Planetfall

Planetfall is published in parts on the parser of Zork -based science fiction text adventure by Steve Meretzky and was the eighth title of Infocom 1983. Like most Infocom games, it was taken for many different hardware platforms simultaneously on the market, there were versions for PC and Apple II, and later, for example, also for the Atari ST, Amiga and Commodore 64 as Meretzkys first game it became one of its most popular games ever and a bestseller for Infocom, so some years later (less successful ) sequel was developed with the station name case.

Planet case was classified by Infocom in the internal difficulty rating as a "standard " and is a portmanteau from Planet and landfall. There are many similarities between Planet and Space Quest case of 1986; in both games, the protagonist is a kind of " space janitor ", his spaceship is destroyed or rendered unfit, whereupon it lands on a strange planet, from which he must escape.

Douglas Adams was impressed by Planet case so that he undertook Meretzky as a programmer for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Action

In the game you take the role of a humble ensign seventh class on the spaceship PLC Feinstein A, which was divided to Deckschrubben from his superiors. After a sudden series of explosions on board he uses a escape pod and lands on a nearby planet. There are signs of civilization, but no signs of living organisms. Along with a helpful robot named Floyd the player must solve the puzzles of the planet and find a way to return home.

Red herring

Planetfall worked as many games of Infocom with so-called red herring (red herrings ): It contains a number of useless items, unreachable locations and deceptive conducting clues.

In absolute contrast to the text adventures available at that time it was unnecessary, if not impossible, to come to a lamp in order to (see Zork ) enter the usual at this time " dark areas " can. Although located in a laboratory, a lamp ready, but the player dies, any attempt to include these. There was the ability to edit the code so that the player could take the lamp in possession. If now the " dark areas " visited, the game responded with the message "You Should not be here. "

Trimmings

Since 1982, Infocom put his game packages at various extras, in the case of Planet this case were:

• A Stellar Patrol " Special Assignment Task Force " card in the form of a credit card
• 3 Postcards
• A handbook of Stellar Patrol entitled " Boldly Going Where Angels Fear to Tread "