![]() These involve the practical difficulties of getting about in the 140 intricately interconnected rooms that make up Adventure‘s storyworld and returning all 15 treasures found therein to the wellhouse: managing the lamp’s limited power reserves, dealing with the limited carrying capacity of the player’s avatar, and, most of all, mapping, mapping, mapping. Perhaps Woods conceived of it as a reward of sorts for the persistent player who made it this far underground.Īnd what sort of challenges must a player who made it so far have overcome? Well, I divide them into three categories.įirst there are the logistical challenges - or, if you prefer, the emergent challenges. Oddly, this room has no practical function whatsoever. It’s often been compared with the descriptions of Mount Doom found in The Return of the King, but Woods, while admitting he had read Tolkien before working on Adventure, has denied using him as a conscious inspiration. ![]() It’s somehow hard to imagine Crowther writing that it’s a long way indeed from the humble wellhouse by the roadside in Kentucky at which the player began. A DARK, FOREBODING PASSAGE EXITS TO THE SOUTH. OWN, WHICH LENDS AN ADDITIONAL INFERNAL SPLENDOR TO THE ALREADY THE FAR RIGHT WALL IS AFLAME WITH AN INCANDESCENCE OF ITS THE RIGHT, AN IMMENSE GEYSER OF BLISTERING STEAM ERUPTS CONTINUOUSLYįROM A BARREN ISLAND IN THE CENTER OF A SULFUROUS LAKE, WHICH BUBBLES GORGE, AND PLUMMETS INTO A BOTTOMLESS PIT FAR OFF TO YOUR LEFT. AN IMMENSE RIVER OF FIREĬRASHES OUT FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE VOLCANO, BURNS ITS WAY THROUGH THE GORGE, FILLED WITH A BIZARRE CHAOS OF TORTURED ROCK WHICH SEEMS TO LIGHT INTO SINISTER APPARITIONS UPON THE WALLS. EMBEDDED IN THE JAGGED ROOF FAR OVERHEAD ARE MYRIAD TWISTEDįORMATIONS COMPOSED OF PURE WHITE ALABASTER, WHICH SCATTER THE MURKY THE TOUCH, AND THE THUNDERING OF THE VOLCANO DROWNS OUT ALL OTHER SPARKS OF ASH AND A HEAVY SMELL OF BRIMSTONE. THE GLOWING ROCK FILLS THEįARTHEST REACHES OF THE CAVERN WITH A BLOOD-RED GLARE, GIVING EVERY. OUT, CASCADING BACK DOWN INTO THE DEPTHS. FAR BELOW YOU IS ANĪCTIVE VOLCANO, FROM WHICH GREAT GOUTS OF MOLTEN LAVA COME SURGING See the response to rub: “RUBBING THE ELECTRIC LAMP IS NOT PARTICULARLY REWARDING.” Lucky I qualified my “certainly” with an “almost…”) In the latter category, we have the most elaborate and extended room description in the entire game, for the “Breath-Taking View” located deep, deep within the cave complex: YOU ARE ON THE EDGE OF A BREATH-TAKING VIEW. (Of course, it’s also true that Crowther’s lamp never ran out of batteries in the first place, because it was almost certainly conceived by him as a carbide lamp of the sort he took with him on his caving expeditions rather than a battery-powered job in this case the very different backgrounds of the two men do affect the finished work.) ( Edit: Actually, it seems the lamp was electric in Crowther’s original. As an example in the former category, the vending machine selling batteries feels like something Crowther would never have added. ![]() If we insist on finding differences, we might point to Woods’s willingness to indulge in more fantastic and anachronistic elements, as well as a willingness to allow himself a bit more poetic license here and there. The player notices no obvious point where Crowther left off and Woods picked up, and, indeed, would probably never guess that the latter parts were written by a different person entirely. The contrast in the two men’s coding styles has no parallel in their prose, as Woods ably continues in Crowther’s terse but just-evocative-enough style. Woods replaced virtually none of Crowther’s original text in Adventure, but simply built upon it, by fleshing out Crowther’s minimalist help text and of course adding many more locations to explore. (Warning: spoilers galore in this one, folks.) ![]()
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