The Hobbit ....You wait time passes
This game entered our life, as most games did , in a sleek black box We knew this was something special, the box didn't even have a picture on the cover. It was when we opened the box we knew it was something special.
There wasn't just a cassette inlay, there was a manual AND a paperback novel. See, if it had a novel to read this HAD to be educational and good for you. It had cost us £14.95 (admittedly if you take away the price of the novel it meant the game was the same price as most other games of the time). The manual was a world of information including a dictionary at the end , telling you which words you could use to interact with the characters ( dear reader , please remember that sentence , it will come back to haunt us). The novel was handed to me to read, let us not forget that this is the quest for education. We loaded up the game and very much like one of the key phrases in this game ...you wait ...time passes as it did take about 12 minutes to load. But the wait was worth it, plus it was the perfect amount of time to brew a cuppa to fortify yourself for the coming adventure.
I'm not going to explain the plot to this game, I'm sure you all already know it...dwarves...dragons...gold...more gold...singing...quaffing...singing and gold. Instead I will focus on the experience of two people who, very like Bilbo Baggins, had never been on an adventure before. It all started off so well.
You are in a comfortable tunnel like hall , with a wonderful magenta carpet and a green door. See , Melbourne House invented the colour combination that has reignited the career of Michael Portillo! We are joined by Gandalf and Thorin ( Gandalf likes to skulk off by himself and Thorin has a tendency to sit down and sing about gold )and it's off we go . To start with we managed quite well. East...East...East...( beware trolls , but I had already read this far in the book) SouthEast...wait...wait...day dawns and that is all the hints I am giving you. I have to admit I found the game really easy to play, I could always explain what I wanted to do with the limited words at my disposal ( in the manual they give this language it's own name, Inglish). I was able to go in the compass directions, talk , examine and carry items, what more could a girl ask for?
But when I had retired for the night , after once more being killed by the wood elf, a whole new adventure started. Enter the Dad Hobbit....Remember that dictionary page, dear reader? With all the words you could use? Imagine that being kicked subtlety under the sofa , as Dad Hobbit began his quest to find the dragon. Very early on he found out that attacking either Gandalf or Thorin was a bad idea and resulted in your premature death, sometimes even before you had left the Hobbit hole. My father's relationship with Thorin was fraught with difficulties, to the point it is possible they may have needed counselling , or a restraining order. His relationship with Gandalf was no better , in fact he got on with the three hideous trolls better , at least he could run away , wait until daylight and then return when they had turned to stone. Suffice to say , the programmers had not taken into account the Dad Hobbit and his utter frustration with strong and silent Gandalf and Thorin the impatient, who had a habit of trying to hurry you up one minute and then sitting down and singing about gold the next. Fortunately the program didn't recognise requests placed in more colourful language. This was a game written with children in mind, thank goodness.
Eventually the sheer impossibility of this game stopped us from playing it , there is only so many times you can get locked in the wine cellar. Even after reading the novel we were still unable to get the characters to do what was needed and we both eventually conceded defeat after only completing 22% . But this is one of the few games my Dad still remembers clearly now he is in his 80's and it was ground breaking in it's day. As it is a text adventure it is still now very playable on an emulator , no need of joysticks or strange key configurations.
More importantly it showed us naïve adventurers something more about the Spectrum , it could compliment things that had already been written , it could act as your guide to interact with new worlds and lead you to new interests. There was an alternative to TV and Cinema and it's name was the Sinclair Spectrum.
P.S. What about Dad Hobbit? I think he is still trapped in that wine cellar to this day!
More importantly it showed us naïve adventurers something more about the Spectrum , it could compliment things that had already been written , it could act as your guide to interact with new worlds and lead you to new interests. There was an alternative to TV and Cinema and it's name was the Sinclair Spectrum.
P.S. What about Dad Hobbit? I think he is still trapped in that wine cellar to this day!