Arthur: The Quest for Excalibur
| Arthur: The Quest for Excalibur | |
|---|---|
| Studio | Infocom |
| Publisher | Infocom |
| Senior Developer | Bob Bates |
| Erstveröffent- lichung |
June 6, 1989 |
| platform | Apple II , Commodore Amiga , Macintosh , MS-DOS |
| Game engine | ZIL |
| genre | Text adventure |
| Game mode | Single player |
| control | Keyboard Mouse |
| medium | diskette |
| language | English |
| copy protection | Enclosure referencing |
Arthur: The Quest for Excalibur is a text adventure game with graphics and RPG elements by Infocom from 1989.
action
The game is based on the Arthurian legend. The player takes on the role of young Arthur. King Uther has been dead for several years, and a potential successor would have to prove himself worthy by pulling the legendary "sword in stone" out of its case. Said stone and sword are stolen one night by Lot of Orkney , which is observed by Arthur. Lot presents the people with a copy of the sword the next day and announces his coronation as King of England in three days. The player receives an order from Merlin to get the real sword back within these three days. The magician acts for the player both as an advisor and as a task setter; it also gives Arthur the ability to temporarily transform into an eel, badger, owl, salamander or turtle, an ability that is required as the game progresses. In the course of the game the player has to improve his chivalry, experience and wisdom skills, as in a role-playing game , in order to ultimately prove himself worthy of being crowned King of England himself.
Game principle and technology
Arthur is a text adventure, which means that the environment and events are displayed as screen text and the visualization is largely up to the player's imagination. The upper third of the screen is taken up by the background images; alternatively, this third is used for an overview of the player's inventory or for a schematic map of the game environment. On the schematic map, the player can use the mouse to select places to move to, which makes navigation easier.
Arthur presents the player with a help system that was quite innovative at the time of publication. As with previous Infocom games, the player can call up a help page that lists questions that the player could ask himself during the course of the game, and gradually call up more and more detailed help for each question. In Arthur , this system has been expanded so that the questions are not accessible from the start, but are activated in a context-sensitive manner.
Production notes
The game's producers were Christopher Erhardt ( Starflight , Pool of Radiance ), Mike Kawahara (Starflight, Warhammer: Mark of Chaos - Battle March ) and Infocom veteran Jon Palace. After the liquidation of Infocom, programmer Duane Beck moved to Legend Entertainment , founded by Bob Bates , as did Tanya Isaacson and James Sullivan from Arthur's graphics team .
As an addition ("Feelie") the game was accompanied by a printed booklet that explains the prayers of the hours of the Catholic Church and contains a poem that is referenced in the game as copy protection.
Arthur was one of Infocom's last games. After a change of management at the owner Activision , the remaining Infocom employees were laid off in 1989 and operations were discontinued. A version of the game for the Atari ST was announced but never appeared.
reception
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The Computer and Video Games magazine praised Arthur as "one of the best text adventure of all time" and criticized only an unfair maze puzzle and a minor bug . Computer Gaming World criticized the technical inadequacies of the Apple II version of the game, in particular the frequent need to change disks and the graphics. SPAG magazine called Arthur "the ideal graphic-text adventure" because it contained graphics that support the atmosphere of the game but do not distract from the text. Zzap magazine praised puzzles, graphics and parsers and said Arthur had "all the ingredients to make it a first-class adventure game". Advanced Computer Entertainment drew a direct comparison to the previous year’s Adventure Lancelot from competitor Level 9 , which also deals with the Arthurian legend. ACE noted that Lancelot stuck closer to the literary templates, but Arthur gave the better game despite static NPCs .
In 1989 Arthur won the Macworld Editors' Choice Award in the Graphic Adventure of the Year category.
Web links
- Arthur: The Quest for Excalibur at MobyGames (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Review in CVG # 095. Retrieved January 31, 2016 .
- ↑ Review in ACE Magazine 23. Accessed January 31, 2016 .
- ↑ Review in ASM 10/89. Retrieved January 31, 2016 .
- ↑ a b Review in Zzap 10/89. Retrieved January 31, 2016 .
- ↑ CGW # 63, September 1989, p. 40, available online
- ↑ SPAG # 4 of March 2, 1995, available online