We had better start by getting the obvious out of the way. The Commodore Vic 20 was not a powerful machine. Your average Vic 20 game had to be programmed using less than 3,583 bytes of memory. To put that into context, a modern mobile phone with sixteen gigabytes of storage has approximately 4.7 million times more memory at its disposal than was afforded to a standard Vic 20. To have produced any games at all within such limitations is a miracle within itself. The fact that some of those games were, in reality, really quite fun and playable, would perhaps be almost unbelievable to today’s gamer.

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Some games couldn’t be delivered within such tiny memory constraints though, so the machine’s expandability was utilised, with the more memory- hungry titles coming on cartridges which were plugged directly into the Vic’s memory expansion slot. This meant that fairly passable versions of the Arcade classics of the time could be played at home, with cartridge versions of Space Invaders, Galaxian, Defender and Pac Man (although often given different names) among those being available.​

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Game developers also used the extra memory to push the boundaries and for the first time we saw a series of text adventure games that could be played on Commodore’s home computer. The Scott Adams adventure games released on cartridge for the Vic 20 included: The Count, Adventure Land, Mission Impossible and Pirate Adventure and I played them all, but the one that I remember most fondly is Voodoo Castle.​

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The game is an unfolding story, told purely by text on screen, driven by the user inputting a series of two word commands, normally one simple verb and one noun, for example: “use saw”, “take lamp” or “eat food”. You can also direct your player to go north, south, east and west as well as up and down when you are near a staircase or similar. Each time you move you are told where you are and what you can see. Graphics? No there aren't any. Sound? Nope. This is a game purely for your imagination, but it embraces it and takes it partying.​

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You are required to navigate the play area, collect and use items, solve puzzles and eventually complete your quest, which in this case is to wake Count Cristo who is lying asleep in a coffin at the start of the game. As the number of rooms you visit and the complexity of routes between them increases, it becomes necessary to chart your progress with pen and paper, drawing ever more complicated maps, sometimes accompanied by extensive notes to remind yourself what was where and how to get there.

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​When providing a reviewer's opinion it is only fair to remember that these games are nearly as old as I am. For their time they were fantastic fun, offering something very different for the average gamer. Working out the (sometimes rather obtuse) puzzles and progressing was both enjoyable and particularly rewarding in the early 1980s. At the time, there was no internet, which meant that there were no easily available walkthroughs available. This resulted in the games (that in reality were really quite short) taking many hours, days, weeks or even months to complete.

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However, while great fun for their time, it must be said that in this day and age they haven’t aged well. Our tastes have inevitably become more sophisticated and the player certainly doesn’t get the same level of enjoyment now that they did at the time; indeed there are some issues that are decidedly infuriating. Let's not forget that this is still a pretty small game in terms of memory, so tricks have to be played to increase its longevity.

Some puzzles are really quite un-intuitive and the game will often try and misdirect you, telling you that certain actions cannot be done "yet", heavily insinuating that they can in time, whereas in reality a lot of these were complete red-herrings. There is extensive trekking back and forth and not really achieving anything and, perhaps most annoyingly, you can die; often, abruptly, and without warning. If you are some distance from your last save, this is extremely frustrating.​

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The game is still available to play for free online here (though bizarrely the instructions tell you how to load a game but not how to save!) ​

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If you are a younger gamer and would like to see what adventure gaming looked like forty years ago, then have a look, though don't be surprised if you are disappointed. For the older gamer, while still being pretty frustrating and simplistic, the game also offers a proper full-on belt of retro-gaming nostalgia which really will take you back.​

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And if you get stuck, do what took me nine months to work out the first time around, and “wave bag…”

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AG 04/12/20218

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Featured in Pixel Addict magazine, issue 2.

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© Words and pictures copyright grapeswriting.com

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