First adapted IF with female protagonist?

Here’s an adaptation of Alice in Wonderland by Magnetic Scrolls: https://msmemorial.if-legends.org/games.htm/wonder.php

1990’s way later than the other candidates here.

But a fine reminder that, wow, there’s so. much. carroll out there.

You may or may not know this already, and apologies if you do, but what you need is a Color Computer emulator, which is not necessarily the same emulator as those that emulate the Tandy TRS-80 models I, III, and/or IV. Radio Shack/Tandy reused their existing TRS-80 monniker from their existing line of (for the time) higher-end computers, but the Model I and successors (which ran a series of custom DOS-like operating system on a Z80 processor) were not particularly similar to the Color Computer line (which ran a DOS-like operating system licensed from Microsoft on a Motorola 6809 processor). I have seen emulators that emulate both systems, but it’s not necessarily the case.

Radio Shack/Tandy, never a company to let a dead horse peacefully without being flogged, used the TRS-80 label to label other unreleated computing products, as well: for instance, the TRS-80 Model II was part of yet another line of computers, not compatible with the model I (though models III and IV were model I-compatible to at least some extent), and succeeded by the compatible-with-the-model-II models 12, 16, and I forget what-all else, none of which was compatible with Model I, III, or IV.

That being said, if you don’t find a Mac emulator for the CoCo system that works for you, I have had good luck running VCC under Wine on Linux. :slight_smile:

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Mucho thanks!

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I know this only because my own family was a Color Computer family when I was very small and people would occasionally gift us software that I couldn’t run. :smiley:

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There is “Alien Adventure” from SoftSide Publications. You’re playing Ripley right after the events of the first Alien movie. I doubt this was properly licensed. My guess is that in 1981, nobody cared anyway.

It was adventure #2 in the SoftSide Adventure of the Month Club subscription service. It was released in July 1981 and first advertised in SoftSide magazine, issue 19, vol. 4, no. 10, July 1981, p. 64.

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Interesting, but is she ever named? From what I can dig up on my phone it doesn’t appear she is, so this might be in Mad Venture asterisk-land.

I wonder if there might have been anything early on in the type in BASIC listings format? Though female protagonists are particularly rare.

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As far as I remember she is not named in the game itself. In this particular case though I personally would let that count because it’s pretty clear it is her. The events are set directly after the first alien movie which is hinted very obvious in the adventure. Even the cat is there when you wake up in your hypersleep-pod.

Part of the exercise is tracking down the first game willing to say (For example) “yup, this is a game starring a lady named Ellen.”

Looks like it’s issue #34. And that said, the hairstyle in the Alien Adventure ad sure projects “it’s circa 1980, and I’m a lady,” so I’m slowly plucking the petals off this asterisk…

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The predecessor to Mad Venture is Palace in Thunderland (also 1981).

(oddly enough, the next game I’ve got on my Renga in Blue queue is alien adventure, as the follow-up to arabian adventure)

Not strictly relevant as this was a choice of a later artist, but I should point out the Atari 48K version of The Count (1979) has a female protagonist on the cover.

Both Book of Adventure Games and this Palace walkthrough call Mad Venture the earlier game. But neither cover says much of anything about the PC.

And, yeah, a S.A.G.A. cover is too little too late in this sweepstakes (no vampire pun intended, probably.) Unlicensed-But-Advertised Ellen Ripley still in the running.

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Double checked – it does look like the Thunderland trademark got filed later. Huh. I guess I’ll have to switch that in my database.

The only genderlocked protagonist I can think of from before 1980 is the male hero in Alderberan III, based off the Retief novels. It just wasn’t common for men or women.

Will o the Wisp and 1/6 of Six Micro Stories then did it (again male) in 1980. Very obscurely, Odyssey #2, Treasure Island by Joel Mick and James Taranto has masterbation as a verb and implies a male character in the process, but that’s incredibly easy to miss.

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City Adventure from 1980 is also genderlocked, I think… unless it’s just that you have a girlfriend and it’s technically possible that the PC is female nevertheless.

Also from 1980, it looks to me as though In search of Dr. Livingston genders the protagonist male through a pronoun in the book at the beginning?

Oo, good catch on the Livingston book. (Although that’s technically a little ambiguous if it’s meant to be literally you – that whole game is just odd in terms of character perspective.)

City Adventure technically only genderlocks the girlfriend (although I’m pretty sure based on the authors they mean a male main character in particular).

So, does this make Retief the first named protagonist in any computer game from adapted source material?

(With some sort of asterisk for the earlier appearance of James T. Kirk in Trek games, I suppose…)

I think so?

We’ve got Hammurabi as the named main character earlier, but it isn’t named off anything in particular.

HIGHNOON (1970) has the player face off against Black Bart but it also doesn’t seem to be a particular adaptation, and the PC is not named.

Okay, here’s one to beat them all so far…I think.

‘Dog Star Adventure’ by Lance Micklus was published by TSE/Softside for the TRS-80 in 1979 and featured Princess Leya of Star Wars fame. The misspelling of Princess Leia may have been intentional or may have been accidental.

This was later published as a BASIC type-in listing in SoftSide, vol. 1, no. 8, May 1979, pp. 8–15, 17-23 (reputedly the first ever type-in adventure) and ‘The Captain 80 book of BASIC adventures’.

She is a named protagonist in the instructions and in the game.

So is this a contender?

It looks like the princess is an object, not the player character.

True, but in the 8-Bit Text Adventures Facebook page on this same topic, you classified this as ‘part-time protagonist’. Isn’t this what you meant? Anyway, they’re your rules, so you can classify it however you like.