How Do I Get Past the Harpies?
Especially back in the 1980s (but still true today), if you happened to know a thing or two about computers, people assumed you were an expert on the subject. And you'd get called on to fix other people's computers. At the age of 14, I knew how to program in BASIC and a little bit of 6502 machine code; I knew what a floppy disk was (they were mainly 5 1/4" back then); and a little bit about booting up different kinds of machines. That made me a "whiz kid" and earned me some measure of respect and awe from adults. Which was of course, very cool.

One Saturday a woman from our church needed help with her computer, and had asked my parents if I could come over and take a look at it. She lived a distance away, so my dad dropped me off to take a look at it, promising to be back in a few hours.

This lady was very gracious, but had no clue what to do with this machine on her kitchen table. This was a "portable computer." Back in 1984, a "portable computer" was jokingly referred to as a "luggable." They were about 50 pounds or so, had a built-in 4" screen, and were about the size of a small suitcase.

I spent about 20 minutes fiddling around with the system, asking the lady for her boot disks and anything else that came with her system. I figured out the problem, but I wasn't able to fix it (I think it was a bad disk, and she didn't have a backup). I gave her my best advice, and I was done. And... I still had a few hours to wait before my dad would pick me up. She gave me some lemonade, and said that she thought there was a couple of games on her assortment of floppies.

The one game I found held my interest for a few minutes (it was some game about a garden maze full of monsters - all ASCII characters), but then I found a disk with a version of BASIC. I booted it up, and began programming.

By the time my Dad showed up to pick me up, I'd written a short little text-adventure game. I only had time to do a really simple text parser, and it had something like 20 areas and a dozen items scattered through them. I left the computer running, and forgot about it. The lady thanked me again for my help (what little I'd done), and I went home and forgot about it.

Shortly after dinner, we got a phone call from this lady. It was for me. I was wondering if there was something else wrong with her computer. I answered the call.

"How do I get past the harpies?!?" she begged me.

It took me a few seconds to realize what she was talking about. She'd discovered my little adventure game --- and had gotten most of the way through it. She was stuck at the harpies, which kept killing her.

"Oh, you get the wax from the candles and put them in your ears. Just 'Use wax.' That way you won't be effected by their song," I responded.

"Thank you!" she said. And she explained that she'd been playing it all evening, and had been trying to get past the harpies for the last two hours, and it had been driving her nuts. She thanked me for the solution, and hung up - presumably to finish the game. Which had taken her almost as long to play as it had taken me to write.

As for me, I felt GREAT. This was the first time someone else had played one of my games - and she'd apparently been hooked on it the entire evening. She LIKED it. And she was not a geeky computer-game addict like me... just some woman who used her computer for her business. But my little invention was of worth to her.

There have been a lot of games since then, and a lot of players. And the feeling hasn't changed much.

It still feels great.

Labels: Adventure Games, Game Design, retro

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 11:16 PM (Permalink)