Greg Hassett published three games in 1979: Sorcerer’s Castle Adventure, Enchanted Island, and lastly Voyage to Atlantis.
While the medium saw Gary Bedrosian and Scott Adams begin to experiment and move away from text adventure tropes; Greg Hassett embraces them. We are once again subjected to not one but two different mazes in this game and we are also on another treasure hunt.
The game is quite simple. We’re to assume that we’ve docked our submarine in the lost city of Atlantis and we’re going to don our oxygen tank and swim around collecting as many different treasures as we can. There are no room descriptions and no real plot other than to collect the treasures and deposit them back at the submarine for points.
While you’re swimming around the ruins of Atlantis you will find many of the treasures are guarded by underwater denizens. Your goal will be, much like it was in Enchanted Island (also by Hassett) to find a way to eliminate the guardian so that you can obtain it’s treasure. This usually involves finding something that satisfies the guardian so that it will go away. There are other times where you will use a spear gun to eliminate the guardian.
One of the puzzles is extremely silly and involves feeding a peanut butter cup to a school of piranhas. I find myself crying “foul” to silly, no-nonsense puzzle solutions like this. The labyrinth of the minotaur seems terribly out of place in Atlantean ruins or an underwater environment as well.
The following 11 treasures need to be found and deposited back at the submarine: jade medallion, many coins, valuable piranha teeth, gold scissors, a platinum pick, gold statuette, golden apple, silver key, platinum spear, glistening pearl and golden fleece.
It only took me around two hours to play through the entire adventure. The room descriptions were very simple and the plot was non-existent. The puzzles were all of a lock and key variety and posed no real challenge.
I find the Atlantis theme to be terribly exciting but much like the city itself my high hopes for the game ended up being sunk.
Atlantis is often portrayed as a fictionalized version of Crete, or at least of the Minoan civilization, so it’s not uncommon to see the Minotaur imported into Atlantis stories.
Thank you great information! I guess I was also a bit taken aback because the entire story takes place underwater and the minotaur was the only adversary that was not aquatic. However I love learning something new so I appreciate your post and the lesson.