Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

(Continued from my previous posts.)

I’ve taken off enough of a chunk of the game to give a report, including a brand-new-for-751 section, but I’m still not yet past the “fnord” rock.

From Arthur O’Dwyer’s family tree of variations of Adventure.

(Incidentally, I’m not sure on the naming of LONG0500 above. There’s text in the November ’78 game which claims the max score is 500 yet typing SCORE says outright the max score is 501. Also, the commercial version of the game has been rescued off old CompuServe drives and likely should be added as another node off of LONG0751.)

I’ve picked up a few new readers recently, so now is a good time to re-explain my verb list. Verbs marked in green are understood by the game, unmarked verbs are not understood at all.

I don’t do this with every old game I play, but it helps with the particularly ornery ones. I typed every single verb in my standard list (see above) and checked if the verb was understood by the parser or not. (SWIM is understood only to say you aren’t able to swim, so I gave it a different color.)

The process looks like this:

STAB

Mumble? STAB?

HOLD

I don’t understand the word HOLD.

PLAY

Play what?

COOK

I don’t understand the word COOK.

Fortunately, there are two and only two well-defined “I don’t understand that word” prompts so there’s no ambiguity (I’ve played games where I’ve had to either outfox the parser or just give up).

For games with a low vocabulary count, this can help fish out the one unusual phrase a game might need early; even when the density is higher (like here) making the list can help suss out potential issues. For example, RUB is in even though it tends not to be used in Adventure variants (Scott Adams Adventureland, yes) so I need to remember to test it if an object seems like a magical candidate. BUILD is particularly worrisome because it means there’s likely some object that is not previously named that the player will be able to make out of parts (usually it’s a ladder or a bridge). FOLLOW is also fairly rare and not normally one I use; I can think of at least one game where the verb was required to solve a puzzle. CRAWL, KICK, and PUNCH are also worth noting.

The list can help in a “negative space” sense as well; I can tell we are not making much conversation, and SAY only serves to speak a particular word out-loud in the sense of a “magic word”.

While I was busy doing this I also realized something about the safe in the starting building.

GET POSTER

Hidden behind the poster is a steel safe, embedded in the wall.

OPEN SAFE

How?

TURN COMBINATION

I don’t understand the word COMBINATI.

TURN DIAL

I can’t make any sense out of that.

(Only the first nine letters are being used, hence COMBINATI.) I realized the way the safe operated was likely going to be by entering individual numbers on their own lines (like typing “42” just on its own). Because of this, I wondered: would it be possible to brute force the puzzle?

4

I don’t understand the word 4.

5

I don’t understand the word 5.

6

Mumble? 6?

7

“Click.”

With this method I was able to get that 7-22-34 causes the safe to open. This is not randomized. (I did find out how to find the combination properly, but only later; I’ll save it for the end of my post.)

The safe door smoothly swings open.

The safe includes a “rare book” which has a “HISTORY OF ADVENTURE (ABRIDGED)” which is long-ish and I have the entire thing as a text file here. This is the document in Adventure 501 that says the max score is 500; in this version, it adds:

Most recent additions include the great Castle of Aldor, the Elephants’ Burial Ground, Leprechaun Rock and more.

You’ll get to see the outside of the Castle in this post. In addition, I wanted to highlight:

Thanks are owed to Roger Matus and David Feldman, both of U. of C., for several suggestions, including the Rainbow Room, the telephone booth and the fearsome Wumpus.

This means the Wumpus puzzle I mentioned admiring in my last post was actually thought of by one of the people playing the game! Mainframe games were not produced in voids and often had multiple contributors; this includes Woods (of classic 350-point Adventure). In the interview with Woods made for Jason Scott’s documentary GET LAMP, he talks about this process, citing (for example) the passage that was too narrow to carry your lamp as something that was suggested by a player.

Back to the safe, it turns out to be useful to access because just like the thief in Zork (I assume he was the inspiration for this) you can have any objects you drop in the building noodled with. I don’t know if there’s a limit or a specific algorithm but the game is hard enough as it is without having to worry about items wandering from where you expect them. I blame the “tiny little green man” that kicks you while outside at the grassy knoll.

A tiny little man dressed all in green runs straight at you, shouts “Phuce!”, aims a kick squarely at your kneecap, misses, and disappears into the forest.

Speaking of “phuce”–

You’re at top of steps in back of Thunder Hole.
The only way past the wall is through a tiny locked door.

UNLOCK DOOR WITH KEY

The tiny door is now unlocked.

PHUCE

You feel dizzy…Everything around you is spinning, expanding, growing larger…. Dear me! Is the cave bigger or are you smaller?
You are on a wide ledge, bounded on one side by a rock wall, and on the other by a sheer cliff. The only way past is through a large wrought-iron door.
The door is open.

GO EAST

You are on the western shore of an underground sea. The way west is through a wrought-iron door.
A high wooden structure of vast proportions extends into the water.
The door is open.

PHUCE

You are again overcome by a sickening vertigo, but this time everything is shrinking… I mean, you are growing. This is terribly confusing!
You are at the western tip of the Blue Grotto. A large lake almost covers the cavern floor, except for where you are standing. Small holes high in the rock wall to the east admit a dim light. The reflection of the light from the water suffuses the cavern with a hazy bluish glow.
There is a small wooden boat here.
The only way past the wall is through a tiny open door.

This is back at the door where you start by growing with mushrooms, shrinking with cake, but then finding a small door to still deal with. No real logic: I was just trying all the magic words everywhere. This breaks into the grotto I dropped a picture of last time.

Manifested!

To move the boat around you need to be holding the wooden pole; I solved this puzzle “passively” by having the pole in my inventory by accident when I tried to move around in the boat. There is a hint — the wooden pole has the text “_ R O _ _ O” suggesting the word GROTTO.

ENTER BOAT

You are now sitting in a small boat.

GO EAST

You have poled your boat across the calm water.
You are on the eastern shore of the Blue Grotto. An ascending tunnel disappears into the darkness to the SE.
There is a jewel-encrusted trident here!

As I was remembering, this links together two distinct parts of the map, the outside section to the area with the “rainbow” room and the Lost River and the “too bright” corridor and the “tongue of rock” with the whiskbroom sitting there and the bat cave with the shovel. I’ve done my best to show a merging of the two sections:

In one case I simply missed an exit (near where the passage got too bright, you can go north to a ledge and find a wooden casket). The grotto connects with the shore with the trident, as already shown, plus you can go:

a.) South to a “gravel beach” where there is an “apiary” with bees; I was able to bring the flowers I found outside and distract them, revealing a treasure (a honeycomb).

You are in the Apiary. The walls are covered with colorful, intricate, flower-like patterns of crystallized gypsum.
There is an active beehive nearby. The bees hum protectively around the hive.

THROW FLOWERS

The bees swarm over the fresh flowers, leaving the hive unguarded and revealing a sweet honeycomb.

The flowers have a “!” mark but that apparently isn’t good enough to determine if something is a treasure. If you GET TREASURE and it picks the thing up then you know it counts for points.

b.) North to a “dark cove” where you can walk up a “basin” to eventually find a fountain of wine. You can climb up at the fountain to get to the place where you can find the cask. I haven’t experimented with this section and if you need to do some fancy shenanigans to safely get the cask to the wine yet.

c.) North from the trident to a “Bubble Chamber” that has a green stone. Hang out at the green stone long enough and you’ll start to feel unhealthy.

You are at a high rock on the NE side of a watery chamber at the mouth of a small brook. An unknown gas bubbles up through the water from the chamber floor. A bluish light can be seen to the southwest.
Nearby, a strange, greenish stone is glowing brightly.

I remember (from 501) this is because the stone is radioactive and needed to be stored in a special container. I’m not sure if I’ve seen the container yet.

d.) Past the radioactive stone is a “Fairy Grotto”…

You are in the Fairy Grotto. All around you innumerable stalactites, arranged in immense colonnades, form elegant arches. On every side you hear the dripping of water, like the footsteps of a thousand fairies. A small stream runs from the SW corner. A bright glow emanates from the south side of the grotto, and a steep passage descends to the east.

…and if you try to keep going, you end up down a corridor that’s too cold to walk through. I think I have seen the right item for this elsewhere but I haven’t tested it yet (you’ll see later).

Going south from the Fairy Grotto you get stopped because it is “too bright”; a similar message happens elsewhere, so this is clearly the same place being linked two ways.

That’s enough of that section. Let’s hop up to the swamp. It relates to the cloth bag that was part of the “Witt Construction Company”.

You are at the edge of an open area of wet sand. The dense foliage appears to grow thinner towards the northeast. A small sign stuck in the muck reads: “Site of Proposed Municipal Parking Lot — D.M. Witt, Contractor.”
Foul smelling gasses bubble up through the wet sand.

I decided to put construction together with the construction site to see what would happen.

As the grey powder mixes with the bubbling quicksand, the whole mixture gradually thickens to a rocklike hardness.

This opens a brand new section; going north no longer sinks you in quicksand.

First comes a ravine:

You’re in an open field on the south side of a deep ravine. South and west the land is an almost impassible swamp. To the west the ravine merges with the swamp; some distance to the east it ends abruptly at the foot of a sheer granite cliff. A dry drainage pipe six inches in diameter emerges from the base of the cliff just above the floor of the ravine.

You can go in the ravine but you can’t get out again with anything being held. This is unfortunate since the ravine has a statue (a treasure).

You are at the east end of a steep ravine, near where a drainage pipe emerges from a rock wall.
There is an ancient marble statue lying here!

Following the ravine further leads to death; I don’t know if exit is about climbing up or about surviving the “wet and treacherous” area to the west.

Ignoring the ravine, you can also go east to find a “cliff” with vines; climbing the vines reveals a rope, and for a while I thought that was that. (Incidentally note: no TIE or UNTIE on the verb list. I tried playing the flute and that didn’t cause the rope to levitate, so I don’t know how to get it to work. I assume THROW makes it happen somewhere?)

I admit my next piece of insight came from the map, but given you could buy it from CompuServe to accompany your gameplay I just consider it a “supplement”. Notice there seems to be a hole/entrance next to the vines. It isn’t there in the regular description!

You are at the foot of a towering cliff. The sheer rock face is partially obscured by thick vines growing up the cliff.

MOVE VINES

Parting the vines reveals a narrow crack in the face of the cliff.

This allows winding around the ravine, getting a “four-leaf clover” on the other side. You can also walk farther and find a lair.

You are in the lair of Ralph the Giant Centipede. The air reeks with the stench of rotting bits of flesh. Giant centipedes, in general, are not partial to visitors.
A golden fleece is lying nearby!
A giant centipede is eyeing you with a none-too-friendly look.

You can take the fleece and it is rather like taking the cloak from the Wumpus. (Incidentally, I suspect either the cloak or fleece or both protect from cold — I just haven’t had a chance to test it yet.) The centipede starts to chase:

The incensed insect is in full gear now. If you don’t move quickly, his monstrous mandibles may masticate you into murky mush!

JUMP

You are at the bottom of the ravine with a broken head.

I’ll have to play around with this later. The game is large enough that it takes a while to get items together to test a theory. Since I had the boat access I grabbed the whiskbroom and shovel and tried using them in various places, getting a hit with the broom at the “dusty room” above the Complex Junction. (This is one of the standard Crowther/Woods rooms, just it has been repurposed. Adventure 448 had a similar puzzle.)

You are in a large room full of dusty rocks. There is a big hole in the floor. There are cracks everywhere, and a passage leading east.

BRUSH

Brushing the dust from one of the larger rocks reveals some carved characters.
In the rock is carved the inscription:

In Memoriam:
John Dillinger, Liberator of the Little Man.
Died: 7-22-34.

…and that’s how you figure out the safe code if you aren’t brute forcing it. Either that, or you take a wild jump based on the Dillinger Society poster and try the death date. I wonder if anyone did that to solve the puzzle!

I’m not really “stuck”, but I have a lot of moving parts to coordinate now and I’m trying to get through without burning too much lamp power. I have five theories about the area past the chapel (“fnord”) but I need to juggle objects to get them in the right spot in order to test any of them.

(Continued from my previous post.)

I’ve taken a fair chunk of the “501 content” down, although there’s a part that’s either different or I’m not remembering correctly. I’ve made a step into the 751-only-content but have only managed so far a step.

From Personal Computing, November 1979. CompuServe was still using the MicroNET name in 1980, but eventually they were just known as CompuServe.

To continue from last time, I had explored the outside and found the usual lamp, food, keys, bottle, and keys, but also a yellow tablet, matchbox, leather sack (empty), cloth sack (with grey powder), large wooden box (empty), mushrooms, flowers, and a wooden pole. The treasures in the building go in a safe (which I don’t have the combination for) and I was stopped by a three-headed perfectly ordinary dog (which we’ll get by later), and a salt marsh/swamp area included one exit I neglected to mention last time guarded by mosquitos:

The air ahead is filled with huge mosquitos, with stingers the size of icepicks! The mosquitos haven’t yet caught your scent. Do you really want to proceed?

YES

Once the mosquitos catch your scent, it’s all over very quickly. Sheesh! You have more holes in you than a pincushion!

Arthur O’Dwyer pointed out in the comments EXAMINE works on some objects, although it doesn’t work on many of them and sometimes it works inconsistently. If you’ve opened the cloth bag at the grate, you at least see the grey powder without spilling it…

It contains:
grey powder

…but you miss out entirely on a helpful message if you don’t examine the bag while it is closed.

The label on the bag reads: “Mix with care. Property of Witt Construction Company”.

This bag is not in Adventure 501 and I have no idea how to mix it yet. Since it is a new item I presume it applies to one of the new puzzles.

At least some of the content is still identical; you can still unlock a grate to find yourself in a long west-east passage, where along the way you can pick up a cage and a rod. (The cage has a “soiled paper” this time around with a “useless” deed for a silver mine.) The bird is along the way who is spooked by the rod and you need to have dropped the rod in order to capture the bird.

The Donovan map includes the fact you can drop from the “all alike” maze which has the pirate treasure down to the bird room.

The bird then can be released to chase off the snake, making the rest of the cave wide open. This seems like a good moment to step back to the big picture.

Above is my current attempt at a “meta-map” where the “new for 501” rooms are marked in blue and the “new for 751” part is marked in green. (Please note directions are approximate, and general areas are compressed into single rooms.) For example, from the snake, there’s one small offshoot to the northeast where you can find a throne room with a crown.

You are in the private chamber of the Mountain King. Hewn into the solid rock of the east wall of the chamber is an intricately-wrought throne of elven design. There is an exit to the west.

GO EAST

You are on the east side of the throne room. On the arm of the throne has been hung a sign which reads “Gone for the day: visiting sick snake. –M.K.”
An ancient crown of elven kings lies here!

While wearing the crown in 501, there’s a sword in a stone you can pull out; you can find it by finding a “whirlpool” (it’s just past the rusty door, if you know Crowther/Woods) and diving in:

You are dragged down, down, into the depths of the whirlpool. Just as you can no longer hold your breath, you are shot out over a waterfall into the shallow end of a large reservoir. Gasping and sputtering, you crawl weakly towards the shore….
You are on a narrow promontory at the foot of a waterfall, which spurts from an overhead hole in the rock wall and splashes into a large reservoir, sending up clouds of mist and spray.
There is a narrow chimney on the east side of the promontory. Through the thick white mist looms a polished marble slab, to which is affixed an enormous rusty iron anvil. In golden letters are written the words: “Whoso Pulleth Out This Sword of This Stone and Anvil, is Rightwise King-Born of All This Mountain.”
A gleaming sword is stuck into the anvil!

Returning back to the Mountain King area:

Two of the treasures have been swapped; the “silver bars” to the north are now a “delicate lyre” and the “diamonds” found near the fissure (the same one you wave the rod to make a bridge) are now a “silver horn”. Both are used to solve puzzles I’ll show later. (I didn’t remember them straight off the bat from 501, but the fact they were treasures changed into tools gave me suspicion.) The magical bridge from Crowther/Woods is technically optional (you can reach the other side via walking a different way) but because of the addition of the Wumpus the bridge is now needed.

You are on the east bank of a fissure slicing clear across the hall.
The mist is quite thick here, and the fissure is too wide to jump.

WAVE ROD

A crystal bridge now spans the fissure.

GO WEST

You are on the west side of the fissure in the Hall of Mists.
There is a silver horn here!
A crystal bridge now spans the fissure.

The Wumpus was my favorite puzzle from 501 and I didn’t even put the solution when I wrote about the game last time.

You’re in the Cloakroom.
A lovely velvet cloak lies partially buried under a pile of loose rocks.
In the corner, a Wumpus is sleeping peacefully.

Specifically, the Wumpus doesn’t wake up until you nab the cloak, at which point it starts chasing you. You can reach a fair number of places on the map in time, but the one you want to aim for is the crystal bridge.

Normal map, not meta-map. Trying to enter the Wumpus area will sometimes randomly drop you in a dead end.

While waving the rod makes the bridge appear, waving the rod again will make the bridge disappear. A formerly “optional” puzzle is repurposed here to now be meaningful.

You’re at west end of Hall of Mists.
The Wumpus is still on your trail! And he’s getting closer!!

GO EAST

You are on the west side of the fissure in the Hall of Mists.
The Wumpus is only a few steps behind you! All this exercise is making him veerrrrry hungry!
There is a silver horn here!
A crystal bridge now spans the fissure.

GO EAST

You’re on east bank of fissure.
The Wumpus is only a few steps behind you! All this exercise is making him veerrrrry hungry!
A crystal bridge now spans the fissure.

WAVE ROD

The crystal bridge has vanished!

As the bridge disappears, the Wumpus scrambles frantically to reach your side of the fissure. He misses by inches, and with a horrible shriek plunges to his death in the depths of the fissure!

(If you aren’t familiar with the Wumpus, I give the history in my Before Adventure series. This is the most notable appearance of the Wumpus in a proper adventure game from this era.)

Some parts are near-identical but still with a change; for example, the long sequence with the troll-chasm-bear normally has the bear appeased with the food in Adventure 350, but this was changed for Adventure 501. This is one puzzle where I forgot what the solution is (I have a suspicion but I haven’t been able to test it yet).

Near the troll bridge entrance is a completely different branch which leads to new rooms starting with “Dante’s Rest”.

You’re at Dante’s Rest, on the north side of a yawning dark chasm. A passage continues west along the chasm’s edge. A decrepit natural bridge spans the chasm. A message scrawled into the rock wall reads: “Bridge out of repair. Maximum load: 35 Foonts.”

GO SOUTH

The bridge shakes as you cross. Large hunks of clay and rock near the edge break off and hurtle far down into the chasm. Several of the cracks on the bridge surface widen perceptibly.
You’re at the Devil’s Chair, a large crystallization shaped like a seat, at the edge of a black abyss. You can’t see the bottom.
An upward path leads away from the abyss.
A decrepit natural bridge spans the chasm. A message scrawled into the rock wall reads: “Bridge out of repair. Maximum load: 35 Foonts.”

I have not tested if there’s a number-of-passes through limit; there certainly is a weight limit. There’s a magic item that allows teleportation so I haven’t needed to pass through more than once.

Just up from the “Devil’s Chair” is a “Rotunda” with a telephone booth; the telephone is ringing. Try to go into the booth and a gnome will jump in before you. (I mentioned this puzzle in my writeup on 501, but I neglected to explain how it gets resolved and I don’t remember. D’oh. I used to do much more skipping around in ye olden days of the blog.) To the east of the rotunda is a brand new room (I think, at least it didn’t make my 501 map) with a Conservatory and a flute.

You’re in the Rotunda. Corridors radiate in all directions. There is a telephone booth standing against the north wall. The telephone booth is empty. The phone is ringing.
Nearby is a small plastic card.

GO EAST

You are in the Conservatory, whence the gnomes often repair to relax with a little music. On one side of the room is an old upright piano.
A delicate silver flute is lying nearby.

The card is a “MERKIN EXPRESS CARD” and does not count as a treasure and is new for 751 along with the flute. I don’t know what either is for yet. Just to compare, here’s the scene from 501:

You’re in Rotunda.

The telephone booth is empty. The phone is ringing.

ENTER BOOTH

You are standing in a telephone booth at the side of a large chamber. Hung on the wall is a banged-up pay telephone of ancient design.

The phone is ringing.

ANSWER PHONE

No one replies. The line goes dead with a faint “Click”.

I don’t know if the change in events suggests a change in how the phone operates (and if there’s a puzzle now that wasn’t here before).

The path leads farther past a “star sapphire” (just a treasure) and into an area I’ll call the Lost River section.

You land from the passage at a “Tongue of Rock” (the whiskbroom was in 501, but again I don’t remember what it was for)…

You are in a level E/W passage partially blocked by an overhanging tongue of rock. A steep scramble would take you up over the tongue, whence continues an upward crawl. There is a small hole in the north wall of the passage.
There is a small whiskbroom here.

….and to the west of here you can pass by a Bat Cave with a shovel, finally ending at a Blue Grotto with a trident; rather, the trident, the one that normally is placed elsewhere and is used to open a clam.

You are on the eastern shore of the Blue Grotto. An ascending tunnel disappears into the darkness to the SE.
There is a jewel-encrusted trident here!

From the Tongue of Rock you can proceed down to a colorfully described Green Lake Room…

You are in a low, wide room below another chamber. A small green pond fills the center of the room. The lake is apparently spring-fed. There is a narrow passage to the north.
A larger passage continues west.

…followed by a Rainbow Room; going any farther west results in it being too bright to make further progress.

You are in a very tall chamber whose walls are comprised of many different rock strata. Layers of red and yellow sandstone intertwine with bright bands of calcareous limestone in a rainbow-like profusion of color. The rainbow effect is so real, you are almost tempted to look for a pot of gold! Poised far over your head, a gigantic slab, wedged tightly between the north and south walls, forms a natural bridge across the roof of the chamber.

GO WEST

You are following a yellow sandstone path. There is a glow to the west.

GO WEST

You go a short way down the bright passage, but the light grows to blinding intensity. You can’t continue.

You can take one more passage north to the side of a river…

You are standing on a large flat rock table at the western end of Lost River Canyon. Beneath your feet, the river disappears amidst foam and spray into a large sinkhole. A gentle path leads east along the river’s south shore. Another leads sharply upward along the river’s north side.

…but let’s leave this area entirely, and jump back upstairs to show off getting by the dog.

You are in a dimly lit passage behind Thunder Hole. Etched into the rock wall are the ominous words:

You are approaching the River Styx.
Lasciate Ogni Speranza Voi Ch’Entrate.

A hideous black dog bares his teeth and growls at your approach.

PLAY LYRE

The air fills with beautiful music. The dog gradually becomes less fierce, and after a short while he lies down by the side of the cavern and falls into a deep sleep.

GO EAST

You are at the River Styx, a narrow little stream cutting directly across the passageway. The edge of the stream is littered with sticks and other debris washed in by a recent rainfall. On the far side of the river, the passage continues east.

I flailed a bit (“GO EAST: How do you propose to cross the river?”) before I realized I could just jump.

JUMP OVER RIVER

You’re on the east side of the river’s sticks.

GO EAST

You are at the top of some arched steps. On one side is a blank wall with a tiny door at the base and a shelf overhead. On the other side a westward passage leads to the sea.
The only way past the wall is through a tiny locked door.

Snrk. From here, thinking of an Alice in Wonderland reference with the tiny door, I tried EAT MUSHROOMS. (Previously, the mushrooms did nothing, but if they were going to work anywhere, here seemed like the place.)

You are growing taller, expanding like a telescope! Just before your head strikes the top of the chamber, the mysterious process stops as suddenly as it began.
You are in a low cramped chamber at the back of a small cave.
There is a shelf in the rock wall at about the height of your shoulder.
There is a tiny brass key on the shelf.
There are some tiny cakes on the shelf.

The tiny key unlocks the door, and the tiny cakes cause you to return to normal size, but the issue is the door remains tiny! So I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be adding another step to my sequence somehow so I can be not just super-grown and normal but also shrunk. (I’m pretty sure this puzzle is in 501 as-is, and I’m annoyed at my past self that I didn’t just explain the solution.)

That’s one instrument used! Let’s take care of the horn next. We’re going back to a scene that’s pretty familiar in Crowther/Woods, where you find a clam and then open it with the trident.

Rather than bothering with the clam at all, though, we’re going up:

You’re in a large room carved out of sedimentary rock. The floor and walls are littered with bits of shells imbedded in the stone. A shallow passage proceeds downward, and a somewhat steeper one leads up. A low hands and knees passage enters from the south.
There is an enormous clam here with its shell tightly closed.

GO UP

You are in an arched hall. A coral passage once continued up and east from here, but is now blocked by debris. The air smells of sea water. Your footsteps echo hollowly throughout the chamber.

BLOW HORN

As the blast of the horn reverberates through the chamber, the seemingly solid rock wall crumbles away, revealing another room just beyond. The wall was most likely worn thin by an ancient watercourse which dried up just before completely wearing away the rock.
You are in an arched hall. The remnants of a now-plugged coral passage lie to the east. The north wall has partially crumbled, exposing a large connecting hole to another room.

This is all still in 501 territory; it leads to a path down to a chapel which is a dead end.

There’s some “ruby slippers” near the church that can be worn and utilized to teleport between the rainbow room and the bridge above it (which adjoins the chapel).

You are standing on a natural bridge far above the floor of a circular chamber whose walls are a rainbow of multi-colored rock. The bridge was formed eons ago by a huge slab which fell from the ceiling and is now jammed between the north and south walls of the chamber. There is a pair of ruby slippers here.

GET SLIPPERS

Taken.

WEAR SLIPPERS

Ok

CLICK HEELS

You are in a very tall chamber whose walls are comprised of many different rock strata. Layers of red and yellow sandstone intertwine with bright bands of calcareous limestone in a rainbow-like profusion of color. The rainbow effect is so real, you are almost tempted to look for a pot of gold! Poised far over your head, a gigantic slab, wedged tightly between the north and south walls, forms a natural bridge across the roof of the chamber.

The new thing is that there are some “brambles” to the east blocking the area.

You can take a candle from the chapel and the matchbox from the start of the game (not present in 501) in order to make a fire.

You’re at the east portal of the Gothic Cathedral.

A sudden draft has extinguished your match.
A NE passage is blocked by an impenetrable thicket of sharp thorny brambles.
Deep within the brambles is growing a perfect, blood-red rose!

BURN THICKET WITH CANDLE

The dry brambles immediately catch fire and disappear in a roar of flame.

Finally this gets to the main new area of the game! The thing I’ve been waiting years to reach… except….

You are in a dull N/S passage beside a tall black rock. On the rock is chisled the outline of a four-leafed clover, under which is the inscription: “Notice: This rock fabricated from ersatz materials.”
Smoke rings curl upward from the rock.

GO NORTH

As you approach the rock, an indistinct muttering sound arises from the general area of the rock. The only word you can hear clearly is “Fnord!”
You’re on grassy knoll.

Agh! Trying to say FNORD here just gets a “snickering sound”. I don’t know if this is just a matter of repetition or finding a new magic word or blindly throwing the axe and hitting whatever is hiding behind the rock or what, exactly. It seemed like a good place to pause, though.

Just to be clear, my main obstacles going forward are:

a.) the tiny door, where I can grow to grab a key and shrink again to normal but I don’t have a way of shrinking to tiny-door size

b.) the mosquitoes at the swamp

c.) the “fnord” rock

d.) being able to rescue that “perfect, blood-red rose” before lighting the brambles (this may help resolve problem c)

There’s always the possibility of something hidden, though. I’m pretty much giving myself free use of the map and it does seem like almost everything left that’s from 751 is past that rock.

I know all this is past the tiny door and I visited it in 501, I just need to make it here.

COME WITH ME TO COLOSSAL CAVE. WHERE MAGIC ABOUNDS AND TREASURES ARE FOUND. BID YOUR FINGERS FOLLOW YOUR COMMANDS AND I WILL BE YOUR EYES AND HANDS. YET BEWARE THE FIERY DRAGON, FOR HE KNOWS NOT WHETHER YOU ARE WIZARD OR SIMPLE CHARLATAN!

HOW BEST TO CONQUER COLOSSAL CAVE? WITH DARING AND SKILL … OH CLEVER KNAVE!

— Early 80s Adventure poster, from the CompuServe Incorporated Information Service Division

Adventure 751 has been, by my reckoning, the most sought-after variation of Crowther/Woods Adventure. It was generally available on the online portal CompuServe from nearly the beginning of the service and it disappeared when they shut down their games in the 90s. Arthur O’Dwyer started a web page in 2016 (with semi-regular updates!) dedicated to hunting down a copy.

To finish off a wild 2025 in game preservation, Arthur O’Dwyer announced the game has been found (by LanHawk, a regular amongst the comments here) and is playable.

Via eBay. You could purchase this from CompuServe. I love how they tried to contextualize this like a swords-and-sandals epic, with a goblin-esque dwarf and the trident used as a weapon. It still includes the bird-in-cage, though!

In 1958, the Electrical Engineering Department of the University of Arizona in Tucson received a donation of equipment in order to form an Analog Computer Laboratory. Analog computers deal with full electrical signals rather than 0s and 1s (think music on record vs. on computer). These could do particular computations (like differential equations) faster than digital devices of the time.

An EAI TR-20 from eBay. $7,495.00 or best offer. As the ad copy notes, “It offers up to 20 amplifiers plus components for addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, integration and generation of powers, roots, logs, antilogs, sine, cosine and arbitrary functions — in one cabinet, and available to one patch panel.”

The University of Arizona’s lab was more cobbled-together than the for-sale-new device depicted above, as they made “two small but flexible computers complete with homemade removable patchboards” to start with but quite quickly changed mission to be a hybrid laboratory. By hybrid, I don’t mean just having digital and analog computers side-by-side, but trying to make computers that use both digital and analog components. Their name officially became The University of Arizona Analog/Hybrid Computer Laboratory. Designs included the “ASTRAC I”, a “iterative differential analyzer”, “APE 1”, a “teaching aid in statistics” that followed a similar design, and an “ASTRAC II” which was now “solid state” and “ultra-fast” and was supported by both the Air Force and NASA.

ASTRAC II. Source: “All analog computing elements other than coefficient potentiometers plug directly into the rear of the shielded analog patchbay.”

(Warning: My next three paragraphs consolidate three different accounts which differ somewhat.)

Three of the students in the 1969-1970 school year were Alexander B. Trevor, John Goltz and Jeff Wilkins. The trio were discussing the possibility of starting a time-sharing company. This was a little late to the game; Dartmouth with General Electric had developed the concept in the early 60s (where a large computer could have its time split into many parts allowing for multiple computers connected; including remote connections Dartmouth had thousands) and by the time Trevor, Goltz, and Wilkins came to the idea there were other companies like Tymshare and National CSS involved.

A PDP-15 mini-computer which the lab supposedly had. Trevor claims 1969 but the machine didn’t come out until 1970.

Jeff Wilkins’s father-in-law, Harry Gard, Sr., was a co-founder of Golden United Life Insurance; at the time the insurance company was still getting their computing via other companies, but Gard was keen on Golden United having a computer of their own. The original intent was to buy a mini-computer like the PDP-15 but Goltz (who was working with Wilkins and doing the purchase through DEC) got a call that he could have a KA-10 for just “a little more” (one of the PDP-10s, a full mainframe rather than minicomputer). While Goltz was an engineer and not a salesperson, John Goltz managed to persuade the board of Golden United to part with the money for the upgrade. This enabled the computer to more feasibly do time-sharing with many customers.

After graduating Wilkins moved to Columbus (followed by Goltz; Trevor was drafted to the Army so didn’t join them until ’71) to be at Golden United’s new spin-off, CompuServe; Wilkins at the age of 27 became President. Their first developed product was LIDIS (Life Insurance Data Information System); there were plenty of life insurance companies in Columbus to sell to.

Jeff Wilkins, photo from himself via the Columbus Foundation.

The company had rapid success; by 1973 they moved to a new building, and by 1974 had not one but seven mainframes “and were using them not only to support a thriving time sharing business, but also to heat our office buildings.” CompuServe stayed with corporate clients, although Wilkins was alert to trends in personal computers; he hired his brother-in-law to track computer magazine news, given the fact most of the operations done by time-sharing could be done more easily with PCs.

One of those personal computers was the TRS-80, launching in 1977 as part of the “Trinity” with the Commodore PET and Apple II from the same year. The TRS-80 was sold through Radio Shack stores that were already well-established across the nation, but it was still difficult to move product when the concept of a personal computer was only a vague notion to many buyers. A Radio Shack manager in Columbus named Bill Louden bought one of the early models (serial model 10) as Radio Shack refused to give out demo units; his purchase became the only demo available in the Midwest and people wanting to experience a TRS-80 went specifically to Columbus, driving and even flying in.

Simultaneous to this, Wilkins was watching the new market for “modems” which connected personal computers to networks via the phone. He also had computers sitting idle by night (as businesses using them were running them during the day); since he already had the resources, it would be a straightforward matter to have a new commercial-facing venture.

Wilkins thus laid out in 1978 an idea for a new product based on European Videotex services. Videotex is its own rabbit hole that I’m not going to touch on much here; starting in the mid-70s there were experiments with turning televisions into networked services.

The important point here is that the “television as an appliance” thought process was being applied to make “computer as an appliance” and this would help interest computing to the masses. Wilkins launched a new service MicroNET (“to get microcomputer owners’ attention and suggest the power of the computer network”) and tapped the previously mentioned Midwest Computer Club for a “beta-test”.

The test service was launched for free; Bill Louden called it “a hacker’s dream” and a good way to sell modems (110 and 300 baud). Quoting Bill:

We had access to many of the DEC-10’s features, storage, and better processing power, but of most significance we had started using two programs: One was a store-and-forward messaging system, called Infoplex, which allowed us to share text message files with one another even if we were not online at the same time. The other was a modified version of a program that allowed a user to send a live one-line text message to the CompuServe system operator. Our version, modified by Russ Ranshaw of CompuServe, allowed us to send one-line live messages to each other if we saw one another online. We called it the SEND program.

It had all the regular offerings later associated with CompuServe, including games. Both Star Trek and Adventure were available (this is before Microsoft Adventure came out, so it was the original mainframe version). Eventually in the early 1979 a price structure was added: $9 startup, prime time use $12 per hour, non-prime time use $5 per hour, 300 baud more expensive as a “premium” service. Q2 revenues in 1979 were $4.2 million; this was almost a rounding error in the scheme of the business as a whole, but of course personal computers were about to hit the time-sharing companies with fatal blows.

A competitor, The Source, was launched in 1979 but “from scratch” by the entrepreneur William F. von Meister (that is, not piggybacking off an existing time-sharing business). Their main relevance to the story here is not only did they have games (the usual like Star Trek) they also tapped Dartmouth College to work on new games. (Remember these are being developed for mainframes or minicomputers, so we’re not talking about typical personal computer programmers! Hence work being drawn from colleges with access.)

I don’t have an official notice of solicitation — it may even have come via word of mouth — but CompuServe also must have had contact with mainframe/minicomputer sites in order to get their own games. A 1984 games catalog lists House of Banshi, which is simply Dungeon/Zork (“CompuServe’s rendition of the original game of ZORK.”) Dor Sageth from the catalog is another famous “lost game” which started life on an institutional computer (mentioned by Jason Scott back in 2011). Listed on page 2 is both “Original Adventure” (as the service launched with) and “New Adventure”.

In 1977, David Long went to the University of Chicago to work as a computer operator. The college had just bought two of the newest computers from DEC, the PDP-20. One was for general use by the college and the other was for specifically the Graduate School of Business; Long “tended to work 50-60 hours a week on GSB stuff”. 1977 was also the year the “standard” Crowther/Woods Adventure was finalized, and David Long was able to get a copy direct from the author:

Don was kind enough to transmit the source program to the present author in mid-1977.

As he notes, given his work schedule, and the time he spent with GSB affairs, “no one cared if I spent another 10-20 hours on Adventure”. He finished “Adventure 501” by November 1978:

You are inside a building, a well house for a large spring. Off to one side is a small pantry.

There is a shiny brass lamp nearby.

There is a leather sack here.

Taped to the wall is a faded poster.

READ POSTER

The poster has a picture of a thin man with a long white beard. He is wearing a high pointed cap embroidered with strange symbols, and he is pointing a finger at you. Below the picture are the words: “I want you!–To report all good ideas for extensions to this game to me without delay. Remember: ask not what ADVENTURE can do to you; ask what you can do for ADVENTURE.”

“A public service of the John Dillinger Died for You Society.”

A safe is hiding behind the poster. Found treasures get dropped in the safe rather than on the ground.

The John Dillinger Died For You Society was a spoof group made in 1966 at the University of Texas meant to parody Elvis fan groups and “Jesus Died For You” signs.

I’ve played Adventure 501 before; a version had been available for some time (with the mysterious addition of a spider, which isn’t Long’s). The archive LanHawk extracted also includes the authentic ’78 version of Adventure 501, so I was able to cross-check with what I already played.

Further expansions eventually led to a “version 6” in January of 1980, including a new area as well as an “improved syntax parser”. (More on the parser later.) An in game “billboard” gives version updates:

( 19-Jan-1980 ) Congratulations to Robert Silverman, the first adventurer to set foot in the Courtyard of Aldor’s Castle.

( 25-Feb-1980 ) Adventurers may now enter the Castle Keep, although construction continues within. Some scoring bugs have been fixed.

Who will be first to discover the secret of the black bird?

( 3-Mar-1980 ) There is a slight bug on the perfume. For full score, you must drop it somewhere, look, and take it again.

( 7-Mar-1980 ) 6.04 is released. Expansion of the castle continues — it is far from complete. Several unique new features and puzzles have recently been designed and are now being implemented.

The format of most hints has been altered. I hope you agree that the new hints are more in keeping with the flavor of the game.

The game I’m referring to as “Adventure 751” seems to have been entirely wrapped up by the end of the school year. Sometime before the end of the calendar year Long sold the game to CompuServe for “a thousand dollars”. (As they used the PDP-10/20 like Long did, no conversion work was needed and they could run the executable without compilation.) Long seems to have been somewhat protective of his source code so distribution past that point was relatively minimal, although he did give source copies of both 501 and 751 to the Illinois Institute of Technology. (See, comparatively: Woods and his regret freely sending out Adventure 350 to anyone who asked, making it so that when he wrote “v2.0” he was much more careful who had access.)

The parser is “improved” over both Adventure 350 and Adventure 501. There is some sense of trying to “outdo Zork”. (See relatedly: Warp bragging about its own system, and Synapse Software calling their system BTZ or “Better Than Zork”.) Quoting Long:

…Dungeon (Zork) and Adventure-6 were developed almost completely independently. The advanced parser, the object containment facility, and virtually all the game puzzles were designed and implemented prior to our receiving any version of Dungeon. With all due modesty (none), I will point out that Adventure’s containment facility is at least as powerful as Dungeon’s, if not more so, since Adventure’s facility permits searching for contained objects in open containers down to any desired level of containment. Further, the parser permits a few constructs not currently permitted in Dungeon (at least in the version we have at U.C.), such as permitting any number of objects (up to some limits imposed by compiled array sizes) to be specified following transitive verbs. In addition, Adventure’s parser can handle multiple verb constructs such as “GET AND THROW AXE” properly. Finally, Adventure’s parser is slightly better about doing the right things with the various applications of the group words “ALL” and “TREASURES”. A planned enhancement for Release 7 will permit such constructs as “PUSH ALL OF THE BUTTONS” or “TAKE BOTH SACKS”, etc.

GET AND THROW AXE is uncommon even in modern parsers. Trying to GET AND THROW BREAD in Savoir-Faire (2002) gets the response “You can’t see any such thing.”

Dennis Donovan (of CompuServe) made a map in November of 1980 which Arthur O’Dwyer scanned in high resolution with some image cleanup by James Lindell Dean, so I’m going to use it to illustrate the journey.

Arthur tested the build with a walkthrough that has been around for a while to confirm this is indeed the “real” Adventure 751; I’m going to play it normally. I am re-mapping the 501 content although I am allowing myself to look at my old posts if I need to; you can also squint at a blurry version of my 501 map where the blue rooms are extensions to Adventure 350.

You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully.

GO EAST

You’re in a flat circular clearing surrounded by dense forest. Not far away is a helicopter. Its engine is idling slowly. Several jac-booted Orcs are standing guard around the aircraft.

Going east normally enters the building. Unexpected! Trying to enter gets a message about needing a flight pass.

The building is still there, but you need to use the command IN to enter, and then can go IN again to get in farther.

You are inside a building, a well house for a large spring. Off to one side is a small storeroom.
There is a shiny brass lamp nearby.
There is a leather sack here.

Taped to the wall is a faded poster.
There is a small matchbox here.

IN

You’re in the caretaker’s storeroom.
A yellow pill-shaped tablet, as large as a doughnut, lies nearby.
There are some keys on the ground here.
There is food here.
There is a bottle of water here.

Helpfully, the leather sack works as a container; keep in mind this is not a two-word parser so to operate it you need to use PUT X IN SACK. In fact, it works with multiple items at once. That is…

PUT TABLET AND KEYS AND FOOD AND BOTTLE IN SACK

…will take care of scooping up all four.

Other than the helicopter pad being different, and a slightly different building layout, there’s a new object at the grate that goes into the cave:

You are in a 20-foot depression floored with bare dirt. Set into the dirt is a strong steel grate mounted in concrete. A dry streambed leads into the depression.
There is a large cloth bag lying nearby.
The grate is locked.

The cloth bag is full of grey powder and if you EMPTY BAG it will scatter all over the place and you won’t be able to pick it up again: “Grey powder has been strewn all about.” I assume this is a softlock, simply from checking what’s inside the bag. (Crowther/Woods really was polite when it came to softlocks. It had the vase breaking when you dropped it, ruining a treasure, but the structure of the game was such that getting all the treasures was an aspirational goal rather than a requirement for having a satisfying playthrough. The various extensions, including the one from Woods himself, often were not so careful. You could eat the food early in Crowther/Woods rather than give it to the appropriate creature, but there’s a built in expectation that EAT FOOD is going to remove it from the object list; just checking what’s inside a container doesn’t suggest such a drastic change.)

I’m not going to go underground at all during this session but rather stay outside. The forest, rather than being a method to steer the player back to the caves, includes a “billboard” (as seen earlier, also in the image above) and a castle in the distance.

You are in open forest, with a deep valley to one side. Not far off is a large billboard.

GO NORTH

You are standing behind a large billboard on a ridge above a deep valley. To the north, the forest gives way to dense swamp and then to open flatlands. Far beyond, the land rises sharply towards the impassible Misty Mountains. Nestled at the base of a distant cliff are the stone turrets of a tall white castle.

The outdoors keeps going. At least some of this area I recognize from 501, although it goes a little farther than that game did.

Going west of the building leads to a “dense forest” with some mushrooms…

You are in dense forest, with a hill to one side. The trees appear to thin out towards the north and east.
There are some oddly-colored mushrooms here.

GO WEST

You are at the high point of a wide grassy knoll, partially surrounded by dense forest. The land rises to the south and east, and drops off sharply to the north and west. The air smells of sea water.

…and a sandy beach. The beach includes a “large wooden box” (the box is empty) where you can go up to find an Ocean Vista with some flowers, the first treasure I’ve found.

You’re on sandy beach.
A large wooden box has washed up on the shore.

GO NORTH

You are at a jumble of large broken rocks and blackened shoals.
A gentle path leads up to the top of the nearby cliffs. A narrow treacherous path disappears among the rocks at the foot of the cliff.

GO UP

You are on a high cliff overlooking the sea. Far below the rolling breakers smash into a jumble of blackened shoals. The thunder of the surf is deafening.
There are some beautiful flowers here!

The “blackened shoals” are incidentally a University of Chicago in-joke created by a friend of Long’s (Eric Weber); it refers to the professors Black and Scholes who made a famous mathematical model for financial markets. There’s an entire hour-long documentary called Trillion Dollar Bet about it (“this solved the ancient problem of risk and return in the stock market”); it is blamed for more than one market crash, including Black Monday from 1987.

This is also the location I remembered something very cruel from Adventure 501 that carries over here. Original Crowther/Woods had a limited number of “random” exits that could sometimes go somewhere else (north goes to a different forest than the normal exit, for instance); other authors basing their games off Adventure sometimes ran with this (even affecting home games, like in Phantom’s Revenge). Going north from the shoals will sometimes go to the cliff already seen, and sometimes it will go to a new room altogether. Back when I played 501 I only found the new room by referring to the CompuServe map!

You’re at blackened shoals.

GO NORTH

You are at Thunder Hole, a funnel shaped cavern opening onto the sea. The noise of the surf pounding against the outer rocks of the cave is amplified by the peculiar shape of the cave, causing a thunder-like booming sound to reverberate throughout the cave. Outside, a narrow path leads south towards some large rocks.

GO EAST

You are in a dimly lit passage behind Thunder Hole. Etched into the rock wall are the ominous words:

You are approaching the River Styx.
Lasciate Ogni Speranza Voi Ch’Entrate.

A hideous black dog bares his teeth and growls at your approach.

I do not remember the method for getting by the dog. I assume I need to go underground first. (I’m pretty sure all of this is 501 territory, though.)

If instead of heading west to the beach you head north from the mushrooms/grassy knoll, you arrive at some “salt flats”.

You’re on grassy knoll.

A tiny little man dressed all in green runs straight at you, shouts “Phuce!”, aims a kick squarely at your kneecap, misses, and disappears into the forest.

GO NORTH

You are at the edge of a trackless salt marsh. Tall reeds obscure the view. In the mud is the partial word “-RO–O”. The missing letters have been washed away by the tide.
A wooden pole has been stuck in the mud here.

I’m not sure what the tiny man is about, yet. Saying phuce gets the response “nothing happens.”

The salt flats are a maze that lead up to a swamp which is just a continuation of the maze.

Notice there’s a.) two “dead end” rooms which aren’t really dead ends and b.) one “death exit” from one of the swamp rooms which just kills you for going a particular direction (“You’ve wandered into a quicksand pit and drowned.”). Neither of these are polite and neither of these are used in Crowther/Woods (you could die walking in the dark by falling in a pit, but this was well-telegraphed by the game).

You are at the edge of an open area of wet sand. The dense foliage appears to grow thinner towards the northeast. A small sign stuck in the muck reads: “Site of Proposed Municipal Parking Lot — D.M. Witt, Contractor.”
Foul smelling gasses bubble up through the wet sand.

This room has multiple death-exits, which is obnoxious given the restore-a-save procedure (where you need to decline resurrection, leave the game, restart the game, decline instructions, RESUME to load as save, confirm you are loading a save game, and then finally type what you named the save). I think this is all a dead end although I haven’t checked every exit as of yet (see: obnoxious restore-a-save procedure).

I believe from here I’ll need to plunge underground, so this seems like a good place to pause for now since I know that’s going to open things wide up. Happy 2026!

(If you still haven’t read it, be sure to check out Arthur O’Dwyer’s post; he is planning a follow-up which hacks a bit more at the data. Also thanks to Ethan Johnson for some source assistance.)