Game #95: Fantasyland 2041 A.D.

John and Patty Bell ran their own small computer store, Crystal Computers, in Sunnyvale, California. John Bell also developed his own adventure games and published them under a label known as Crystalware. Quest For Power and Forgotten Island, which we played through, were also from Crystalware. In 1981 John wrote and developed the largest game for any personal computer at that time. Adventure and role-playing games were gaining in popularity but the majority of them were text only. Fantasyland had more than 400 screens of graphics and took up 400kb of storage. 400kb may not seem like much, but in 1980 and 1981 most of your games were taking up 40kb. John Bell wrote Fantasyland for the Apple II and in the spring of 1981 Michael Potter walked into the store and showed off his Atari 800 games he had developed. John Bell was so impressed he hired Potter, and in June of 1981, Potter converted Fantasyland to the Atari 800 and added some enhancements to the graphics engine. Both the Apple II and Atari 800 versions of Fantasyland were released at the same time, at a retail price of $59.95 which is equivalent to $296.00 today. Mike Potter would end up converting 11 other Crystalware titles to the Atari 800 but in 1982 they went their separate ways over royalty disputes.

The game features 6 different worlds to explore with each world taking up it’s own side on three doubled-sided 5.25 floppies.

–The graphic routines developed by Mike Potter and John Bell are incredible and the Crystalsonics sound is amazing!! The price is $59.95 and is worth every penny. The documentation is almost as fun to read as the program is to play!! It is an incredible experience!! After playing this game for over 87 hours I have rated this program the absolute BEST I have ever played, including all games for all computers, all adventures and even Star Raiders. Yes, I repeat this game is better than Star Raiders. Hard to believe? Well it is FANTASTIC!! I have rated this program on a scale from 1 to 10, an incredible 2041!! I recommend it for every owner of an ATARI 800 or 400 with a disk drive to purchase this program over all else!! It is worth it!!

The above is a review for Fantasyland 2041 A.D. found in the Atari Computer Enthusiasts Newsletters Volume 1

The manual, which came packaged with the game, was very high quality and reminiscent of something you’d see from Automated Simulations (which would later become Epyx). It consisted of 40 pages which contained a short story introducing the reader to each of the six worlds. Combat and game mechanics were explained in detail and there were also small hints contained within the reading to aid in your experience with the game. There was professional artwork scattered throughout the manual as well.

Fantasyland 2041 A.D. IS huge. It took me roughly 14 hours to complete the game. I sat down with a PDF of the manual and read through the entire thing before starting play. Inside is a short story that explains the premise of the game and I must say it immediately reminded me of the movie Westworld; written and directed by Michael Creighton. I checked and Westworld was released in November of 1973. You can watch a trailer for the movie HERE and I can almost guarantee it was a huge influence on Bell.

Fantasyland 2041, much like Creighton’s Westworld, is an amusement park where you can pay an exorbitant amount of money to become embroiled in epic fantasy.

Guests of Fantasyland will move through a series of adventure worlds which are populated with animatronics and cyborgs. The scenarios include: Congoland, Arabian Adventure, King Arthur’s Camelot, Olympus, Captain Nemo, and Dante’s Inferno. The ultimate goal is a rescue mission. Before you begin play you choose to rescue Guinevere or Lancelot from the depths of hell. You then begin play in the Hall of Heroes and must venture through Congoland first.

The overall gameplay is linear as the movement through each of the six worlds is fixed. However you are going to have to manage food and equipment along the way, battle all kinds of different adversaries, and solve different inventory puzzles. You will also ultimately have to figure out how to move from one world to the next as most of the portals are cleverly hidden or you need a particular item and/or magic to be able to move on.

Even the game manual doesn’t think you’ll make it:

You may conclude that it is impossible to ever finish or win this game. We had to make it pretty tough. The average adventurer will probably never see the Throne of Lucifer or make it past the gates to the Underworld. We hope that just the experience of a single adventure will be sufficiently entertaining to satisfy our most critical hobbyists.

What is it that makes Fantasyland 2041 so hard? It is a culmination of several things and I’m not surprised to find evidence that only a handful of people ever finished the game. The food and inventory management is brutal. Like Ultima, each time you move on the overland map it depletes your rations. The more people you have in your party, the quicker you go through the rations. There is usually one town or village in each world where you can buy rations, but treasure in the game is finite. You find just enough through exploration in each world to allow you to survive; assuming you’re managing your inventory and party properly. There are individual powerful enemies on each world as well as random parties of enemies that can attack you constantly. It doesn’t matter whether you are moving or standing still. So you need enough individuals in your party in order to survive this constant combat; but not too many so as to deplete your food supply too quickly. The armor and weapons which you purchase or find can help to increase your attack score as well as your defensive score. When you lose equipment or party members; these scores will drastically decrease. The game emphasizes encumbrance or the amount of equipment and items you may physically carry. If a couple of your party members are slain; you may suddenly find that you are too encumbered to move. So then you need to go into your inventory and begin dropping items. This kind of equipment shuffling and inventory management becomes a constant monotony.

You begin play in the Hall of Heroes where you assemble your party. It is here that you can purchase your initial party members, equipment, and rations. It requires some careful planning; more than you might initially think and I encourage you to study the manual a bit before beginning gameplay. I found that, for me, the optimal starting party size was 12 knights. You’ll see that you have options ranging from squires and archers to marauders and Argonauts as well as headhunters and Zulu warriors.

Once you have assembled your party and leave the Hall of Heroes you find yourself in Congoland. Each world has physical features that are dangerous to bump into. So you have to constantly avoid touching them in each of the world’s you traverse. If you accidentally come into contact with them you can lose pieces of equipment or companions. What you lose is completely random. There were numerous times where I accidentally “bumped” into a physical terrain feature and lost a key piece of equipment that I needed to win the game or progress forward. So I would have to quit and go back to my last saved game. You DO have the option of saving anywhere and I suggest you save often and use many different saved game titles. You die quite often or run into issues with inventory management or funds. The game is also extremely buggy. You may find that suddenly you are just missing pieces of equipment for no explicable reason or you may find that one of your saved games no longer loads correctly or works. So save often, and do not keep saving to the same game file. Create numerous save files that are all self-explanatory. Each world also has random environmental affects that have the same affect as the dangerous terrain. Examples of this are sandstorms in the Arabian Adventure world or high winds and storms in the Olympus world.

Congoland is one of the easier worlds to traverse. The key here is that you must find King Solomon’s Mines and ultimately King Solomon’s Temple located within.

There are two things that you will need in order to escape Congloland:

1. A light source. If you travel through the mines without a light source; every few steps you lose a random piece of equipment or a companion to the darkness. You can obtain a lamp by finding the village. You can buy, sell or trade there and it is located to the east and just north of the river. You have to cross the river but beware the piranhas. Then just north of the village is the maze that you must traverse in order to find King Solomon’s Temple.
2. You’ll need the Witch Doctor to JOIN your party. Many of your encounters will be with the Witch Doctor until he is in your party. Once you have the Witch Doctor his Earth magic accompanies him which is what you will need to get by the guardian standing before King Solomon’s Temple. Just USE the Earth magic and you’ll be able to move on to Arabian Adventureland.

The USE command in Fantasyland 2041 A.D. is something that you will use a lot. It is extremely tedious. Each time you press U for USE you have to scroll through every individual item you are carrying and sometimes this spans multiple screens. By the end of the game I was ready to tear my hair out each time I had to press U for the USE command.

You arrive in Cathay once you make it through the other side of King Solomon’s Temple. In this land you deal with dust storms which can cause you to lose equipment and personnel so save often. There are ruins in the northeast quadrant of the map that are locked. However you may uncover a key in one of the chests you find. If you are awarded a key then make your way to the ruins to find more gold pieces. What the game awards in each land is completely random so you may not even find the key to unlock the ruins at all. It is not necessary to win the game but the extra gold does help with inventory management. You will encounter Turks, marauders, snakes, camels, and spiders on this level. Your goal is to find Baghdad. Baghdad is your gateway to King Arthur land. There is only one item you will need to make your way through the Baghdad gate:

1. You need to encounter the GENIE and have him join your group. The GENIE is accompanied by his AIR magic which is what you need to bypass the guardian at the gates of Baghdad.

Once you find yourself in King Arthur land or Camelot the game changes and gets considerably harder. There are several things you will need to do but it is important that you save often on this level.

You must also beware the wandering Black Knights and Mordred. The encounters with the Black Knights are much harder than any of your previous encounters and it is likely that you will not be able to defeat them without more personnel in your party. Mordred is an even tougher opponent and very hard to beat without about 30+ members in your party. You also have an opportunity to obtain the sword Excalibur on this level! Getting your hands on Excalibur gives a nice boost to your combat statistics. However Excalibur is protected a Dragon which is about 15x more powerful then Mordred.

King Arthur land introduces a new “wrinkle” on this level. Much tougher opponents but a new command feature. Now instead of Fighting or Running you can choose to Greet your opponents to see if they will join your party. It is possible to create an extremely large party in this fashion. A word of caution, remember that the larger your party, the faster you go through your food supply.

I found it easier, rather than building up a small army and then dropping personnel after combat, to simply avoid the Black Knights, Mordred, and the Dragon all together. In an arcade style format, it is possible for you to sneak into the Dragon’s Lair, grab Excalibur, and then flee from the Dragon avoiding any kind of icon contact. This allowed me to continue to keep a handle on my food supply and items. This advice that I am giving now was learned through much trial and error.

There are several things you must do in order to escape from King Arthur land. The gate to Olympus is found in Merlin’s Hideaway. The only way to find Merlin is to traverse another maze. Remember that you will need to USE a lamp once you are in the maze to avoid the hazards of darkness. The following things need to be done in King Arthur land before continuing on to Olyumpus:

1. When in Camelot, purchase King Arthur’s signet ring from the store (the manual, if you read carefully, warns you to do this) You will need the signet ring as one of the three items to rescue Guinevere from Lucifer in the Dante’s Inferno level.
2. Make sure you encounter a Sorcerer before finding Merlin’s Hideaway. FIRE magic will accompany the Sorcerer when he joins his party and you will need this to get by Merlin. However if all you have is the FIRE magic, Merlin will not allow you to proceed to Olympus. You need the first Ring of Power.
3. The first Ring of Power is found on this level and obtaining it is a bit of a puzzle and it took me quite some time to figure out. When you loot some of the chests that you find in King Arthur land, without the game telling you that you obtained them, you will suddenly begin to find a Holy Grail in your inventory. You want to keep opening as many chests in King Arthur land as you can until you obtain the Holy Grail. Once you have a Holy Grail, travel to Stonehenge and stand in the middle of the structure. USE the Holy Grail and then suddenly the first Ring of Power will appear in front of you. Add the Ring of Power to your inventory. You will need it near the final phase of the game.
4. The last item you may want to obtain is Excalibur from the Dragon’s Lair. It is not essential to win the game but it gives a huge boost to your combat abilities and it is the best weapon in the game that you can obtain.

Once you have the Sorcerer in your party, the signet ring which you purchased, and the first Ring of Power, you are ready to move to Olympus. Casting FIRE magic will allow you to pass from Merlin’s Hideaway to Olympus with the Ring of Power in your possession.

Olympus changes the rules of the game yet again. In Olympus you’re going to trade your horses for sails. You’ll need to purchase SEVERAL very special items that you will need for this last leg of your journey. All of this level is spent traveling the ocean looking for islands.

WARNING: As I stated earlier, be sure you are saving often. Do not save to the same save game file either but keep adding save files. The game begins to get continually more buggy as you get deeper into the game. Obviously protein bars and cans of Red Bull were not invented yet when the programmers worked late into the night. TWICE I had two of my save game files become corrupted and I had to begin all over again. It was nauseating.

There are SEVERAL things you will need to do in order to be successful on this level. I found this level and the next level to be very difficult in terms of gauging personnel and equipment so I can tell you exactly what you’ll need.

1. You will need to purchase **ARGOS** This will be your ship to sail the seas and allow you to continue with your quest. This boat usually costs around 2500 gold pieces on average so be prepared to have to spend A LOT of your money on this level. Once you buy **ARGOS** it can be boarded on the west side of the island.
2. In order to get to **ARGOS** you are going to need to purchase a longboat. The longboat gets your crew from the boat to the several islands so that they can be explored.
3. You will also need to purchase an Anchor. The Anchor allows you to Anchor your ship next to an island. You will use the USE command to access the Anchor when it is needed.
4. You will also need to purchase Oars. I chose to purchase Oars and extra food rather than sails. Sails will save you greatly on your food supply but it can be very difficult to maneuver and there are many obstacles. Like the other lands, if you run into an obstacle you may randomly lose an important item or crew members. You cannot afford either on this level. So again, save often! Oars can be accessed via the USE command so that you can row the ship in any direction you chooses.
5. You will also need to purchase the **TARDIS** before you leave Olympus. This is the sub that you will use in Captain Nemo land. If you do not purchase it beforehand and bring it along, it will not be there for you to use when you go through the gateway to Captain Nemo land.
6. You will need to purchase FUEL and AIR for the **TARDIS**. Each of these you have to manage just like food. Yes, it’s a nightmare. 50 to 100 of each depending on the size of your party might be enough. I made the mistake of going out, finding the gateway, and then realizing I had no submarine and I watched everyone drown. I loaded my saved game (thankfully) and purchased the **TARDIS** this time around but didn’t realize I also needed to purchase FUEL and AIR for the submarine. I then watched as everyone asphyxiated on the bottom of the ocean floor.
7. You will need more bodies if you have only 12-19 individuals in your group. The first island you will need to find is the Isle of Circe. Her island is in the upper northeast corner. She is very hard to beat and just as powerful as Mordred. It took me 30 individuals and Excalibur in order to beat her. Once you defeat Circe you will find the 2nd Ring of Power. You need the signet ring and the two Rings of Power in order to take Guinevere from Lucifer. So it is imperative that you beat Circe.
8. You will need enough food now to get you to the end of the journey and the confrontation with Lucifer and then back to Olympus.

So you will need all of these things and thus plenty of gold and things to trade once you arrive in Olympus. Be prepared for this management nightmare.

Once you take the 2nd Ring of Power from Circe you can head due east on the map and just south of the Isle of Circe and you find the gateway to Captain Nemo land.

Captain Nemo land can be even more of a nightmare than Olympus. It is crucial that you monitor your AIR and FUEL supply here because you have to have enough to make it back! It was very close for me. It was excruciating to explore this level so I was greatly relieved when I discovered Atlantis. Atlantis is your gateway to Dante’s Inferno and the last level. You can find Atlantis in the upper northwest corner of the map. There is nothing you need to do on this level other than to find that gateway. You can hire divers and obtain treasures off of the ocean floor to increase your score but once I had made it this far I could have cared less.

The Dante’s Inferno level is brutal. Your adversaries are brutal. Save often. There is one last chance to purchase food and supplies in the upper northwest corner of the Dante’s Inferno map.

It is extremely important that while you are in this city you purchase a PLANK. The PLANK will allow you to cross a molten river later in this same level in order to reach Guinevere. You can also finally purchase more food here as well if you are running low. You cannot purchase AIR or FUEL for the **TARDIS** here. That can only be accomplished in Olympus.

Once I used the PLANK to get across the molten river I encountered this vile ceremony in progress. I mistakenly thought that was Guinevere in the middle there and that I had to rescue her. Many of the demons on this level will not attack you unless you come into contact with them. My rescue attempt failed miserably and they ripped me to pieces like a guest star on the Walking Dead. I luckily was saving often and once I had my game reloaded I proceeded to carry on.

I finally reached Lucifer and because I had the signet ring and two Rings of Power in my possession he was forced to relinquish Guinevere into my care. However; much to my shock at this point in the game; he told me I had to make my way all the way back through the six lands with my prize. He dared me; “Now try to get back…”

I could not believe I had to work my way all the way back through these lands. This is why I cautioned make sure you have enough AIR, FUEL, and FOOD to not only reach Lucifer but to get back to Olympus as well. It was tedious but I did manage to make my way all the way back.

There was a contest that Crystalware was running with Fantasyland 2041 A.D. I still have no idea what “mystery” they wanted the user to solve or what solution they wanted the user to send in. Winners which qualified were awarded a $1000 cash prize. If anyone has any information as to what the winning answer was I’d love to hear from you. I had decided early on not to worry myself over trying to solve this 40 year old mystery and instead just focus on trying to finish the game.

This game was immense and very hard as well. I am probably in rare company with others who have finished this game. I felt the same way after I spent almost an entire summer playing and beating Moria. I played the Atari version of Fantasyland 2041 A.D. on an emulator. If you, dear reader, decide that you want to try and take on this beast, I would plan at least 10 to 20 hours to finish depending on your personal schedule and perseverance.

This was the biggest game ever created up to that point in 1981. Nothing else comes even close. Time Zone, a graphic adventure from Roberta Williams of Sierra On-Line, would surpass Fantasyland’s size in 1982 as the largest game ever released. John Bell always seemed to think and dream big and I can’t help but think this game would have been even bigger had the technology been better. Did I enjoy the game? There were several spots in the game that I highly enjoyed and I thought them to be inventive for the time but getting to those spots was in some ways excruciating. The slow wait time for certain commands began to wear on my nerves a bit. The game did get increasingly “buggy” as well once you got deeper and deeper into it. The company advertised that the game was hard and that many would likely not finish and they were not wrong. It was because of some of these things however that when I did finish the game I felt a great sense of accomplishment. The last four levels took a great amount of patience and perseverance in order to finish. Overall I enjoyed my time with Fantasyland 2041 and I appreciate it’s place in computer gaming history.