The Poseidon Adventure is the eighth adventure game that Roger M. Wilcox wrote for the TRS-80 in 1980. And I’ve had the pleasure of playing them all. The seven previous games that I’ve covered already are: Misadventure, Star Cruiser, Jailbreak, Space Traveller, Nuclear Submarine, India Palace, and lastly the Vial of Doom.
Wilcox at one point renamed the game The Upside Down Adventure out of fear that 20th Century Fox might sue for trademark infringement.
Greg Hasset released Devil’s Palace in 1980 as well and it was the eighth game that Hasset had made. He had set out to make a game that was much harder than any of his previous adventures and he certainly accomplished that. I believe that Roger M. Wilcox set out to emulate that experience because The Poseidon Adventure is frustratingly hard.
It’s not that puzzles were obtuse or undecipherable; or that the map itself was difficult to discern or create; it’s that there are hidden expectations regarding the parser that the player is somehow supposed to be aware of. I had to resort to getting a hint not once but two different times with this game. Let me give you a couple of examples:
In this first example I actually solved what might have been an inventory dilemma quite by accident. In a medical closet you find a bottle of liquid and in an ex-stoner’s cabin you find glycerin. At any point in the game if you type in MAKE and have these two items on your person than you suddenly have a bottle of nitroglycerin in your inventory. I arrived at this solution quite by accident admittedly.
This next example is much more devious. In the cargo hold you find a metal rod and in an underwater pocket you find a metal claw. You must type CONNECT and hit enter and then you’ll suddenly have a crowbar which you’ll need later in the game.
I had to resort to a hint in this last example as well. In a tool room on the ship you discover a drill and a screwdriver. I tried using the the tools in different rooms and in that room but what the parser was looking for in the tool room was for me to type: DRILL
followed by: SCREW
which would then disassemble a wall revealing a hidden room which contains an axe you’ll need for later in the game. In these examples there are no what I would call unfair puzzles or anything that hasn’t been done in other games but it was the execution of the solution or the expectation by the parser that threw me off. You encountered situations like this in Hasset’s Devil’s Palace in a purposeful attempt to make the game harder and I believe you have the same situation here. I don’t mind cerebral puzzles or riddles but playing “guess the surprise verb” makes for a frustrating experience.
Hundreds of games have been created that revolve around licensed properties, with or without permission, and I thought the idea to create a game based on Irwin Allen’s hit movie was a novel idea. The locations in the game and the map itself makes sense and there is a sense of urgency in the game as well but a couple of the odd “parser puzzles” overshadowed the experience for me with this particular game. Overall it has been an absolute pleasure to be able to experience the eight games created by Roger M. Wilcox in 1980. While these games were not commercial games; players will discover that he was just as prolific as a Greg Hasset or Joel Mick.
For my next game I’m taking a break from the interactive text adventures from 1980 and going back into the dungeons with a role-playing game called Catacombs.