ID this text adventure, Jolt Country faithful!

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

This was posted on a different forum:

So I'm feeling nostalgic in my old age. But due to said aging, I can't remember the name of my old favorite text adventure game. I was hoping one of you might recognize it, and help me out.

Warning: Description of game follows.

You start off in a ravine. There's a road next to the ravine, which brings you to a castle. If you enter the courtyard, there's a dragon, which holds a ring in a pouch around its neck. Slaying the dragon will provide you with the ring, and automatically teleport you to the throne room in the castle. The ring is one of five treasures. The object of the game is to get any three of the treasures together in the same location. Or, if you're clever, you can put two in the throne room, carry two on your body, slay the dragon, and thus get all five treasures. But let's move on...

There is a Black Orb in the game. Picking it up will make you too weak to carry most items, so you have to drop everything in a safe place before setting out to get it. It gets you extra points. You have to row through a maze of streams to get to it. Other mazes include the dungeons below the castles (where you fight gasp skeletons!), and the maze of hallways in the castle.

Other memorable items: A well that you fall into to get a special sword, and have to teleport out of. An idol found in the dungeons. A SEKRET passage behind a tapestry. Vials of red liquid that might make you "feel strong and well rested".


Is any of this ringing any bells? I played this game constantly, along with Zork, when I was a dorky kid. I wouldn't mind finding it again, so I can play it and discover that it sucks more than I thought.

Any ideas?

[looper]

Any ideas?

Not really, but, what system was it on? And what time period is this? Circa 1984? 86? The Spectrum seems to have had a lot of text games made for it, and there's a lot of web pages about said system and said games...like The Hobbit. Have you thought about searching some of them sites?

[looper]

clarification:

By "The Hobbit", I mean the text game, not a site.

[Ben]

Alright, I'll try:

I'm going to go with: "Every text adventure game ever made."

Is that it? Is that the right answer?

[k. roo]

Apallatron didn't have a black orb, now did it. So there you go.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

It was Zyll.

Dad never pirated Zyll for me when I had my PCjr, so I didn't recognize it.

[Lex]

I don't understand all this piracy-is-bad stuff, in a child's perspective; over on Groucho a while ago we were all talking about bringing our children up in a copying environment, and how talking about it as wrong was what was supposed to happen. To which I'm: What the fuck? Piracy is a very necessary part of a child's evolution into a techno-aware adult. How the hell would I have learnt about PKUnzip and, infact, XT-gold, without it?

Sorry, different subject matter, but still. This totally doesn't apply to this base.[/quote]