Shogun (computer game)
| Shogun | |
|---|---|
| Studio | Infocom |
| Publisher | Infocom |
| Senior Developer | Dave Lebling |
| Erstveröffent- lichung |
March 14, 1989 |
| platform | Amiga , Apple II , DOS , Mac |
| Game engine | ZIL |
| genre | Text adventure |
| control | Keyboard , mouse |
| medium | diskette |
| language | English |
| Current version | 890706 |
| copy protection | Feelies |
Shogun is a text adventure game with graphics by Infocom from 1989. It is based on the novel of the same name by James Clavell , which was present in the media as a television series at the time of the game's publication .
action
The player takes on the role of the Englishman John Blackthorne, who capsizes off the Japanese coast in 1600 as a navigator with the Dutch merchant ship Erasmus. In order to find his way around, Blackthorne has to integrate himself into the Japanese society, which is completely foreign to him in terms of language and culture. As the game progresses, he gets caught between the fronts of various Japanese warlords and falls in love with a local. After all, he integrated himself so successfully into Japanese society that he became a samurai .
Since the hardware available in the 1980s was limited, the game only reproduces individual scenes from the novel.
Game principle and technology
Shogun is a text adventure, which means that the environment and events are displayed as text on the screen and the actions of the player are also entered as text via the keyboard. Still images illustrating the scenery are displayed on the screen. The game contains 75 rooms and 63 objects, and the parser understands about 1400 words. For comparison: The first part of the genre classic Zork contains 110 rooms and 60 objects, but the parser only understands about 700 words.
The game included a reproduction of a map from 1600 and a booklet ("The Soul of the Samurai") on the subject of swords. Both were referenced in the game and thus represent copy protection.
Production notes
Shogun was one of two Infocom games that came under an external license - the other was Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy , which was based on a novel by Douglas Adams . While Hitchhiker's Guide was created in close collaboration with the novelist Adams, who later wrote Bureaucracy for Infocom, Shogun was a purely licensed product, in whose creation the novelist Clavell was not involved. As a result Lebling, author of the Infocom classics Zork , Spellbreaker and The Lurking Horror , calls Shogun his worst work.
The graphics of the game were created by the painter and sculptor Donald Langosy. Until Shogun was released, Infocom had only produced pure text adventures. The company justified the change of this concept with the improved technical possibilities of the meanwhile successful 16bit computers. The British magazine "The Games Machine" suspected, however, that Infocom was primarily driven by the successful integration of graphics on the part of its direct market competitors Magnetic Scrolls and Level 9 .
reception
Dave Arneson praised the scope of the game and the decent graphics in the Computer Gaming World , but criticized the linearity, the numerous situations occurring in the game, in which a wrong decision leads to the death of the player, and the unhelpful help system in the game. The ASM praised the parser, the graphics quality and overall ease of use and complained only the small number of graphics. The Power Play criticized the graphics quality.
| magazine | Rating | link |
|---|---|---|
| ASM | 8/10 | link |
| The Games Machine | 95% | link |
| Power play | 74/100 | link |
| Tilt | 17/20 | link |
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Interview with Dave Lebling on AdventureClassicGaming.com
- ↑ TechSheet on IF.org
- ↑ forum post by Dave Lebling
- ↑ The Games Machine # 020, July 1989, p. 69, available online
- ↑ Computer Gaming World # 62, August 1989, p. 12, available online
- ↑ ASM 7/89, available online
- ↑ Power Play 8/89, p. 24, available online