Nine Princes in Amber (computer game)
| Nine Princes in Amber | |
|---|---|
| Studio | Telarium |
| Publisher |
Telarium Idealogic |
| Senior Developer | Seth Godin |
| Erstveröffent- lichung |
1985 |
| platform | Apple II , Atari ST , C 64 , DOS , MSX2 |
| Game engine | Spinnaker Adventure Language (SAL) |
| genre | Text adventure |
| Game mode | Single player |
| control | keyboard |
| language | English Spanish |
Nine Princes in Amber is a computer game by the US company Telarium from 1985. It belongs to the genre of text adventures and is based on two novels from the novel series The Chronicles of Amber by the writer Roger Zelazny .
action
The action takes place in a fictional fantasy world. The player, Prince Corwin, is the intended successor to King Oberon von Amber, but his eight brothers, especially his brother Eric, are also interested in the rule over Amber. Prince Corwin must avoid murder attempts, uncover intrigues, and make alliances with some of his siblings in order to become King of Amber.
Game principle and technology
The single player adventure is controlled by keyboard commands. English words as well as simple and complex sentences are entered into a text parser . Interaction with the NPCs is central to progress in the game ; there is no inventory that is common in other adventures. There are 40 different possible solutions to end the game.
Development and production details
The adventure has two-dimensional graphics, a title melody and sound effects. It was implemented for the C 64 , DOS , Atari ST , MSX2 and Apple II . The MSX2 version is a translation into Spanish (“Nueve Principes en Amber”) and has new illustrations.
The game is based on the novels Nine Princes in Amber ( published by Doubleday , 1970) and The Guns of Avalon (published by Doubleday, 1972) by Roger Zelazny.
reception
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The magazine Zzap! 64 praised the graphics of the game, but found it to take getting used to because of the focus on the interaction with NPCs and the reloading times to be unreasonable. Overall, the magazine rated Nine Princes in Amber as a welcome change for everyone who had had enough of adventures that consisted of treasure hunts or killing dragons. A game review by the computer magazine Happy Computer praised the intelligent texts, the exciting plot and the impressive parser vocabulary of the "noble adventure".
A study of computer game history and theory from 2006 differentiated. On the one hand it was a good game overall, on the other hand the goal of the game developers - to enable complex interactions of the player with NPCs - was more ambitious than the actual implementation ("What they ended up with is not a bad game - in fact, it is one of Telarium's best, and working out the conversational ´puzzles´ can actually be oddly satisfying at times - but they seemed to be aiming so much higher. ").
Web links
- Nine Princes in Amber at MobyGames (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Shay Addams: if yr cmptr cn rd ths ... ( Memento of the original from January 21, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Computer Entertainment , August 1985, pages 24-27, 76-77.
- ↑ Overview of the contributors to development and production under Nine Princes in Amber at MobyGames (English)
- ↑ a b Zzap! 64 # 012, April 1986, p. 74: Nine Princes in Amber. Retrieved January 1, 2016 .
- ↑ See Heinrich Lenhardt : Nine Princes in Amber . In: Happy Computer 3/1986, p. 159.
- ↑ See Jimmy Maher: Let's Tell a Story Together. A History of Interactive Fiction . Senior Honor's Thesis, University of Texas, Dallas 2006 (Chapter 6 The Rest of commercial IF - Trillium / Telarium ) .
