Treasure Island (computer game)
| Treasure Island | |
|---|---|
| Studio | Byron Preiss Video Productions |
| Publisher | Windham Classics |
| Senior Developer | Lee Jacknow |
| Erstveröffent- lichung |
 1985 |
| platform | C 64 , Atari ST , MSX2 , DOS , Apple II |
| genre | Text adventure with graphics |
| Game mode | Single player |
| control | keyboard |
| language | English , Spanish |
Treasure Island is a computer game by the US company Windham Classics from 1985. It belongs to the genre of text adventures with graphics and is based on the novel Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson .
action
In an adventure novel- style plot , the player takes on the role of young Jim Hawkins, who works in his parents' inn near the English city of Bristol . One of the guests, Captain Billy Bones, tells Jim on his deathbed about the treasure of the famous pirate Captain Flint, which is hidden on an island. Together with his companions Dr. Livesey and John Trelawney, Jim sets off to the island to find the treasure. To achieve the goal of the game he has to solve several puzzles and escape opponents like Long John Silver.
Gameplay
Treasure Island is a text adventure, which means that the environment and events are displayed as screen text and the actions of the player are also entered as text via the keyboard and processed by a parser . The upper 40% of the screen is reserved for two-dimensional graphics that illustrate the text descriptions; the lower part of the screen is used for the textual representation of what is happening and for command input.
Development and production details
The implementation took place for the platforms C 64 , Atari ST , MSX2 , DOS and Apple II . Treasure Island was developed by Byron Preiss and his company Byron Preiss Video Productions. The texts were written by Ann Weil and Lee Jackson, the graphics were by John Pierard. The game is aimed at a younger target group (from 10 years) and is based closely on the novel Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson . Unlike the novel, however, the game is not told from a first-person perspective .
A Spanish version of the adventure was published under the title La Isla Del Tesoro .
reception
In an English review from the 1980s, Treasure Island was described as too easy for adult gamers on the one hand, and as easy to play for children and teenagers on the other. The puzzles are logical and not difficult to solve. The on-screen hints on the game vocabulary are useful ("The 'Word Window' vocabulary feature is very helpful").
In the 2000s, the game principle of the Windham Classics adventure Treasure Island was compared with the literature adaptations from Telarium , another subsidiary of Spinnaker Software (" IFgame in the Telarium mode") in a study on the history and theory of computer games . Another investigation dealt with the historical development of the game principle in adventure games. It was found there that in the transition phase from text adventures to graphic adventures, specific player characters with corresponding graphic images became common. The character of the player character Jim Hawkins in Treasure Island was also cited as an example. The graphic representation of the player character should facilitate the identification of the player with the game plot ("providing a visual point of view helped to construct a specific identy to the player character, which the player had to re-enact").
Web links
- Treasure Island at MobyGames (English)
- Treasure Island at GameFAQs (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ See Sharon Darling: Byron Preiss and Ronald Martinez. Trillium Software Developers . In: Compute! S Gazette, Issue 18, December 1984, pp. 52-58 (54).
- ↑ Overview of development and production under Treasure Island at MobyGames (English) and on the website Hans Persson, Stefan Meier: Adventureland-Telarium (section Windham Classics-Adventures)
- ↑ See Sol Guber: Treasure Island . In: Antic Vol. 5 No. 1, 5/1986, p. 81.
- ↑ 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 ).
- ↑ See Olli Leino, Hanna Wirman, Amyris Fernandez: Extending Experiences: Structure, Analysis and Design of Computer Games . Lapland University Press 2008, p. 219.