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                   BOARD GAMES
  Much of our country's computing power is spent playing games.
Here's why. . . .

                 Shannon's trees
  In 1950, Claude Shannon proposed a way to make the computer win
at checkers, chess, and other complicated games.
  To understand his method, let's try to make the computer win a
game of checkers. As in all checker tournaments, one player is
called BLACK, and the other is called WHITE (even though his
pieces are actually red). BLACK makes the first move. When a
player can jump, he must. The game ends when one of the players
can't move (either because he has no pieces or because his pieces
are blocked).
  To simplify the game, we'll play on a 4-by-4 board, instead of
the traditional 8-by-8. Each player has two pieces instead of
twelve.
  This diagram shows 63 possible positions:
  Position #1 is the initial position, from which black will
move. The three arrows coming from position #1 represent the
three legal moves he can choose from. Depending on which move he
chooses, the board will wind up in position #2 or #3 or #4. Which
move is best?
If he moves to position #2, white will reply by moving to
position #5 or #6 or #7.
If he moves to position #3, white will reply by moving to
position #8 or #9 or #10.
If he moves to position #4, white will reply by moving to
position #11 or #12 or #13.
  The diagram shows all possible ways the game's first five moves
could go. Throughout the diagram, w means white man, b means
black man, w' means white king, and b' means black king. The
diagram's called a tree. (If you turn it upside down, it looks
like the kind of tree that grows in the ground.) The arrows are
called the tree's branches. The tree's depth is 5.

  Which position should black choose: #2, #3, or #4? The wisdom
of your answer depends on how deep you make the tree. In this
particular game, a depth of 5 is satisfactory; but in 8-by-8
checkers or chess you might have to dig deeper. Theoretically,
you should keep digging until you reach the end of the game; but
such a tree might be too large to fit in your computer's memory.
  For chess, Shannon estimated that a complete tree requires
10120 branches. Einstein estimated that the number of electrons
in the universe is only 10110. If Shannon and Einstein are both
right, the tree can't fit in the universe!
  Having constructed a tree of depth 5, look at the bottom
positions (#42 through #63) and evaluate them, to see which
positions look favorable for black. You should consider many
factors: which player has control of the center of the board?
which player can move the most without being jumped? and so on.
But to keep matters simple, let's consider just one factor: which
player has the most men? Consider a king to be worth 1½ men.
  Subtract the number of white men from the number of black men:
the result of the evaluation is a number, which is called the
position's value. If it's negative, black is losing; if it's
positive, black is winning; if it's zero, the game is heading for
a draw.
  For example, consider position #42. Since black has one man and
white has two, the value is 1 minus 2, which is -1. That's why
I've written ``v=-1'' underneath that position. The value of each
position at depth=5 is computed by that method.
  For the positions at depth=4, use a different method. For
example, here's how to find the value of position #29. That
position has two possible outcomes: #46 and #47. Which outcome is
more likely? Since the move will be made by black, and black's
goal is to make the value large, he'll prefer to move to #46
instead of #47. Since the most likely outcome is #46, whose value
is ½, assign position #29 a value of ½ also.
  Here's the rule: to compute the value of a position at depth=4,
find the maximum value of the positions it points to. (The value
of position #29 is the maximum value of positions #46 and #47,
which is ½.)
  To compute the value of a position at depth=3, find the minimum
value of the positions it points to (since it's white's turn to
move, and white wants to minimize). For example, the value of
position #18 is the minimum value of positions #31 and #32, which
is 1½.
  Compute the values for depth 2 by maximizing, and the values
for depth 1 by minimizing. Finally, you get these results:
The value of position #2 is -1.
The value of position #3 is  0.
The value of position #4 is -1½.
Since black wants to maximize values, black should move to
position #3. If white is also a good player, the game will
probably gravitate toward position #53, a draw. If white is a
poorer player, black will win.
  That method of choosing the best move was proposed by Shannon.
Since it makes heavy use of minimums and maximums, it's called
the minimax method.
                                                 Samuel's checkers
                                         After Shannon, the next
person to become famous was Arthur Samuel. He spent a long time
(twenty years, from 1947 to 1967) trying to make the computer win
checkers. He used Shannon's minimax idea, but made many
improvements.
                                         His first spectacular
success came in 1962, when his program won a game against Robert
Nealey, a former Connecticut checkers champion. After the game,
Nealey said ``The computer had to make several star moves in
order to get the win. . . . In the matter of the end game, I have
not had such competition from any human being since 1954, when I
lost my last game.''
                                         Later, the computer
played six more games against Nealey. Nealey won one of them; the
other five were draws.
                                         In 1965 the computer
played four games against W.F. Hellman, the World Champion. The
games were played by mail. Under those conditions, Hellman won
all four. But in a hastily played game where Hellman sat across
the board from the computer, the result was a draw.
                                         In 1967 the computer was
beaten by the Pacific Coast Champion, K.D. Hanson, twice.
                                         In short, the computer
wins against most humans and draws against most experts, though
it loses to the top champions. To bring the computer to that
level of intelligence, Samuel improved Shannon's method in three
ways. . . .
                                         1. When choosing among
several moves, the computer analyzes the most promising ones more
deeply.
                                         2. After computing the
value of a position (by examining the positions under it), the
computer writes the value on a piece of tape. If the position
recurs in another game, the computer looks at the tape instead of
repeating the analysis.
                                         3. To compute the value
of a position, the computer examines many factors in addition to
the number of pieces each player has. The computer combines the
factors, to form combination-factors, and then combines the
combination-factors to form a single value. The relative
importance given to each factor is determined by ``experience''.
Samuel experimented with two forms of experience: he had the
computer play against itself, and also had it analyze 250,000
moves that occurred in checker championships.
                Chess
  While Samuel was programming checkers, other programmers tried
to write a similar program for chess. They had a hard time. In
1960 the best chess program that had been written was beaten by a
ten-year-old kid who was a novice.
  Greenblatt The first decent chess program was written in 1967
by Richard Greenblatt and his friends at MIT. It actually won a
game in a chess tournament.
  But in most tournaments, it lost. In 1970 and 1971, it lost
every game in every tournament it entered.
  Slate & Atkins In 1968, Atkins & Gorklen, undergraduates at
Northwestern University, wrote a chess program. Inspired by their
program, David Slate, a graduate student in physics there, wrote
a chess program also. In 1969, Slate & Atkins combined the two
programs, to form a better program, Chess 2.0.
  During the next several years, they continually improved the
program. Their most famous version was called Chess 4.7.
  Their program is playing chess against human experts ___ and
winning! Their computer has scored several triumphs in
tournaments designed for humans.
  In 1976, their computer won the class B section of the Paul
Masson American Chess Championships. Against the humans in that
tournament, it scored 5 wins, no losses. By winning that
tournament, it achieved a U.S. Chess Federation score of 2210 and
became a chess Master.
  Then it entered the Minnesota State Championship, to try to
become the Minnesota State Champion, but lost (it scored 1 win, 3
losses, 1 tie).
  In August 1968, an International Chess Master, David Levy, bet
about $5,000 against several computerists. He bet that no
computer would win a chess match against him in the next ten
years. He won the bet: in August 1978, Chess 4.7 tried one last
time to win a match against him, but lost (it scored 1 win, 3
losses, 1 tie).
  Slate & Atkins improved Chess 4.7, to form Chess 4.9, which is
the world champion of computer chess.
  But though it's the world champion of computer chess, it's not
necessarily the ``best'' program. It wins because it runs on a
super-fast maxicomputer (manufactured by Control Data
Corporation). Other chess programs, written for slower computers,
are at a disadvantage.
  Minicomputer chess Almost as fast as Chess 4.9 is a program
called Belle, written at Bell Telephone Laboratories. Belle runs
on an unusual minicomputer that's specially wired to create trees
quickly.
                                         Microcomputer chess Each
of those programs ___ Chess 4.9 and Belle ___ requires an
expensive CPU and lots of RAM. Is it possible to write a decent
chess program using only a cheap CPU and very little RAM? Yes! In
1976, a Canadian named Peter Jennings wrote a program called
Microchess 1.0; it ran on a $250 microcomputer (the Kim 1), which
contained a 6502 CPU, no ROM, and only 1K of RAM! The program
played decently, though not spectacularly.
                                         Later, he improved the
program, and called the improvement Microchess 1.5. It plays on
the Radio Shack model 1 and the Apple. The version on the model 1
consumes 4K of RAM: 2K is for the logic, and the other 2K are
just to make the picture of the chess board look pretty! You can
get Microchess 1.5 for just $20 from your local Radio Shack store
or Apple dealer.
                                         In 1978, an amazing
chess program was written by a husband-and-wife team: Dan and
Kathe Sprachlin. They named the program Sargon, to honor an
ancient king. It ran on the Jupiter microcomputer, which
contained an 8080 CPU and 16K RAM. It played much better than
Microchess. When the Jupiter computer became obsolete, the
Sprachlins rewrote the program, to make it run on the Radio Shack
model 1 and the Apple. Then they developed an improved version
called Sargon 2, and a further improvement called Sargon 3, which
runs on all the popular computers. Sargon 3 is published by the
Hayden division of Spinnaker.
                                         For many years, Sargon 3
was considered the best microcomputer chess program. But in 1986,
Sargon 3 was beaten by a new program called Chessmaster 2000.
Like Sargon 3, Chessmaster 2000 contains many features that make
it fun for both experts and novices. It's published by Software
Toolworks, distributed by Electronic Arts, costs about $35, and
comes in versions for the Apple 2e & 2c, Commodore 64 & Amiga,
Atari 800 XL & ST, and IBM PC.
                                         Recently, Sargon 3 has
been replaced by Sargon 4, and Chessmaster 2000 has been replaced
by Chessmaster 2100 and Chessmaster 3000.
                                         When you play against
the computer by using Sargon 4, Chessmaster 2100, or Chessmaster
3000, you can ask the computer for help, by pressing a special
key. Then the computer will tell you how it would move, if it
were in your position. You can follow the computer's suggestion
or ignore it. (Since your goal is to outsmart the computer, you
should listen to the computer's advice; but instead of following
the advice, you should try to devise a move that's even more
clever.)
                                         Many companies
manufacture hand-held electronic chess games. Some of the games
even contain a tiny voice synthesizer, which lets the computer
tell you its moves verbally. Some of the games even contain a
mechanical arm, so that the computer will pick up the pieces and
move them. Some of the games have touch-sensitive boards, so that
you can indicate your move by just pushing the square you want to
move from and the square you want to move to. For humor, some of
the chess games have the computer make wisecracks about your
style of playing.
          Choosing a level
  When you begin playing a top-notch computer game (such as
Chessmaster 3000), you must choose the ``level'' at which you
want the computer to play. If you choose a low level, the
computer will move quickly, without much forethought. If you
choose a high level, the computer will play more carefully (and
make better moves); to do that, the computer ``looks ahead'', by
building a very large tree, which requires lots of time; and so
you must wait a long time until the computer moves. If you choose
a level that's very high, the computer will need several hours to
compute its move.

           Why a computer?
  Playing against the computer is more interesting than playing
against a human.
  When you play against a human friend, you must wait a long time
for your friend to move. When you play against Chessmaster 3000
at a low level, the computer moves almost immediately. So you can
play several games against the computer (and learn a lot from
them) in the same amount of time you'd need to play just one game
against a human. So by playing against the computer, you gain
experience faster than by playing against a human. Bobby Fisher,
the world chess champion, now plays only against computers; he
refuses to play against humans.
  The computer is kinder than a human. If you make a bad move,
the computer lets you ``take it back'' and try again. If you seem
to be losing, the computer lets you restart the whole game. The
computer ___ unlike a human ___ has infinite patience and no ego.
Playing against the computer is less threatening than playing
against a human.
  If you have a computer, you don't have to worry about finding
an opponent who's ``at your level''; when you play against the
computer, just tell the computer at what level you want it to
play. The computer will act about as smart as you wish.

               Othello
  Chess and checkers are both played on a checkerboard. Another
game that's played on a checkerboard is Othello. It uses
checkers, but each checker has two sides: one side is white; the
flip side is black.
  When the game begins, only four checkers are on the board: two
of them have their white side showing, and the other two checkers
show black.
  The game is for two players. One is called the white player,
and the other is called the black player.
  For example, suppose you're the white player. On your turn, you
put an extra checker onto the board, so that the checker shows
white. You must position the checker so that it and a previously
placed white checker surround some black checkers. Then you flip
all the surrounded black checkers, so that they become white.
  Similarly, on his turn, the black player puts a black checker
onto the board, so that some of your white checkers are
surrounded by black, and he flips all those white checkers, so
that they become black.
  The game ends when the board is entirely filled with checkers.
If most of the checkers are white, the white player wins;
otherwise, black wins.
                                         The game is tricky,
because the definition of ``surrounded checkers'' is strange, and
because you can't easily figure out who's winning. At first
glance, you'd think that if most of the checkers on the
checkerboard are white, white is ahead; but at the end of the
game, the situation can change drastically. For example, the
black player might place a black checker in such a way that most
of the white checkers become black. So you must guard against
dangerous positions. During the early parts of the game, the
white checkers' positions are more important than their quantity.
                                         The game began centuries
ago in England, where it was called Reversi. It resembled the
Japanese game called Go. About 1975, it was marketed in the
United States as a board game, under the name Othello (which is
trademarked by Gabriel Industries). Programmers tried to make the
computer imitate the game and win.
                                         After writing Sargon 2
(the award-winning chess program), Dan and Kathe Sprachlin turned
their attention to Othello, and wrote an award-winning Othello
program called Reversal. It plays Othello better than any other
program ever invented. Like Sargon 2, it's been published by
Hayden, runs on the Apple, allows several levels of play, costs
$35 on disk, and lets you press a ``tutoring'' button whenever
you want the computer to give you advice on how to reply. For
added humor, each checker shows a frown or smile. For example, if
the white checkers outnumbered the black, the white checkers wear
smiles, and the black checkers wear frowns; the smiles and frowns
grow bigger, as white's lead over black increases. And whenever a
checker is added to the board or flipped, the computer plays a
musical fanfare.
                                         Unfortunately, Hayden
has become part of Spinnaker, which has stopped publishing the
program, because most people have forgotten how to play Othello
and no longer want to play. Too bad! It was a fun game.

                                                    Backgammon
                                         Backgammon is a game
played with dice. It requires both luck and skill. For many
years, the world champion backgammon player was a human. But
recently, he was beaten by a computer, in a thorough match.
                                         The human was a poor
loser: he blamed it on ``bad luck''. He refuses to admit that the
computer has more skill than he. Nevertheless, the computer is
now the world champion.

            ACTION GAMES
  Hey! Let's have some action!

            Arcade games
  The first popular arcade game was Pong, which made the computer
crudely imitate a game of ping-pong. Then came Space Invaders, in
which you had to shoot aliens who were dropping bombs on you.
  Those games restricted you to moving in just one direction. The
first popular arcade game that let you move two-dimensionally was
Asteroids. It let you move through the sky while dodging
asteroids and enemy space ships.
  Those outer-space and sports games appealed mainly to boys. The
first arcade game appealing mainly to girls was Pac Man, a
non-violent fantasy in which you ran through a maze full of food
and tried to gobble as much as possible, before ghosts gobbled
you. It appealed especially to dieting girls who dreamed of
pigging out without getting caught.
  In all those games, the graphics were crude. The first arcade
game that used professional graphics was Dragon's Lair, which
contained a videodisk full of animated cartoons drawn by artists
who had worked at Walt Disney Studios. To dodge obstacles that
appear in the cartoons, you move your joystick, which changes the
action that the cartoons display.
  Each year's arcade games reflect the latest fads. For example,
you can play arcade games about break-dancing and kung-fu.

             Game watch
  A game watch is a digital wrist watch that plays a video game.
If you're stuck in the middle of a boring business meeting, look
at your game watch.
  When your colleagues see you looking at your watch, they'll
think you're an impatient executive tracking the time. Meanwhile,
you're just having fun!
                                                     Olympics
                                         In 1980, Tim Smith quit
his job at Burroughs and spent the next 9 months programming
Olympic Decathlon, which made the Radio Shack Model 1 computer
imitate all ten of the decathlon's events.
                                         In his game, one of your
fingers represents your left leg, and another finger represents
your right leg. To ``run'', you tap those fingers (left, right,
left, right) as quickly as possible on the keyboard. By using
those fingers and others, you compete in all ten events: the
100-meter dash, long jump, shot-put, high jump, 400-meter dash,
110-meter hurdles, discus throw, pole vault, javelin throw, and
1500-meter run. You can play solo or against your friends. At
parties, you can form teams and cheer each other on.
                                         Later, he wrote versions
for the Apple 2 and the IBM PC. They're published by Microsoft.
                                         A competing company,
Epyx, has invented a variation that displays better graphics. It
comes on a pair of disks, called Summer Games and Summer Games 2.
It plays the national anthems of all major countries and includes
sixteen games: pole vault, diving, 4x400-meter relay, 100-meter
dash, gymnastics, freestyle relay, 100-meter freestyle, skeet
shooting, triple jump, rowing, javelin, equestrian, high jump,
fencing, cycling, and kayaking. It runs on all popular computers:
IBM, Mac, Apple 2, C64, Amiga, and ST.

                                                   Sports heroes
                                         A game called One-on-One
accurately imitates a basketball shooting match between two
stars: Larry Bird and Julius (``Doctor J'') Erving. The program
imitates each player's personal strengths and weaknesses. You can
take the role of either player and try to avoid getting creamed
by the other. Programmed by Eric Hammond with help from Larry and
Doctor J, it's published by Electronic Arts.

           ADVENTURE GAMES
  Adventure is a game where you hunt for some sort of
``treasure''.

         Original Adventure
  The original version of Adventure was written by Will Crowther
& Don Woods, on a PDP-10 maxicomputer at Stanford University's
Artificial Intelligence Lab.
  When you run the program, the computer says you're near a shack
at the end of a road. The computer offers to act as your body and
understand any two-word command. Then it waits for your command.
You can tell it to GO NORTH or GO FORWARD or ___ if you're going
along a stream ___ you can say FOLLOW STREAM or GO DOWNSTREAM.
  The first time you play this game, you feel lost ___ the game's
an adventure. As you wander in whatever direction you please, the
computer says you're going through forests, across streams, over
hills, etc.
  After much aimless wandering, you'll eventually see a stream.
If you follow the stream, you'll come to a mysterious iron grate.
If you try to BREAK GRATE, the computer says you're not strong
enough. If you try to OPEN GRATE, the computer says you have no
keys. You'll get more and more frustrated, until the computer
offers to give you a hint ___ but the hint will cost you several
points. If you acquiesce, the computer will give you this hint:
find the keys!
  To find the keys, the typical stupid player tries wandering
through the forests and valleys again. But if you're smart,
you'll remember that at the beginning of the adventure you were
next to a shack. So you go back to the shack, walk inside, and
find keys! So you trek back to iron grate, and use the keys to
get in. You think ___ aha! ___ you've succeeded!
  But actually, you've just begun! The grate leads you into a
cave that contains 130 rooms, which form a big three-dimensional
maze. Lying in the maze are 15 buried treasures; but as you walk
through the maze, you can easily forget where you are and where
you've come from; you can waste lots of time just walking in
circles, without realizing it!
  To add to the challenge, the cave contains many dangers, such
as trap doors (if you fall in, you break every bone in your
body!) and trolls & snakes, which you must ward off by using
various devices that you must find in the cave's rooms or even
back at the shack. Yes, you might have to trek all the way back
to the shack again!
  Finally, after dodging all the evil things in the cave, you
reach the treasures. You grab them up and start walking away with
them. But then you hear footsteps behind you, and pirates steal
your treasures! Then you must chase the pirates.
  If you manage to keep your treasures and your life and get out
of the cave, you haven't necessarily won. The nasty computer
keeps score of how well you retrieve the treasures. The maximum
possible score is 350. After you've played this game many times
and learned how to duck all your adversaries quickly, you'll find
you scored just 349 points, and you'll wonder what you did wrong
that cost you 1 point. The answer is: during the adventure, you
must borrow magazines from a room in the cave; to get the extra
point, you must return them!
  The game's a true adventure, because as you wander through
forests and the rooms in the cave, the computer tells what you
see, but you don't know whether what you see is important. For
example, when you walk into a room, the computer might say the
room contains a small cage. That's all
it says. You must guess whether the cage has any significance and
what to do to the cage, if anything. Should you pick it up? Try
to break it? Kiss it? Carry it? Try anything you like ___ give
any command to your computer-body that you wish ___ and see what
happens.
                                         Here's a list of the
most useful commands. . . .
                                         To reach a different
room in the cave, say GO NORTH (or SOUTH, EAST, WEST, UP, or
DOWN). You can abbreviate: instead of typing ``GO NORTH'', just
type ``N''.
                                         Whenever you see a new
object, TAKE it. Then you can carry it from room to room and use
it later whenever you need it. If you see a new object and want
to TAKE it, but your hands are already full, DROP one of the
other objects you're carrying.
                                         To see a list of what
you're carrying, tell the computer to take INVENTORY. To make the
computer describe your surroundings again, say LOOK.
                                         To see your score so
far, say SCORE.
                                         If you say SAVE, the
computer will copy your current position onto the disk, so you
can return to that position later. If you ever want to give up,
just say QUIT.
                                         Throughout the game, you
get beautifully lyrical writing. For example, the computer
describes one of the rooms as follows: ``You are in a splendid
chamber thirty feet high. The walls are frozen rivers of orange
stone.''
                                         The game's an adventure
about a person exploring a cave. Since you're the person in the
adventure and can type whichever actions you wish, you affect how
the adventure progresses and ends. Since it's high-quality
story-telling whose outcome is affected by your input, it's
called interactive fiction.

                                              Microcomputer versions
                                         Although Adventure was
originally written for a PDP-10 maxicomputer, you can get an
exact imitation for microcomputers.
                                         The first imitations
(published by Microsoft for the Apple 2 and by Creative Computing
for CP/M computers) are no longer marketed. Today, the best
imitation for microcomputers comes on a disk called the Golden
Oldies, published by Software Country and distributed by
Electronic Arts. The disk includes four programs: Adventure,
Eliza, Pong, and Life. It's been available for the IBM PC, Mac,
Apple 2e & 2c, Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga, and Atari 800 XL.
But getting your hands on it is difficult, since it's no longer
being actively distributed.

                                                      Infocom
                                         After Adventure became
popular, several programmers invented a variation called Zork,
which lets you input long sentences instead of restricting you to
two-word phrases. Like Adventure, Zork consists of hunting for
treasures in a cave. In Zork, you reach the cave by entering a
house's basement.
                                         Like Adventure, Zork
originally ran on a PDP-10 computer. Infocom has published
versions of Zork for microcomputers. Versions for the IBM PC,
Mac, Apple 2e & 2c, Apple Macintosh, Commodore Amiga, Atari ST,
and Radio Shack Models 3 & 4 cost $39.95. Versions for the
Commodore 64, Atari 800 XL, and Radio Shack Color Computer 2 cost
just $34.95.
  Zork sold so well that Infocom published sequels, called Zork 2
and Zork 3. Then Infocom published other variations, where the
cave's been replaced by experiences in outer space or by
thrillers involving spies, murders, mysteries, and haunted
castles. Infocom's latest big hits are The Hitchhiker's Guide to
the Galaxy (based on the award-winning wacky outer-space novel by
Doug Adams) and Leather Goddesses of Phobos (which lets you
choose among three naughtiness levels, from ``prude'' to
``lewd''; choosing ``lewd'' makes the computer asks whether
you're at least 18; it also asks whether you're male or female,
and you get a titillating 3-D comic book with a scratch-and-sniff
card).
  Infocom was an independent company but has been acquired by
Activision.

           Sierra On-Line
  Shortly after Infocom developed the microcomputer version of
Zork, Sierra On-Line developed Super Stud Adventure, which was
quickly renamed Softporn Adventure. Instead of exploring a cave,
you explore a brothel. To enter the brothel, you must find the
secret password (hint: go to the bathroom and look at the
graffiti!) and find enough money to pay for your pleasures (by
taking a taxi to a casino and gambling).
  That was the first urban adventure, and also the first sexual
adventure. The ad for it showed a photograph of the programmers
(Ken & Roberta Williams) nude in a California hot tub.
Fortunately, the water in the tub was high enough to cover any
problems.
  The original adventure, Infocom adventures, and Softporn
Adventure display wonderful text but no graphics. They're called
text adventures.
  The most ambitious graphics adventure ever created was Time
Zone, published in 1981 by Sierra On-Line. The Time Zone program
is so long that it fills both sides of 6 Apple disks; that's 12
sides altogether! In fact, the game's so long that nobody's ever
finished playing it! Here's how to play . . .
  You use a computerized ``time machine'', which transports you
to 9 times (400 million B.C., 10000 B.C., 50 B.C., 1000 A.D.,
1400, 1700, 1982, 2082, and 4082) and 8 locations (North America,
South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, Antarctica, and
Outer Space).
  Wherever you go, your screen shows a high-resolution color
picture of where you are. For example, if you choose
``approximately 1400'', Christopher Columbus will welcome you
aboard his ship. Altogether, the game contains over 1400
pictures! You travel through history, searching for clues that
help you win.
  Time Zone is historically accurate and doesn't let you cheat.
For example, when you find a book of matches in the year 2082,
your time machine will let you carry the matches back to 1982 but
not to 1700 ___ since matches weren't invented until 1800.
  Living through history isn't easy. Jonathan Rotenberg, chairman
of the Boston Computer Society, played the game and said:
I've been killed dozens of times. I've been assassinated by
Brazilian terrorists, karate-chopped by a Brazilian monk, eaten
by a tyrannosaur, crushed in an Andes avalanche, stampeded by a
buffalo, overcome by Antarctic frostbite, and harpooned by Mayan
fishermen.
And you see it all in color!
  Time Zone sold for $99.95. Alas, teenagers didn't buy it,
because it took too long to win and was too expensive. Sierra
On-Line has stopped selling it.
                                         Recently, Sierra On-Line
has made Softporn Adventure even more exciting, by adding
graphics. The new graphic versions are called Leisure Suit Larry
in the Land of the Lounge Lizards, Leisure Suit Larry 2: Looking
for Love in all the Wrong Places, and Leisure Suit Larry 3:
Passionate Patti in Pursuit of the Pulsating Pectorals.

                                                Creative Computing
                                         Dave Ahl, publisher of
Creative Computing Magazine, copied the movie Roller Coaster onto
a videodisk, then attached the videodisk player to the computer,
to let the computer control which part of the movie you see. He
wrote an adventure game that lets the computer illustrate each
location and action by a 10-second clip from the movie. When you
play the game, your goal is to save your friends before they ride
on a roller coaster that crashes. It's the world's first video
adventure. Your actions determine which part of the movie you see
next, which disaster scenes you manage to avoid, and the fate of
your friends. It's the world's first interactive movie.
                                         Although Dave and his
friends all love to play the game, the Actors Guild refuses to
let Dave sell the game to strangers. The Guild claims that when
Dave shows the scenes in an order different from the original
movie's, he's destroying the ``artistic integrity'' of the
actors' performances.
                                         Ha! Does the Guild
really believe that a grade-B horror flick has any artistic
integrity at all?

                                                     Spinnaker
                                         Spinnaker publishes the
Windham Classics. It's a series of adventure games based on kid's
novels.
                                         You become Dorothy in
The Wizard of Oz, Jim Hawkins in Treasure Island, Fritz in Swiss
Family Robinson, Alice in Alice in Wonderland, and Green-Sky in
Below the Root. The games include graphics. To make those
adventure games easy, whenever you get stuck the computer helps
you by printing a list of words to try typing.
                                         Each computerized novel
costs just $9.95 for the Commodore 64, $39.95 for the Apple 2e &
2c and IBM PC.
                                         Spinnaker also publishes
Telarium Software, based on novels that are more adult. You
become Perry Mason in The Case of the Mandarin Murder, the crime
reporter in Agatha Christie's The Scoop, the researcher in
Michael Crichton's Amazon, and the major characters in Fahrenheit
451, Rendezvous with Rama, Dragonworld, and Nine Princes in
Amber.
                                         The Perry Mason one,
besides being fun, also trains you to become a lawyer. It comes
with a lawyer's handbook that explains the 6 ways to object to
the prosecutor's questions: you can complain that the
prosecutor's asking an IRRELEVANT question, relying on HEARSAY,
BROWBEATING the witness, LEADING the witness to a suggested
answer, getting an OPINION from a person who isn't an expert, or
trying to get facts from a person who's UNQUALIFIED to know them.
                                         To make sure you
understand those six ways to object, the handbook includes a
multiple-choice test about them. The test is titled ``Study Guide
for the California Bar Exam''.
                                         The game also lets you
invent your own questions for the witnesses and give commands to
your secretary (Della Street) and detective (Paul Drake). It
costs $39.95 for the Apple 2e & 2c and IBM PC, $32.95 for the
Commodore 64. The other games in the Tellarium series cost the
same or less.
             Broderbund
  Broderbund has published a game called Where in the World is
Carmen Sandiego? You try to catch and arrest the notorious
international thief, Carmen Sandiego, and the other thieves in
her organization, called the Villain's International League of
Evil (V.I.L.E.), as they flee to 30 cities all over the world.
  To help you understand those 30 cities, the game comes with a
geography book: the 928-page unabridged edition of The World
Almanac and Book of Facts.
  As you play the game, you unearth clues about which cities the
thieves are fleeing to. But to use the clues, you must look up
facts in the almanac. By playing the game, you learn how to use
an almanac, and also learn geography. When you figure out which
city to travel to, the screen shows a map of the world, shows you
traveling to the city, and then shows a snapshot of what the city
looks like, so that the game also acts as a travelogue.
  Because the game is so educational, it's won awards from
Classroom Computer Learning Magazine and the Software Publishers
Association.
  Strictly speaking, it's not a true adventure game, since it
does not let you input your own words and phrases. Instead, you
just choose from menus, which make the game easier for
youngsters.
  Broderbund has created three sequels. Where in the USA is
Carmen Sandiego? has you chasing Carmen's gang across all 50
states; the game comes with Fodor's USA travel guide. Where in
Europe in Carmen Sandiego? takes you to all 34 countries in
Europe and comes with Rand McNally's Concise Atlas of Europe.
Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego? lets you romp through
historical time periods.
  For the Apple 2 family and IBM PC, the original version costs
$39.95, and the sequels cost $44.95 each. For the Commodore 64,
you pay $5 less. Those are the list prices; discount dealers
charge even less.

           Electronic Arts
  My favorite text adventure is Amnesia, published by Electronic
Arts for the Apple 2e & 2c and IBM PC. Like Softporn Adventure,
Amnesia takes place in a city; but Amnesia is far more
sophisticated than its predecessor.
  When you start playing Amnesia, you wake up in a hotel room in
New York City. You discover you have no clothes (you're stark
naked), no money (you're flat broke), and no recollection of who
you are ___ because you're suffering from amnesia. You don't even
remember your name.
  You look at yourself, and notice you're a male. Your first
problem is to get some clothes and money. But then you learn you
have other problems that are even more serious. For example, you
get a call from a guy who reminds you that today is your wedding
day, and that if you don't hurry up and marry his daughter
without further mess-ups, he'll use his pistol. You also discover
that the FBI is looking for you, because the state of Texas has
reported that you're a murderer.
  After getting some clothes (so you can stop scaring the hotel's
maids), there are several ways to get out of your jam. (I've
tried them all!)
  One way is to say ``yes'' to the pistol-packing papa and marry
his daughter, who takes you to Australia, where you live on a
sheep ranch for the rest of your life. But then you never learn
who you really are! Whenever you ask your wife about your past,
she simply says, ``You wouldn't want to know.'' You die of old
age, peacefully; but even on your deathbed, you
don't learn who you are; and so when you die, you feel sad. In
that case, you score lots of points for survival, but zero for
detective work and zero for character development.
                                         A different solution is
to say ``no'' to the bride and ___ after getting bloodied ___ run
out of the hotel, onto the streets of New York. Then the fun
begins ___ because hiding on the program's disks is a complete
map of Manhattan (from Battery Park all the way up to 110th
Street), including all the streets and landmarks and even all the
subway stops! Yes, this gigantic game includes 94 subway
stations, 200 landmarks, and 3,545 street corners.
                                         As you walk one block
north, then one block east, etc., the computer describes
everything you pass, even the most sublime (The Museum of Modern
Art) and the most ridiculous (Nedick's hamburger stands). You can
ride the subway ___ after you get enough money to buy a token.
The game even includes all the subway signs, such as ``Downtown
___ Brooklyn'' and ``Uptown ___ Queens''. To catch the E train,
you must hop in as soon as it arrives. Otherwise, it departs
without you, and the computer says ``an F train comes'' instead.
                                         As night falls, the
computer warns you to find a place to sleep. (You can't go back
to your hotel, since you're in trouble there.) To find a free
place to stay, you can try phoning the names in your address book
___ once you find a phone booth, and get a quarter to pay for
each call. The address book contains 17 listings: J.A., A.A.,
Chelsea H., drugs, F°, Sue G., E.H., interlude, kvetch, J.L., R &
J, sex, soft, Lila T., T.T.T.T., and Wit's End. Each of those
listings is an adventure in itself, and you must explore each of
them thoroughly, to fully discover who you really are.
                                         If your body ever gets
weak (from sleeplessness or hunger or being hit by too many
muggers), you faint on the sidewalk, wake up in a hospital, and
get found there by the FBI, which returns you to the state of
Texas, which executes you for murder. But even that deadly ending
has a cheery note. For example, you can choose your last meal:
would you like steak and potatoes, or turkey? When you finally
die, you can wind up in purgatory, which consists mainly of
getting mosquito bites, with an opportunity to take a rowboat to
heaven, if you can just remember your real name and tell the
boatman.
                                         The entire adventure has
the structure of a good novel: a gripping introduction (you're a
nude, broke, amnesiac groom in a hotel), a thorough development
section (wandering through the streets of New York, searching for
your identity and the meaning of life), and a conclusion (a
whimsical death scene, or something better).
                                         The text was written by
Thomas Disch, the award-winning sci-fi novelist. It's lyrical.
For example, when you escape from the hotel and walk out onto the
streets of New York, the computer says: ``It feels great to be a
single faceless, nameless atom among the million others churning
about in the grid of Manhattan's streets. It feels safe.''
                                         The game combines all
our nightmares about New York into a wild, exciting adventure.
                                         The game's affected my
own life. Now whenever something in my life goes wrong, instead
of groaning I just say, ``I'm in another wild part of Amnesia!''
In Amnesia, as in life, the only way to score top points for
living is to experience it all. To live life to the fullest, you
must take risks, have the courage to face unknown dangers, and
revel in the excitement of the unexpected.
                                         Though Amnesia received
lots of praise from reviewers, sales were disappointing.
Electronic Arts stopped publishing it. I bet if they'd rename it
``Lost in New York'', it would sell well ___ at least in New
York!