Crapshoot: The Hobbit, a text adventure that lets you try to kill Gandalf
From 2010 to 2014 Richard Corbett Wrote Crapshoot, a column about craps to make random and obscure games reappear. This week, this adventure brought Tolkien’s epic fantasy to life like never before-with words! Etc., etc……
In the center of the earth, on the land of the Shire, lived a brave little hobbit that we all admire. He lived in a hobbit cave with a long wooden tube and shaggy toes, and everyone knew him. Bilbo. Bilbo Baggins. He is only three feet tall. Yes, Bilbo, Bilbo Baggins. The bravest little hobbit of them.
Okay, will you try to let Thorin Oak Shield carry your shaggy butt by your side?
The Hobbit is one of the classics of the 80s. It is loved by everyone who has played it. What is commendable is that it turns adventure into… Well, it is a good attempt, especially according to the 1982 standard.
While GO NORTH is still impressive, GO WEST can still be entered without “you go to the west. Life there is peaceful”, it dares to try-including-has a role in its own life, almost Real-time adventures that no other commercial game has tried (although there are some, such as Infocom’s Border Zone), and a mix of text and graphics, both help convey the world and punish anyone who buys their arrogant color monitor.
Hear some people talk about it, the Hobbit is the greatest text adventure ever. Of course, it is not. From the perspective of modern people, this is as primitive as orcs’ dating information. (“Name: Azog the Defiler. Hobbies: Murder the dwarf scum, helping to turn what should be a movie into three napkins. The first thing people noticed about me: my prosthetic murderer stabbed when I laughed Their faces. I also like jazz. ”)
Depending on how you play, it may also be one of the shortest adventures ever, just as a transcript of what happened the day Gandalf came to town, and Bilbo is not in the mood for anyone’s shit.
Gandalf gave you the curious map. Thorin stood up and said to you, “Well, Mr. Baggins, everything is ready for our adventure, I must say things look promising. Can we leave now? “
> Kill Gandalf
You attack Gandalf. With a light blow, you can split his skull. Gandalf is dead.
Thorin said, “Well, are we just going to stay here all day?” “
> Kill Thorin
You attack Thorin. With a light blow, you can split his skull. Torlin is dead.
♪ Bilbo! Bilbo Baggins! The bravest little hobbit of them! ♪
Of course, you cannot guarantee to eliminate these two heavy hitters. You have a random chance that it will somehow end up above the norm. It is more likely that “You swing at Thorin, like a lightning bolt hitting him from a height by coincidence” or “You try to hit Gan with a rooster. Doffer. He smiled happily. He had a heart attack and fell to the ground with an angry look of shock.”
If you don’t have these two characters on hand, this is also a fairly short adventure. You can still walk through the Shire like in the movie, but with the wizard’s intestines on your fists, and Thorin’s head as a furry hat, and you can walk through most of Middle-Earth effortlessly. Mainly because in The Hobbit, Middle-earth only has a few screens. Trying it does not work well, but first stepped over Elrond’s corpse in Rivendell, and then was trapped in the goblin dungeon. Here, you need to enter one of the most famous lines in the history of text adventure-say “bring me” to THORIN-so you can get the motivation to open the window. He was lying in the puddle at the bottom of the bag, and the only possible outcome was…well…bad ending. Restore, restart, exit?
Although the story is severely cut off, especially by trimming the dwarves with a red pen to Thorin, Balin, Dwalin, Fili, Kili, Dori, Nori, Ori, Oin, Gloin, Bifur, Bofur, and Bombur, only a little bit until “Thorin” , The Hobbit actually did a very good job of covering the narrative of the game.
The world has been compressed to the point of being funny, especially if you have seen the panoramic view of the movie, so much so that Bilbo’s house is basically next door to Rivendell in the Lonely Mountain, and it may be very close to Mount Doom. It can be used as a garbage incinerator. furnace. However, the actual plot point approached unexpectedly in different ways, including dueling with Gollum and persuading Bud to kill the dragon Smaug, meeting with Elrond and finally bringing it with a box of gold and some vaguely beautiful magic rings. Come back alive.
The main problem is that all random elements will get in the way. They are cool on a technical level, but in practice they are a real bloody nuisance. Characters usually disappear when you need them, or coax endlessly to do what you need, and the world where Bilbo can defeat Thorin is a world where Bilbo can be defeated in an instant. This can be very frustrating if you don’t use drills, in which case it has a shorter temper than the abandoned dwarf.
you can Play Hobbit for free in your browserThere is no reason not to give it a try—of course, unless you are racing to give a heart to a dying superhero, in which case you must do it first. Or, there is also a PC version, which can be easily found-ahem -.If you remember when this game started, you might also be interested in a project called Badlands, It uses peculiar futuristic technology to track what’s happening behind the scenes, using the Spectrum version of the game.
Speaking of the Spectrum version, here is its entire content. Marvel at its amazing graphics. The PC version is more stylish and higher resolution, but you can’t beat… well, you were able Defeating the original is like someone defeating it with an ugly stick. Nevertheless, when people think of this game, this is usually the version they think of. The film took about nine hours to tell the story. YouTube, 10 minutes. Including load time. How far have we come, eh?