The Internet Archive seems to have a working 2021 snapshot, for what it’s worth.
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Episode 19 is out. When Dr. Jonathan Partington was on Ep 16, he recommended we play Monsters of Murdac. So we have.
We also explored the SAM Coupé Adventure Club disk #1, and stumbled into playing… sigh… Behind Closed Doors.
We also try to apologize to Amstrad PCW enthusiasts and probably have made some SAM Coupé types upset as well.
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Actual footage of Ben Collier playing Behind Closed Doors:
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Some misguided individual has had a go at porting Behind Closed Doors to the BBC Micro here. Probably had too much time on his hands.
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As a SAM Coupé owner, both now and back in the day when it originally came out… as well as the reviews editor of The Sam Adventure Club magazine… I thought I should probably give the first section of this a listen to and respond as appropriate! 
Yes, the SAM was probably about as bad an idea as the C65was … although I loved it at the time and it’s certainly paid off in monetary value for anyone who kept hold of either of those machines!
With the lack of very little real, significant professionally-released commercial software, it was down to us SAM owners to produce games and utilities for the little wedge-shaped micro. As you suspected, there was a whole collection of different SAM disk (and paper) magazines out there and throughout the history of the SCAC disk we used various different “article” viewers, many of which were shared between the various magazines.
One of the advantages of producing a disk magazine was the fact we could give away games on the disk. These were all fully-licensed from the homegrown publishers of the day, such as Zenobi, Compass and The Guild, and were mostly ZX Spectrum games. Even as a SAM owner I would find getting them to load on real hardware today hard but anyone who was a SAM owner at the time knew exactly how to load Spectrum games into their SAMs and had the required emulators to hand; usually with a copy of the Spectrum ROM to load in to ensure maximum compatibility.
As time went on we included more of the actual tools on the disk so the games could be launched from the menus directly and even developed routines that would work with ZX Spectrum games to allow them to access elements of the SAM itself; such as allowing to users to change fonts & colours on the fly, save to disk, and even (in cases such as The Hermitage) load in additional graphics to display alongside the game.
It wasn’t all about ZX Spectrum games, though… the SAM did have its own small range of specific text adventures. Colin Jordan’s The Famous Five was perhaps the most well-known of these (I actually didn’t play it myself!) and he also developed the sadly underutilised Sam Adventure System. SAM had a unlicensed version of CP/M called ProDOS which allowed a whole world of text adventures, including Infocom’s, to be played on the machine.
As for poor Behind Closed Doors! The game was originally a free B-side on the back of John’s other releases, so probably should be viewed in that manner! It did become incredibly popular though, largely due to its inclusion on some commercial magazine covertapes. For many Speccy arcade gamers it was the only ZX Spectrum text adventure they ever played and is very fondly remembered… usually for its responses to random comments. I can understand how it would appear to a modern audience, though. John’s games were always a little obtuse in places, especially with the restrictions of the two word and four character parser of the Quill, but players at the time were probably more attuned to his idiosyncrasies.
Although I’d recommend loading the SCAC disks into Sim Coupe to view them; if people want to nose at the contents, without emulation, I’ve popped up the text from the first two issues here (Sam Adventure Club - Issue 1), here (Sam Adventure Club - Issue 2) and here ( Sam Adventure Club - Issue 3).
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I’ve added the browser-readable link to SCAC #1 to the show notes, we’ll keep it in mind when we go back to the series. And thank you for the other historical context! Running the image definitely felt like a thing that users would more-or-less easily know how to do but seems obtuse to an outsider.
Thank you for the trip down memory lane - I played Monsters of Murdac (on a real Amstrad PCW but no hard feelings) as teenager. I never did complete the game but I had fun with the wacky environment despite feeling that the first puzzle (where you have to make 4 specific actions right from the first turn of the game) was very unfair. I think your supposition that it was designed to be solved by a group of people in a computer lab is right on the money.
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Note that I shan’t be subscribing to Ben’s toilet-adventure-themed spinoff podcast.
-Wade
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Episode 20 with The Mask of the Sun and Valkyrie 17 is out: two games which, had they been adapted into films after release, would have starred Martin Sheen.
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And to celebrate one full year of this quirky narrowcasting, the hosts all assemble for a game of skill and the most coveted prize of all: being dubbed the “Seven of Nine” of the troupe.
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You should all listen to the anniversary Chatisode to find out how everyone thought I was Nick Montfort at a party in Soviet Russia circa 2012 (sic).
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Re: Chatisode questions to listeners (e.g. me)
I’m catching up on the podcast, listening to episodes in a mood-based order. So I will be listening to Valhalla, which I know nothing about. I just haven’t yet. It’s not unpopular because of me 
Re: Where to go? Like any band you find you like, you start by liking what you first heard. I like hearing about 8-bit-platform adventure games with typing. I particularly dislike King’s/Police Quest etc., but that’s just me. I’d be less interested in non-typing games, but paradoxically, equally interested in 16-bit microcomputer games if they’re still driven by typing.
The podcast I’ve listened to the most is The Hysteria Continues, which is about slasher films. They’ve reached episode 328 after 14 years. (Yes, the implication that there are at least 328 slasher films to talk about is correct.) To keep themselves fresh, they go sideways every now and then. Sometimes the hosts or listeners nominate slasher-adjacent films. These can be anything from The Terminator to 1970s giallo. I’m sure you can do the same kind of thing.
This podcast is now my main listen along with HC and Write Now With Scrivener, so thanks again.
-Wade
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We take on two comic book-inspired productions in Episode 22. Questprobe: Spider-Man shows us the Scott Adams empire in its final days, turning some things on their head while still basically hunting for treasure, while Redhawk tries to merge genres with a three-panel comic display generated by player input. Also featuring a look at the abandoned Questprobe: X-Men game.
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I’m enjoying your episodes a lot, though in a very different order than intended. 
Keep up the good work
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There’s no real linear story or character development to speak of, other than Ben offending niche groups and delighting in the playing of toilet games.
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Ben also seems to delight in randomly kissing NPCs, and getting offended when NPCs suddenly come on to him, so Text Adventure Smooching is a Land Of Contrasts…
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Three Sherlock Holmes text adventure games needed an expert to carry the load, so we brought in Sherlockian playwright Christian Neuhaus to help settle the score.
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Peter Golden, author of Sherlock Holmes: Another Bow and other “Living Literature” text adventures for Bantam/Imagic, talks with us on the latest episode of The Retro Adventurers. (He’d also like a chat with Firebird about royalties…) Episode 24 - A Conversation with Peter Golden | The Retro Adventurers
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Magazine Roundup #2 is out. It heavily features English/Welsh horror at North American computer game list prices of the early 1980s!
Tim Gilberts joins Jason & Dave to explore text adventure coverage and more in Personal Computer Games, Computer Gaming World, Softline (Tron cover story!) and the Trillium newsletter. Available now on all major podcast platforms.
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I finished Magazine Roundup #1 episode a couple of days ago. I didn’t know what it would be or be like in advance, so afterwards, having liked it a lot, I thought I should come and say ‘I liked magazine roundup #1 a lot’. So the news of a new one is welcome.
-Wade
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