Blade of Blackpoole is a graphic text adventure on a single diskette image.
The graphics are not what I would call impressive, but the area where you interact with the parser is much larger at eight lines rather than the four I have seen in other graphic text adventures. This allows more text to be displayed without being crammed into a small area.
I have to say the game itself did not grab my attention and within minutes I managed to walk into a quicksand trap and die.
In the last eighteen posts, I’ve been trying out different Apple II games.
Most of them have no instructions. No documentation on the diskette.
In many of the games you can figure out the keyboard commands fairly easily, by trial and error. What I find kind of sad is some of the games look really interesting, but the commands aren’t so obvious. Some were not so interesting to me, but others may have liked them.
As I’ve figured out the obvious commands, I’ve posted them for future reference.
Bandits is an arcade style game that reminds me of Galaga. It is not a copy of Galaga, it just reminds me of it, even though there are a lot less ships to shoot.
You have one gun that can be moved right and left across the bottom of the screen using the right and left arrow keys. Firing the gun is accomplished by hitting the spacebar.
Play is fairly fast with decent response time. As an arcade style game it is pretty good and keeps you entertained.
Asteroid is a version of asteroids. It can be played with either the keyboard or paddles.
To use the keyboard use the following keys:
D – Turn counter clockwise
F – Turn clockwise
Left Arrow – Thrust
Right Arrow – Fire
Spacebar – Hyperspace
I’ve played other versions and in this one, the games reaction time seems slow.
Ardy the Aardvark is a cute little single disk graphics game. The object is to control the tongue of Ardy the Aardvark down through the tunnels of an anthill.
Gobbling up the goodies, while avoiding the guard ants you move the tongue left, right, up and down or retract it all together.
The game can be played either using the keyboard or a joystick.
Arcade Games, Diskette 3, contains three games which according to the splash screen require a joystick.
The games are Ball Blaster, Big-Mac Attack and King Tut’s Revenge.
I tried out Ball Blaster and found it was a pin ball machine controlled by the apple keys. Open Apple for the left flippers and Closed Apple for the right flippers.
Big-Mac Attack is kind of a reverse missile command. You fire Big-Macs from your flying McDonalds down at a planet.
King Tut’s Revenge is all about defending King Tut’s tomb from invaders. These last two really do seem to need a joystick.
Arcade Games, Diskette 2 contains ten files, most of which we won’t be concerned with. The first is the Hello program which lists the files and acts as a menu program to run some of them.
The theme of the diskette is Pacman versions. The three files that I was able run were Ms. Pacman, based on the arcade game with the same name. Gobble and Snack were more Apple related versions. Although I was able to get them to run, I was not able to figure out the commands. Ms. Pacman says it can be run from the keyboard, but even though I tried almost every key I could not get a response. Making sure the caps lock was on I tried the same with both Gobble and Snack getting the same results.
All in all, this diskette was a bust.
There are three diskette images in the Arcade Games Package. The first diskette Arcade1 has four games Robotron, Pacman, Star Trek+, and Mario Bros.
I’ve been watching Battlestar Galactica on Netflix and can’t help but draw similarities between them. In Robotron, the robots we created, have decided we are a mistake and are hunting us. You move around and do battle with the Robotrons, attempting to destroy them before they destroy.
PacMan is very similar to the original PacMan, which makes sense since it is from Atari.
Star Trek+, also known as Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator, is based on the arcade game, by the same name. As far as I can tell, it requires a joystick to play.
Mario Bros. is an arcade style game. You can customize the controls before you start to play. I have never played the Mario Bros. games before so I don’t know how they compare. In this one you move side to side and hop up and down levels.
Apple Panic is an arcade style game similar to Donkey Kong. It comes on a single diskette image.
You move around a building climbing up and down ladders avoiding giant apples, which you destroy by pounding them into a hole. The commands are pretty straight forward I, J, K and M to move. The A key is used to dig holes and the S key is used to pound apples.
Apple Cider Spider, by Sierra On-Line, is a single diskette arcade style game. Visually it reminds me of Hard Hat Mack or Donkey Kong.
The object seems to be to move your spider through an Apple Cider manufacturing plant while avoiding obstacles such as machinery, falls, frogs and birds. The Spider kind of reminds me of Thing (the hand that runs around on its fingers), from the Addams Family.
It can be played with either a joystick or the keyboard. I tried the keyboard and play moved right along.
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