When I first started this project, my desire was to have a different platform featured every week. The PCjr! The arcade version of Elevator Action! Wirewalker on the PlayDate! Space Ace on the New Wave Toys replica! I have been meaning to connect my Amiga 1200 up for the entire year, and only recently was able to do so.
I have (had) an 1084S monitor that I used as the sort of catch-all CRT around here that could take composite video. I bought it from someone on an #arcade IRC channel. It worked well enough for a couple of years, but both the composite input for video and specific video cable that the Amiga uses gives me the same result: “wiggling” the connectors will mean I maybe get everything from the red, blue and green guns, but usually not. I bought a Sony PVM monitor at one of the 1UP bar arcade locations last year and while it is just a 9″ monitor, I have the thing close enough to my face that I can make do. Taking the Amiga out of storage, the keyboard ribbon cable had somehow become disconnected. When I fixed that, I heard something rattling around inside and it would not boot. I re-opened it and… there was a screw against the motherboard causing a short. GOD, storage, right? I now have it booting correctly from an AmigaKit fake hard drive flash solution. There are games on it from years ago. One such game…
Adventure Construction Set! Ahead of its time in many, many ways, let’s feature the very first part that excites me even now. I’ve been working on my text adventure CRPG Cyberganked for 13 years, so when ACS tells you in its pretty cool demo mode that it can “finish the game for you,” oh how I dream. (Just kidding, kind of. Although this game is almost 40 years old, it is a sort of artificial intelligence that would finish it, right? In general, if a human didn’t make it then I, a human, don’t want to read/experience/play it. When I had ACS for DOS in the 1980s, I do remember just letting ACS complete at least two games I had worked on. I guess the “surprise” was the point of it. I guess the other thing is that Stuart Smith, the developer, didn’t shamelessly steal from thousands of other content creators in order to let ACS finish games, and then cry like a bitch when faced with a reality where maybe they can’t do that. I guess that is the difference. That and ACS not boiling off the Earth’s fresh water supply. Reader, we identified the differences.)
The DOS version, released in 1987, used CGA graphics – the blue, brown, white and black mode. The subdued brown and blue gave it a less garish look than the stereotypical cyan and purple, but the Amiga version kicks the hell from it. According to Mobygames, the Amiga version came out the year before the DOS version and it looks beautiful. It’s stunning. It is the ideal version of the game and game creation system. It is a great example of what nice PC video cards had to overcome to simply look as good as what the Amiga could do out of the box. Okay, one step back —
What is Adventure Construction Set? It’s a fully-featured framework for making your own Ultima III style adventures. You have access to a graphics editor, a map and quest system and the ability to put hotspots and non-player characters around your game. You have access to creating weapons and magic spells. ACS supports three different “themes” due to tilesets: secret agent, fantasy and science-fiction.
You get two complete adventure games (Rivers of Light and Galactic Agent) and the ability to make your own. From the forum posts and blogs I’ve read this week about ACS, the construction was very much where the bulk of players enjoyed their time.
The adventure present on my copy of ACS for the Amiga seems to have a kind of tutorial thing for it. It isn’t strictly in one genre, but it shows off a lot of the great activities for an ACS game – you have melee and missile weapons (a sword and a pistol) alongside a lamp that can have an action associated with it (rubbing the lamp) that brings the character of the genie around. Any other NPC on the same screen as you gets to move just like you do. If they are friendly, they will just run around doing their thing, and of course those that are marked as foes will try to attack you. ACS has a sort of real time+ thing going on: if you just sit idle, the timer bar will decrease, so that the other creatures and players can take their turn. If you are moving quickly, you burn up the same time.
One of the things I am trying to do with this project is identify games that still hold up and ACS holds up as both a development system, and for the games themselves. They are going to get a little samey inevitably, but if you pace yourself at one of these every 10 years and throw in a new computer system to play it on, I think you’re good. One of my favorite bits from the Angry Video Game Nerd was when he exclaimed, “LOOK AT THIS CHAOS!” during his Silver Surfer review. ACS isn’t a twitch game, but on the screenshot to the left, we have our player character in yellow, three information kiosks (the “H” tile), a hospital (the red cross) a pistol, a wandering genie and what isn’t there is a bad guy that was shooting at me, who I killed with a sword. If Ultima III was a little more methodical, ACS is playing with your action figures in computer game store. It hasn’t lost a step.