My father was a student at University of Chicago in the late 1970s early 1980s and he would let me logon and play an adventure game that started with “You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building.” I want to say the total points you could get was somewhere in the 700s and it had a Leprechaun that would yell “Fnord” which was another magic word like ‘xyzzy’ or ‘plugh’. I remember the bird cage had soiled papers that were really a document that you could use get by an orc after riding in a helicopter.
I have looked for this version but never been able to find it. Does anyone know if a version like this is available? I was so close to solving the whole game but could not get by a swarm of mosquitoes as they would “make me look like a pincushion”.
There’s a branch of the Adventure family tree that starts with a version created by David Long at the University of Chicago in 1979, so it’s certainly possible that this is the one you played. Long released a 501 point version (which he called Adventure 5), this was then updated by a Doug McDonald to create a 551 point Adventure 6. This is the most widely available version of the game that’s derived from Long’s work. You can play it online here: Adventure 6
It’s known that Long also made a 751 point version of his Adventure variant, which was accessible on Compuserve in the early 1980s. This version now sadly seems to be lost.
The 751 point version really sounds like the one I played. 751 really sounds familiar now that you mention it. I am going through the 551 point version now but it does not have the few aspects I mentioned before. Too bad, as that 751 version was pretty exceptional…
I believe this solution can also be found on PC-SIG Library Disk 539, which makes me wonder whether it was more widely available in the early days of the PC or even available on the PC itself. Probably not, but you never know.
Circa 1982–1984, CompuServe’s catalog contained an advertisement offering maps of “Adventure”, both the 350-point version (17x25 inches; $2.95) and the 751-point version (23x35 inches; $4.98). Jason Scott reports that the 350-point poster was drawn by Dennis Donovan in 1981.
The post has high-res scans of the Adv751 map, but nothing about the Adv350 map. I can’t find any trace of it online except a small photo here.
Does anybody have a better source for the Donovan Adv350 map?
