Did anyone else play this version of Adventure?

I just discovered that I played a nonstandard version of Adventure as a kid. (This is kind of disconcerting, given that I’ve been digging around the source code for weeks.)

The version I played was written in FORTRAN. One of the treasures was an African gray parrot in a pirate aviary, accessible by a rubber raft. There was also an office of some kind with the words “how do you spell relief?” on the wall, and after you read the message, you could use “Rolaids” to teleport to and from the well house. I think the magazine at Witt’s End might have been a copy of Byte magazine.

…and that’s all I’ve got. I can’t remember anything else from “my” version that isn’t in the standard 350 point version. I’m pretty sure “my” version was also 350 points, but everything in the 350 point version looks familiar.

Does this sound familiar to anyone else?

Hmm … I remember playing “original” Adventure on some type of minicomputer in the late 70’s, after hours at Hewlett-Packard. I’m just about certain that that version was in Fortran, and I seem to have a vague recollection of an African gray parrot. I don’t recall the other details you mention, but it’s possible that I’ve just forgotten. Would’ve been thirty-five years or so back :frowning:

However, as I sit here and think about it, I seem to recall that modding Adventure was a popular thing to do back then, at least among programmers, who were just about as interested in “how the heck did they do that?” as in the game itself. So the most likely bet is just that you had a copy that somebody had amused themselves with by adding some rooms/treasures.

I posted here and then realized there was a much easier way to find out. I asked my dad. > < Maybe I should have done that first!

If anyone’s curious, it turns out the source was the MS-DOS version available from the Heath Users’ Group. I misremembered the magazine at Witt’s End, which would have given me a hint, as it was actually a copy of REMark, the Heath Users’ Group magazine.

I wonder if that version still exists anywhere.

I hope it does somewhere, but I can’t supply it. The copy I played was apparently compiled to half-inch computer tape, and then discarded in 2003 for lack of anything that would read it.

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Russel Dalenberg’s page mentions two modified ports that were 350 points

prismnet.com/~ged/www/advelist.html

UCLA0365 – UCLA extension to WOOD0350
(no info on this one, looks like)

LIDI0365 – FORTRAN-77 extension to WOOD0350
Stephen O Lidie Stephen.O.Lidie@Lehigh.EDU

Stephen Lidie seems to have a webpage, if anyone wants to contact him
search.cpan.org/~lusol/

A bit more I found:
Heath Users’ Group newsletter #4

pestingers.net/Pages_images/ … 4_1978.pdf

the end page mentions Gordon Letwin’s port of Adventure

Gordon Letwin also did “Microsoft Adventure” which might be related, pretty sure it didn’t have a parrot though.

I believe that’s exactly the version I played. Thanks for tracking this down!

I would tweet at Gordon Letwin about this, because that means he was indirectly responsible for my game dev career, which is kind of neat. But he seems to be doing that inaccessible philanthropist millionaire thing. Ah, well.

I just got an email out of the blue from Jesse Wolfe, who tracked down the version of Adventure I’d played in an archive at EC Neilson’s Antediluvian Design.

The zip is in planemo.org/retro/downloads/z100 … 016-37.zip, and the in-game credits cite Brian Barnes and Dave Sandage of Zenith as the creators.

I cannot possibly tell you how happy I am. As illogical as it may be, discovering that I’d played a “lost” version of Adventure was really disheartening, and having a copy again feels like someone just handed me the location of Atlantis.

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The source code for this Adventure (and modified Zork as well) is at:

https://www.bigcatos.com/BigCatOs/tag.html