Monday, 6 April 2015
Cover to Cover Adventure International Spring 1981 Catalog pp 7 8
Page 7 continues the then-new Other Ventures series, with the first two interactive fiction releases by Jyym Pearson, whose more story-driven style would come to define this "official" alternative to the classic Scott Adams Adventure series:
I have only briefly sampled The Curse of Crowley Manor and havent tried Escape From Tramm at all, so I will have to remedy that. I have played and enjoyed Pearsons later Med Systems release, The Farvar Legacy -- my impression of his style is that it is more "directed," sacrificing a degree of player freedom for the sake of more dramatic storytelling. I think Scott Adams made a good business decision here, offering adventures in a different style from his own before somebody else did.
Page 8 presents another early attempt to bring TSRs Dungeons & Dragons pencil-and-paper role-playing game system to home computers, with Adventure Internationals entry in the race that Richard Garriotts Ultima would arguably win:
I never played any of these games, the 2-drive disk system requirement of the original Balrog Sampler being well beyond my paper-route income at the time. On the next page (next week) well read some more details about the Maces & Magic game system, which clearly borrows more than its alliterative naming from classic D&D. (M&M doesnt quite have the same ring -- or perhaps it does, but that ones already taken. Twice, actually, with more recent history in mind.)
