Jedadiah Leland’s Horrific Adventures In The Internet Archive #1: Richard and Alan’s Escape From Hell (1990, Entertainment Arts)

Posted on October 1, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

For October, I have decided to return to the Internet Archive and further explore their collection of old MS-DOS games. I started things off by playing Richard and Alan’s Escape From Hell (1990, Electronic Arts).

Though the Archive only includes the game (no manual, no instructions of any kind), I was able to find Escape From Hell‘s front and back cover art at the Let’s Play Archive. Almost everything that needs to be known about this game’s tone and sensibility can be deduced simply by looking at these illustrations:

As for the game itself, it is a role-playing game. You are Richard. Largely as a result of your own stupidity, you and your best friend and your girlfriend have all accidentally be sent to Hell.

(Good work on including the Guns and Roses poster in the background.)

Because this is a MS-DOS game from 1990, Hell looks like this:

In the screen shot above, you are standing above a river of flame and there is a skeleton blocking your way. One thing that I quickly learned is that you should not try to talk to the skeletons. If you do, this will probably happen:

That did not work out. One of the problems with trying to play Escape From Hell on the Internet Archive is that, especially early on in the game, it is very easy to die and, without the original disk, it is impossible to save your game. Death means that you literally have to start over again, from the very beginning.

It is worth restarting, though. Once you figure out how to avoid running into skeletons, you do get a chance to talk to some of the other inhabitants of Hell. Like this one:

You also come across clues and other messages:

Eventually, I even found the entrance to Hell’s waiting room.

Unfortunately, once I got in the waiting room, I went down the wrong hallway and this happened:

Escape from Hell is not an easy game but it is worth sticking with. If you can manage to go long enough without dying, you will eventually meet some condemned people who are willing to help you out. Most of them are real-life tyrants, like Joseph Stalin and Genghis Khan. It turns out that Stalin is a really good shot with a nail gun. Who would have guessed?

I am still playing my way through Escape From Hell but, from what I have seen, I recommend it for anyone who wants to take a retro trip through the underworld, MS-DOS style.

Law & Order In The Internet Archive: Crime Fighter

Posted on September 27, 2016 by Jedadiah Leland

I have just returned from another exploration of the old MSDOS games stored at the Internet Archive and I think I may have found one of the most addictive games ever programmed. Without further ado, let’s play Crime Fighter (1993, Peter Steffen)!

(There is an updated version of Crime Fighter that can be downloaded from here. This review is solely for the version that can be found on the Internet Archive.)

Crime Fighter is a game where you attempt to become the top boss of a small city’s criminal underworld. When I started the game, this is the first thing I saw:

Got it? This is an educational game!

You are one of the four gangsters mentioned above. The other gangsters are your friends and loved ones, assuming you can convince them to play the game with you. I could not.

Fear the Citizen Kanes!

After naming my gang, I was randomly assigned some stats. I am more brutal than smart and I’m also as weak as a little kitten. I’ll be running that city in no time.

Rules? Who needs rules? I never read the rules. I can figure this game out on my own. What I can’t figure out is which of the two options I’ve selected. Since I’m using the arrow keys to make my selection, it’s not easy to tell which option I’ve highlighted. Have I selected no? The only way to know for sure is to press enter.

‘I guess I must have selected yes because there’s the rules.

After all of that, it was finally time to get this game started. At the start of each turn, you see this:

I looked at my six choices. I was not ready to quit the game and, since I was playing a single-player game, there was no next player. Run through the town sounded like fun but I wasn’t here to have fun. I was here to become the top ganglord in the city! The best way to do that? Get rid of all the other gangs.

I selected gang war.

That didn’t work. Apparently, you can only have a gang war if you are actually playing with other people. That was good news for the Citizen Kanes, though. With no other gangs around, the city belonged to us. I guess that made me the winner, right?

Seeing as how I was the city’s new criminal overlord, I decided it was time to run through the city.

Where should I visit first? I knew I was only allowed 25 moves before the turn ended so my options were limited. I decided to pay a visit to the building with the H on the rooftop.

That explains the H. I decided to enter the hotel.

“Give me all your money!”

What happened next occurred so quickly that I did not get a chance to capture a screenshot. Four gangsters showed up with baseball bats and beat me down. It was not the greatest moment in the history of the Citizen Kanes.

Things only got worse.

Bribing the police was the right thing to do but now I was down 1500 DMs. I was not sure how much money I had left so, when I was transported back to the city map with 15 moves left in the turn, I decided to visit the bank.

Coming back at night seemed like a good and simple way to make some money!

Who needs instructions? How difficult can it be?

Again, I pushed the wrong button and I got the instructions anyway.

What the Hell am I supposed to do with that? Can I see those instructions again?

Too late. The alarm went off. It’s a good thing that I can always just bribe the police.

Did I push the wrong button again?

Yes, I did.

This is when I discovered is that, while you can keep backing up from them for as long as you want to, there is no way to escape the police. You have to fight them. That’s a problem when they have guns and you do not.

That did not work out. I guess I’m dead now.

No, I’m not dead. But I am in prison for 1 month, which amounts to four game turns. If I had been playing with another player, this would have given them time to steal all of my territory while I was in jail. Luckily, since I was playing a single player game, being in jail did not hurt me one way or the other.

After I was released, I found myself back here:

This time, I decided not to go to the bank or the hotel. Instead, I went down to the bottom of the map and visited the subway station.

I learned my lesson the last time! I bribed the cops and they let me go.

Where to now? It looks like there might be a gun shop above the subway station.

Eddie, I like the way you think. Show me your weapons.

Hand grenades might be helpful but let’s take a look at that pistol first.

Thanks for nothing, Eddie.

If I can’t afford a gun, maybe I can steal one. And who has more guns than police? As I started to make my way to the police station at the top of the map, this suddenly happened:

Thanks, officer!

Here’s the police station! Let’s see if I can trick a flatfoot out of his piece.

Sorry, stealing a gun is not an option. If I wanted a weapon, I was going to have to find the money to pay for it. But how could I steal the money if I didn’t have a gun?

Is that a casino down at the bottom of the map? My prayers have been answered!

Blackjack has always been my game and I am not a bad poker player either. But I needed money quickly and that meant betting it all one turn of the roulette wheel.

Great.

To recap: After playing the game for fifteen minutes, I have spent a month in jail, I do not have a gun, and I am now broke. The Citizen Kanes have seen better days.

Maybe I should just go rob that big shopping mall.

Money transport in the evening? That sounds like an easy score!

How difficult can that be?

I just have to wait for that one guard to move before I move down. There he goes! This is so easy, I can’t believe I did not try it earlier…

This is probably not going to end well.

No, it did not end well. Not only was I captured but I did not have any money to offer the police. I ended up spending another 4 game turns in jail. When I was released, I looked back on what I had accomplished after playing the game for 30 minutes and it became clear that I really only had one option.

I may not have done so well on my first try but Crime Fighter is an addictive game and I look forward to playing it again in the future!

The Further Adventures of Jedadiah Leland In The Internet Archive

Posted on August 26, 2016 by Jedadiah Leland

Tonight, I returned to the Internet Archive. The last time I was there, I had promised that I would come back and play a game called Sex Olympics. I was not really being serious when I wrote that but, as I have learned over the past few days, when you promise your editor that you are going to review a game called Sex Olympics, she is not going to let you off the hook until you do it.

However, before playing Sex Olympics, I decided to run another scenario through President Elect (1987, Strategic Simulations, Inc.).

The last time I played President Elect, I simulated the current election and the game predicted that Donald Trump would win 535 electoral votes and 56% of the popular vote. (For the record, Hillary did win the District of Columbia.) This time, I decided to see what would have happened if, in 1980, the GOP had not selected Ronald Reagan and instead given their nomination to North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms.

According to the simulation, independent candidate John Anderson would have received a lot more votes than the 5 million he won in the actual election:

(For the record, in the actual election, Ronald Reagan won 50% of the popular vote, Jimmy Carter took 41% and John Anderson received 6.6%.)

But what would the electoral college look like?

In the simulation, John Anderson won the most electoral votes with 233. But it takes 270 electoral votes to win the election.

That’s not good.

There you have it! Jimmy Carter would have come in third but he still would have been elected President. Jesse Helms would have returned to the Senate and John Anderson would have been screwed over.

Once that was settled, I was ready to play Sex Olympics (1990, Free Spirit Software, Inc).

In Sex Olympics, you are legendary porn actor and intergalactic superstud Brad Stallion. You have been recruited to represent Earth in the Sex Olympics. Your goal is to go from planet to planet and do it with as many aliens as possible. But you have to be clever and you have to be quick because your main competition is Dr. Dildo and he appears to be much better at this than you are.

When the game starts, you are here:

You have a blond assistant named Sandie, who you can either ask questions or screw. Since Sandie never had much to say whenever I tried to talk to her, I went with screw.

Yeah, that’s hot.

Unfortunately, neither talking to nor screwing Sandie helped me with my main problem. I could not figure out how to get out of the damn room! I clicked on both doors. I clicked on the window. I pushed the “e” key for east and the “n” key for north. I tried to call someone on the phone. No matter what I did, the same thing happened:

Finally, I figured out that you had to click use and then click a very specific place on the door on the west wall if you wanted to go outside. Clicking on go and then the door won’t work. Clicking on use and then clicking on door won’t work. No, you have to click on use and then click exactly on the door knob if you want to go outside.

I bet this crap never happens to Dr. Dildo.

Once I finally managed to get outside, I found the Big Thruster waiting for me.

Inside Big Thruster, I discovered all the planets that I could go to in my effort to defeat Dr. Dildo and prove Earth’s carnal superiority:

Let’s go to the big red one. Why not?

The big red planet turned out to be planet of volcanoes. This did not look promising but at least there was a village in the valley below.

I was heading into the village when suddenly…

That dog looks really mean! Forget this, I’ll just go back to Big Thruster and visit another planet!

This little white planet looks promising. Let’s see what it’s like.

Is that an igloo? Let’s see if anyone’s down there!

This is a lot better than that killer dog on the volcano planet! Let’s heat this igloo up!

“Inge has nothing to say.” That line pretty much sums up the entire game.

Oh, I have to manually tell the game that I want to remove my clothes? Sorry, I just assumed that it was implied.

Is it usually this difficult to have sex with a blue-skinned alien on an ice planet!?

Things got a lot more difficult when I was suddenly told that I had been arrested for indecent exposure and sent back to Earth!

I don’t have time for this! I’m trying to defend the honor of Earth!

Good for Dr. Dildo.

Eventually, I was released from jail and I was sent back to where it all started.

And that’s when I said forget it. This is too much trouble for a planet that is not even willing to support me. Dr. Dildo can have the medal. Brad Stallion is retired!

After being left disappointed by Sex Olympics, I decided to try playing a game called Survival In New York City (Keypunch, 1986).

Survival in New York City is a text adventure game from Keypunch, a company that was notorious for stealing other people’s games and releasing them without any designer credits. That appears to be the case of Survival in New York City.

It’s still not a bad game. You wake up in an alley in New York City with no memory of who you are or how you got there.

Your goal is to not get killed while exploring New York. That is easier said than done.

A piece of advice: Don’t go near the teenagers until you have figured how to get a gun.

I played Survival In New York a few times. I got further every time but I still ended up dying. Sometimes, I was killed by teens. Sometimes, I was killed by Hell’s Angels. It is a game that I will be playing again.

After that grim journey through New York, I decided to finish off my visit by playing a classic, Lemonade Stand (1973, Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium).

Lemonade Stand was the very first business simulation game. You have a lemonade stand. Every day, you decide how much lemonade to make, how many signs to make, and how much to charge per glass. If you do a good job, you make money. If you do a bad job, you go out of business and have to live with the shame of failure for the rest of your life.

For some reason, I decided to open my lemonade stand on a cloudy day.

Because of the bad weather, I did not sell any lemonade on that day or the next. Finally, on the third day, I decided to take a chance and see what would happen if I tried to sell on a cloudy day. It was time to take a risk.

I know that some people would say, “With a 50% chance of rain, why even try?” I’ll tell you why. In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women.

Besides, what’s the worse that could happen?

At this point, I did what any gamer would do when the game was not going his way. I quit and started over.

Sunny! Now, this is more like it!

I took a chance. I invested all of my money in making lemonade. Unfortunately, that left me no money for advertising.

I ended up throwing out 70 glasses of lemonade but I still made a profit. That’s the important thing. Now, my fate and the fate of my lemonade business depended on tomorrow’s weather.

Oh yeah, baby! Hot and dry!

I had learned my lesson from yesterday. I made less glasses but I paid for two signs. And I charged a little more because it’s hot and dry. People are suffering out there. They need my lemonade and I need their money.

$4.15 in profit! I am a business genius! Get out of my way, Bill Gates! Look out, Warren Buffett! There’s a new player on the block!

But then I asked myself, “When did this crazy business become all about money?” It was supposed to be about the lemonade. I had made my money and proven my point. Taking my $4.15 with me, I pressed ESC and retired from the lemonade game.

I never looked back.

After that, I left the Internet Archive. I was through exploring for the night but I knew that I would come back in the future and simulate another presidential election or attempt to survive in New York City or maybe I would even get back in the lemonade business.

But you can forget about the Sex Olympics.

Dr. Dildo can have that medal.

Jedadiah Leland’s Adventures In The Internet Archive

Posted on August 6, 2016 by Jedadiah Leland

I have just returned from exploring the Internet Archive. The Archive, which is also the home of the Wayback Machine, is a non-profit online library with millions of free books, movies, software, music, and websites. In particular, I have always been interested in their collection of old MS-DOS games and that is what I was looking at tonight. While I could have played Oregon Trail or maybe one of the many Leisure Suit Larry games available, I instead decided to check out four lesser known games.

The first game I played was Hidden Agenda (1988, Trans Fiction Systems, Inc.)

Hidden Agenda is a strategy game. You have just taken over as the president of a South American country and you have to decide how you are going to rule. Are you going to be a corrupt dictator or an idealistic reformer?

I played the game twice. The first time I played, I filled my cabinet with right-wingers, pardoned the leader of the former dictator’s death squad, and sanctioned the murder of a labor leader. The second time I played, I filled my cabinet with communists, jailed the leader of the death squad, and gave into every demand. Both times, my government was overthrown after a year and I was executed in my office.

Hidden Agenda has a learning curve that I have yet to master but it was still an interesting game. Some players will probably find it to be too dry but I appreciated that the game attempted to take a realistic approach to the trials and tribulations of leading a post-revolutionary society.

After getting executed for the second time, I decided to play a safer political simulation, President Elect (1987, Strategic Simulations, Inc.).

A perfect game for political junkies, President Elect allows you to manage a presidential campaign. You can either take part in a historical campaign, like Kennedy vs. Nixon in 1960, or you can create your own candidates by answering questions about their positions and their abilities as a campaigner. You get to decide everything your candidate does, from what states he visits to whether or not he agrees to a debate.

I decided to run a simulation based on the current election. Since the game does not include any candidates beyond 1988, I created versions of Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Gary Johnson. I did my best to be fair and unbiased while determining their strengths and weaknesses as campaigners. For instance, I gave Hillary a low public speaking rating while rating her highly for her poise under pressure. I gave Trump a low score for poise under pressure but a high score for his ability to get and hold an audience’s attention. I then entered in the current economic conditions.

For 9 game weeks, I managed Gary Johnson’s campaign and got nowhere. I did not have as much money as Trump or Clinton, which meant I could not afford to campaign as extensively as they could, and I watched as my national support got smaller and smaller with each passing week. On election night, it was clear who was going to win.

I don’t want to panic anyone but here’s the final result of the simulation:

After watching Donald Trump win every state in the union (though he did lose the District of Columbia), I decided to give Kingmaker (1994, TM Games) a try.

Kingmaker opens with none other than William Shakespeare explaining the history behind the War of the Roses.

In Kingmaker, you are one of the claimants battling to become the king of England. After Shakespeare’s introduction, you are given a series of options regarding how difficult you want your game to be. This was my favorite:

Advanced plague? This was going to be fun!

Unfortunately, then the game started:

I spent a few minutes moving the arrow over England and clicking. Nothing happened. I clicked on the boxes at the bottom of the screen. Nothing happened. I clicked on the names over on the right side of the screen. Nothing happened.

I had run into the biggest potential problem with playing the games in the Internet Archive: none of the games come with their original instruction manual. Kingmaker looked like it could have been fun and I usually enjoy strategy games but I got frustrated trying to figure out how it worked. Perhaps if I can find a copy of the game’s manual, I will try to play it again.

Once it became clear that I was never going to figure out how to play Kingmaker, I decided to try Executive Suite (1982, Armonk Corporation).

Executive Suite is a largely text-based game in which you attempt to go from an entry-level job to being president of the Mighty Microcomputer Corporation.

The game starts with the receptionist, Angie, asking if your resume is on file or if you need to go through the interview process. Angie is so helpful! I bet MMC is going to be a great place to work!

Since I did not have a resume on file, I decided to submit to the interview process.

The interview started normally enough.

The interviewer then asked me what part of the country I was from. I selected the northeast.

The questions continued. The interviewer asked me where I went to college. He asked me if I had an advanced degree. He asked me what I majored in. I selected Girls. (That was an option.)

Then he asked me this:

I am sure that question violated some sort of law but I must have given the right answer because he then told me this:

Finally, I was allowed to apply for a job.

Once I was finally hired, I was presented with my first big decision:

Of course I’m going to go drinking with the boys! What could possibly go wrong?

That worked out well! This Bucky Carter seems to be a great guy. I wonder what other ideas he has.

Another chance to bond with the boys? Forget studying, let’s get down at the local house of ill-repute!

I made a mistake but I’m new here and it was just my first day. Surely, this will not still be held against me after I’ve been with the company for a year.

This doesn’t look good.

An envelope? Maybe I’m getting a promotion!

That’s not good.

It does not look like I am going to be the president of the Mighty Microcomputer Corporation any time soon. I’m not giving up though. I will definitely be playing Executive Suite again!

In fact, there are still many games in the archive that I am going check out. In fact, I just spotted something called Sex Olympics.

I shall return.