Amazon (video game)

Amazon is a computer game of the U.S. company Telarium (formerly Trillium ). Built in 1984, it belongs to the genre of the text adventure with graphics ( Interactive Fiction with Graphics) and was developed by writer and film director Michael Crichton, the case on his motives Romans Congo fell back.

Action

The plot in the style of an adventure story with sci-fi elements plays in the Amazon region in South America. The player works on behalf of the company NSRT ( National Satellite Resource Technology). He is looking for a twelve -man expedition team of NSRT, the jungle of the Amazon should involve diamonds and went missing. He is accompanied by the talking parrot Paco.

Gameplay

The adventure is played by joystick and keyboard. With the joystick short action sequences are controlled, eg fine-tuning a radio to receive an emergency call of the lost NSRT expedition team. Entering game commands is done in short English sentences on a text parser using the keyboard. Typical game commands are for example the study of objects ( " examine " ) or the questioning of persons ( "ask", "talk "). Some game actions must occur within a time limit. The adventure can be played in three different difficulty levels.

Development and production details

The Adventure has a two-dimensional graph, which is partially animated, a theme song and sound effects. Amazon has been implemented for the C 64, DOS, Atari ST and Apple II. The graphics are by David Durand. A translated into Spanish MSX2 version with newly created graphics appeared in 1987. Developed was the play of Michael Crichton. The story is partly based on his novel Congo (published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1980).

Reception

In the 1980s, the detailed and well-written texts of the Adventures were highlighted in games reviews. In the test report from a computer magazine action, graphics and vocabulary of the text parser were assessed as very good.

In the early 2000s, Amazon was placed on the history of gaming in the online magazine Telepolis in a series with other literature related Adventures of the company Telarium in a journalistic retrospect, where the gaming experience greatly the process of reading and the game itself resembled the narrative Exposing a fiction.