~2 minute readScreening Room: The Rating Game
Deadline
hardware requirements:
Apple
II/II plus/IIe/III w/emulator, 48K
(disk); also available on IBM-PC,
64K (disk); TRS-80 I/III, 32K
(disk); Atari 400/800/1200, 32K
(disk); and Commodore 64 (disk,
distributed only through Commodore).
manufacturer: Infocom, Inc.,
55 Wheeler St., Cambridge, MA
02138; (617) 492-1031
price: $49.95
In Deadline, Infocom's first mystery text adventure, you're a detective trying to solve the mystery of an apparent suicide.
When the game begins, it's 8:00 a.m., you're outside the victim's estate, and you have 12 hours to solve the case. Most of the commands you give the computer count as one minute. Some that may take longer in reality, though, also take longer than one minute in the game (e.g., SEARCH). To keep you aware of (and worried about) your deadline, the time is displayed constantly on the top of the screen.
On your search for clues, you're allowed to roam freely around the estate, enter any rooms, and examine anything of value to the case. When noon arrives, though, the lawyer shows up to read the victim's will, so keep an eye on the time.
Some of Deadline's more interesting features include: commands that permit you to WAIT for an event to occur, ANALYZE objects at any time, FOLLOW people, discuss other people or things with suspects, and HIDE from someone if a hiding place is available. You also can ask the suspects any questions you want. When they answer, however, they're not always truthful. There are false leads, subplots, and as many as 25 different possible endings (including the death of the suspect, or your own death.)
To enhance the realism of Deadline, the game comes with all sorts of different items: a casebook describing the dos and don'ts of being a detective, a memo from the police department, a coroner's report, a letter from the victim's lawyer, a lab report describing items found by the body, a sample of the drug (candy, actually) the victim supposedly took an overdose of, a photograph of where the body was found, brief interviews with the suspects, and the suspects' fingerprints.
It's difficult to solve the mystery the first, second, or even fifth time you try. But it doesn't become boring after a few weeks. You can save up to eight different games to come back to, and since your time is used only when making moves, you can continue whenever you want. Deadline is very exciting, is as good, or better, than Zork, and will bring hours of enjoyment and, best of all, intrigue.
ANNE MORRIS lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She's 15 years old.
This article appeared in
K-Power
Feb 1984
These historical, out-of-print articles and literary works have been GNUSTOed onto InvisiClues.org for academic and research purposes.
