike the zombie's disease, the poison from the topiary creatures does get removed when healing at the gypsy camp. I also had many herbs that cure it, but I was hoarding them while I could make the trek back to camp. Only once I was deeper into the maze did I resort to using the nasturtium to remove the green lipstick. I could easily take out two or three creatures before needing to retreat, and as the only creature in the maze it proved easy to navigate despite the name. I picked up some comfrey plant and garlic throughout the maze. The garlic was strung together into a necklace by Annabelle. She warned to keep it hidden, lest those sided with Kairn might upon seeing it be embolden to strike me down. The comfrey doesn't seem to have a use other than trading for coin.

Missed Classic 130 - Daughter of Serpents (1992) - Introduction

 Written by Vetinari

Daughter of Serpents is the second of the two games created by British developer Eldritch Games and based on the Cthulhu Mythos by H.P. Lovecraft, the first of which, The Hound of Shadow, was my first series of posts for this blog.

Chris Elliott and Richard Edwards are credited as authors also for Daughter as they were for Hound, but here they had contributions from at least six or seven other people, which may bode well for this game, at least in comparison to Hound where there were four persons credited in total.

Missed Classic: Beyond Zork - Won! And Final Rating

Written by Joe Pranevich

It was a bumpy ride and I took too many hints, but we have defeated Beyond Zork and can finally put it to rest. I am grateful to our community for the assistance! I was able to solve most of the rest of the game on my own, but as you will see, there were still a few places that caused me trouble. I ended the last post with Prince Foo of Pheebor’s helmet, finally retrieved from the far distant future with the help of our trusty time archway. We had to take a chocolate truffle, dip it into the Fountain of Youth, travel back in time to the battle where the prince died, hide the truffle in a ditch next to his body, travel forward in time thousands of years, and then dig it up with the help of a magical chocolate-sniffing ferret. When you write it out like that, it sounds perfectly normal, right? 

Stay turned to the very bottom of the post for questions and discussion on the future of the Infocom Marathon, especially with Return to Zork coming very soon in the 1993 cycle. Your input will be invaluable as I work out how I approach the coming months.

Missed Classic: The Hound of Shadow - Won (Plus Alternate Characters and Final Rating)

Written by Vetinari

After the poppycocks of the game wiping out the file for my character just because he had been devoured by an abomination from outside of space and time, I proceeded to create another character and play all through the game again until the end.

Not really. I just edited Sven's character file with Notepad by copying the values from one of the pre-generated characters.

So, back to Blythburgh church. This time I choose to meditate, emptying myself of all conscious thoughts. And then...