Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Game 103: Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1981)


Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves is a joyfully chaotic game in which you, as Ali Baba (and/or a host of other characters) navigate the landscape of Arabian mythology while being attacked with startling frequency and randomness by the titular 40 thieves. It continues the originality that developer Stuart Smith first demonstrated in Fracas, offering elements seen in few (if any) other RPGs of the era, including cooperative multi-player, classical themes, and a world in which there are no generic "orcs" or "rats" or "zombies," but in which every enemy and ally is a uniquely-designed and named NPC.

A typical Ali Baba room. There's a minotaur foe to the right, two treasure chests, and a wandering unicorn NPC named "Equus" that I was never able to productively interact with. Hidden squares in the room teleport you and knock you around, making the room more of a "labyrinth" than it seems. You can see the various movement and action options at the bottom.

I owe Stuart Smith a debt of gratitude for forcing me to finally learn the story of Ali Baba. I've been exposed to his name, and the name of his One Thousand and One Nights story, for 40 years, but I've never actually learned it. I would have assumed that Ali Baba was the leader of the 40 thieves, but in fact the story is about Ali Baba and his friends systematically outwitting the 40 thieves and stealing their gold.

The game incorporates elements from the traditional legend, such as Ali Baba's venal elder brother, Cassim, having died in the thieves' treasure cave when he forgot the password to open the cave ("Open Sesame!": the origin of the phrase).

The thieves' treasure cave of legend. The rune at the bottom triggers the passcode to get in and out.

But for the most part it's a potpourri of characters and themes from Arabian, Greek, and Roman mythology. The main quest--to rescue the sultan's daughter, Princess Buddir--comes from Aladdin's fable, and indeed Aladdin himself comes wandering through the screens. Names of the thieves (e.g., Absal, Mahmud, Omar, Kwadrach, Abul-Fath) are drawn from Persian writers and their works, Islamic saints and historical figures, and similar sources. We encounter creatures based on the signs of the zodiac, a minotaur's lair, and the Sword of Damocles. PCs in addition to Ali Baba have a high-fantasy tinge, as they're classified into human, dwarf, elf, and halfling races, and they include Abou Hassan and Scheherazade from other One Thousand and One Nights tales; Celegorm, Luthien, and Curufin from Lord of the Rings; and Thora and Ulva from "Hansel and Gretel." "Doctor Who" (an owl) shows up as a wandering, friendly NPC. There were probably a bunch of other references that I missed.

The 40 thieves wander throughout the screens of the game, and there are indeed 40 of them, all named, with different attributes and equipment. Other enemies stay on fixed screens and include bears, slimes, rats, dragons, werewolves, and tigers. Combat can escalate extremely quickly. You'll start by fighting one thief and suddenly three more will appear. If you're lucky, Aladdin or some other NPC might come along while you're fighting them and help you out.

Three of the 40 thieves gang up on Ali Baba. Fortunately, he's just rescued his friend Abdallah in the lower right. (You can't see Ali Baba in this screen shot because he had "blinked out" when I took it.)

Combat remains relatively primitive, though the game is unique in explicitly providing the formulas for hits and damages in the manual. There only two attributes--strength and dexterity--and four types of weapons and four types of armor. These come together to determine whether your blow lands and how much damage it does, but luck plays a huge role as well. Rather than give you a specific description of the damage done, you get a strong sense of how hard a character hits by the description. I believe they are, in order, "jabs," "pokes," "hits," "clouts," "pounds," "whops," "smacks," "bashes," "whacks," "smites," "smashes," and "wallops."

The resulting physical damage is also expressed in terms of the reactions of the characters (both PCs and foes). At the lowest level, the armor simply absorbs the blow and the character "chortles." It proceeds from there to "Hah! Just a scratch!" to "Ouch!" then "Aaargh!" and finally "Aiyeeeee!" There is one final level that I have trouble believing Stuart Smith programmed into the original game; I suspect it is the work of the person who cracked my copy:


There aren't many tactics to help you in combat. You can have allies assist you, trade weapons for brawling by leaping on your enemy's square (something that the enemies themselves do with alarming frequency), and try to lure enemies to other NPCs of opposing factions. Of these tactics, the latter is the most satisfying. There were plenty of times in which I happily ignored the thieves and simply let dragons, bears, or wandering enchanted swords (one of them called "Bane of Thieves") take care of them. (In fact, the game challenges you to try to win without killing a single foe yourself, something that I didn't even attempt.) If you can survive combat, it's a simple matter to (R)est until you're hale again. There were many times that I didn't survive combat; though the game "resurrects" you in such cases, I confess I typically re-loaded from my last save.

Ali Baba stands aside while enemies duke it out with each other.

Navigation is as confusing and chaotic as combat. As you wander through the areas, trying to find the path to Princess Buddir, picking up gold, reading runes, and buying weapons and armor at scattered merchants' shops, you have to contend with one-way doors, random squares that teleport you to other areas, squares that knock you back or sideways, walls that can be smashed down (and plenty that you injure yourself against while trying to smash down), doors that don't return you to the same place that you came from, walls that collapse behind you, and other assorted navigation nightmares.

Runes scattered about the floors--many left by a "friendly mage"--give you bits of knowledge about the game and its lore and hints to getting to Princess Buddir. I didn't understand a lot of them--there was something to do with the colors of the rainbow and the acronym "Roy G. Biv" that I never figured out. But occasionally there were helpful. For instance, one scroll advised me: "On the gilded pathway, walk straight and narrow." When I reached a room called "the gilded pathway," I knew to walk straight ahead, through an apparent object, rather than use the sides, which would have subjected me to random teleporters.

Walking carefully along the gilded pathway.

I played with a single character (Ali Baba), though I was joined for a brief time by NPCs whom I "rescued," including Abdalla (he died almost immediately) and Morgiana--both characters from the Ali Baba legend--and (in the end) Princess Buddir.

Ali Baba enters a new room and rescues Morgiana.

Morgiana was useful for a time against enemies, but I found controlling two characters a bit annoying and I ultimately had her "retire." It took a long time navigating through the areas before I finally found the way to Princess Buddir.

The skeleton finally finds the disembodied head!

It was easy enough to lead her back to the sultan, since I'd killed all of the enemies in between. The end game text read:

The sultan rushes over to your side. His face is a complex mixture of joy, relief, and anger.

"Allah be praised! My daughter is rescued! Quickly take her to the home of Ali Baba. She is not safe here."

Oh, yes. She'll be "safe" at my place.

Praise be to Allah! You have rescued the beautiful princess Buddir Al-Buddoor. The sultan is very grateful! The sultan goes to his private palace with his guards, leaving the rule of the realm with you. He also awards you with great $$$ wealth. $$$$$.

A messenger arrives with a sealed packet. You open the message and read, "look under my throne!"--The Sultan.

'Tis up to you whether you will retire now or grab more wealth or rid the world of all evil!

Under his throne was a secret entrance to his treasure chambers, which was fairly useless to me now. Since I think I had already rid the world of evil, I decided to retire. Winning the game took me about five hours.

Oh, but really, what are the odds of that?

I took a five-minute video to illustrate combat and other gameplay elements. You really need to watch it to understand how frenetic the combat experience is in this game. (I recommend turning the sound off, though.) In it, you see me trying to take on a couple of thieves and a dragon at the same time, sometimes attacking them directly, sometimes letting them fight each other. At one point, I buy new weapons in the middle of combat. You have to laugh when, just as I'm on the threshold of victory, a previously-unseen black bear suddenly appears out of the wall. I let the bear finish off the thief and then I escape the room before the bear can follow. I rest up and regain my health in the next room, but the bear still kills me at the end of the video.


In a quick GIMLET, I would give the game:

  • 3 points for game world. I'd like to give it more, given the uniqueness of the middle-eastern theme, but the game operates primarily in allusions rather than a fully-developed story. Still, there aren't really any other Middle-Eastern-themed games in this era (they're rare in any era), and the game gets credit for its approach to mythology.
  • 2 points for character creation and development. There isn't much of either--"development" is primarily a matter of better equipment--but there is some strategy associated with picking the right PC. I only found one place in the game where I could raise a character's strength and dexterity, though I may have missed some. There are no experience rewards or leveling from combat.

Ali Baba's statistics at game's end.
 
  • 3 points for combat. As I related, the system is relatively primitive, but it does have some interesting tactics, primarily in getting enemies to fight each other (you could theoretically win without killing anything). I don't think I ever mastered the whole "tackling" mechanism. There's no magic in the game.

Ali Baba fights a tiger who has jumped into his square. To the west, you can see two shops, and to the east there's a rune that gives the "Open Sesame" message needed to enter the thieves' treasure cave.

  • 2 points for NPC interaction. There's very little interaction, and of course no dialogue, but I give a point for the few NPCs that you do encounter, either in person or via their messages, and a point for having some joinable NPCs that make a "party."
  • 3 points for encounters and foes. This game's approach to enemies is unique (I know I keep using that word), with each one an NPC with his own attributes and a defined "faction" that determines who he will and won't attack. The manual outlines every one of them down to the last statistic. Unfortunately, in practice they don't behave very differently (at least, not the ones that attack you), and they don't have very different combat approaches.
  • 2 points for equipment. There are only a few types, but it's easy to figure out the best weapons and armor in terms of protection. These also have associated weights, and you have to watch your encumbrance lest you end up able to move only at a snail's pace.

Purchasing armor in a shop.

  • 1 point for economy. Gold is simply far too plentiful for the economy to have a significant role in the game. Most times, I was overloaded and just left it where it lay. I suppose it might be different if I was playing multiple characters, each of whom had to buy his own weapons and armor.
  • 3 points for the quest. There's only one main quest, with no side quests and no real "role-playing," but you do have the option to play under a "conduct" (no killing, just like the Ali Baba of fable) which is worth a point.

The main quest is given at the outset.

  • 2 points for graphics, sound, and inputs. The graphics are tolerable, but still in the primitive era. I found the oddly-skeletal appearance of Ali Baba and other characters a bit off-putting. The sound is piercing and best left off. There are only a few input keys, but I found them a little confusing, and I kept accidentally doffing and dropping my armor instead of moving west; only one screen separates these options that respond to the same command. Even with the emulator turned up quite high, I felt the delay in combat messages was a little frustrating.
  • 4 points for gameplay. It's fun and brisk, challenging without being overly-frustrating. The era-imposed limitations on game elements are balanced by a quick ride, and I like the explicit challenge to win several times under different rules (aided vs. unaided, killing vs. no-killing).

Many of the players who fondly remember this game also fondly remember the cooperative multi-player aspect which I, as a solo player, didn't get to experience. Message boards recall kids sitting on couches, passing controllers or keyboards between them, as they explored the halls separately, in competitive races to collect treasure, or as they teamed up to defeat a particularly difficult foe. This kind of option is rare in an RPG and worth an extra point. I'm also going to give a second bonus point for the navigation puzzles, which are a big feature of the game and don't really fall into any other category.

That leaves us with a final score of 27, very good for its era.


Ali Baba clearly shows its Fracas lineage (I covered that game in April), to which it gives a sly acknowledgement when it says that characters "break out of the fracas" when they successfully escape from melee combat. The approach to exploration, combat, factions, and NPCs is essentially the same, though the graphics are better and there's an actual quest in Ali Baba. I understand that Smith's next game, The Return of Heracles (1983) has very similar gameplay but with much greater complexity, transitioning well into the Adventure Construction Set of 1985.

I'm having a fun time playing this lineage, and I'm sorry I didn't do it before Adventure Construction Set which was, after all, the last one. I think it would have made me understand ACS better. Smith's games really do exist in their own unique capsule, not dependent on high fantasy and D&D tropes, not owing their themes or interfaces to the Ultima or Wizardry series (the first of both games was released the same year as Ali Baba). I'm glad I've had a chance to experience them.

I played this game this week because I was stuck on Mines of Titan and I was waiting for hints to come in. Let's see if I was able to win.

59 comments:

  1. Not sure if you mean you didn't figure out the rainbow connection (apologies if I'm being dumb), but Roy G Biv - Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet.

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    1. Ha! No, I get that part. I don't understand how I was supposed to apply it in navigating the game.

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    2. To be fair, you are color-blind. It's probably not a fair puzzle for you.

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    3. I seem to recall a series of rooms labeled, in turn, "R", "O", "Y", etc. You had to step through them in order but once you hit "V" you went backwards through the door that you had just entered the room through in order to advance to an area much closer to the princess.

      Loved this game as a kid and went ahead and did the "don't hurt anything" playthrough as an adult. Once you have your route mapped out it's not too difficult but you have to get lucky with a few fights (in order to escape).

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    4. Yeah, I think they're in that zodiac area. I don't know why I didn't take a screen shot there. Oh, well. Whatever I was supposed to do, I got through with trial-and-error.

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    5. Death message definately hacked. If I remember correctly from my childhood it is something about "shuffles off this mortal coil".

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    6. "Turns toes up to daisies" and "becomes food for worms" was in there too. As a kid I thought the death phrases were funny.

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    7. If you walk through the 'Roy G. Biv' room that's west of the air vent and you haven't attacked anything in the game yet, it takes you straight to the Princess's chamber.

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  2. In 1981 this game was probably the best of its kind. It seems always to be fondly spoken of on the Atari forums.

    Also, that box shot princess, damn. I like how Ali Baba is pointing at the cushion and looking off to the right.

    "What do you mean you don't like them now? You're the one who ordered them!"

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  3. I had this game and Return of Heracles on an Atari 800XL. You are spot on with your review. The combat was primitive but excitiing and early in the game, when Ali Baba is alone, it can be frustrating to die. Later I would assemble a party, including Morgana, though it did make life more expensive.

    I also tried playing after rescuing the princess, who also joined the party, but apart from finding the remaining thieves, there was not much to do.

    I like the early graphics. They were colorful and easy to recognize. Mostly, I liked Smith's attempt to make combat more interesting with his use of colorful verbs. I remember seeing "clout" had me heading for a dictionary.

    Return of Heracles seems to use the same engine and manner. Also, you can play it solo or recruit as many heroes, including Pegaus the winged horse, as you want.

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    1. I can't imagine I'm wrong about the original game not saying, "Oh, #@*&, that hurts!" But can any of you original players confirm?

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    2. I never saw that comment. The look of the version you are playing is different, but the overall style and the words used are the same, except for the profanity.

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    3. I believe the original text was akin to "Oh mamma I'm coming home!" This only occurred when maximum damage was received (almost always resulting in the death of the target)

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    4. "Oh, ma, I think it's my time!" If memory serves. The sound and graphics on this and Heracles were really good on the Atari and joystick control was pretty convenient. I often played with parties of 3-5 characters at a time.

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    5. I played both games on apple ii+ I remember they both came on the same 5'25 floppy disc RoH on the side with the label and Ali Baba on the "B" side. I played both of these games well past the super nintendo era (along with Zork). Honeslty I have more fond memories of these games than even Zelda or Final Fantasy which are always given more credit for pioneering the RPG we know today.

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    6. When I played this as a kid, I never understood the death message, "X shuffles off this mortal coil." Many years later when I read Hamlet I had a big nostalgic smile when I realized where that line came from.

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    7. Nope not in there for sure. Also there is a VERY rare case when you attack a foe you can get a message that you "lambasted" them. My friend and I about passed out laughing. I only have seen that phrase two or three times and have played this game multiple times. I'm sure all probabilities have to be aligned perfectly. I don't remember a foe ever surviving this!

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  4. "Celegorm, Luthien, and Curufin from Lord of the Rings"
    Silmarillion, actually.

    Which reminds me...your postings about The Land inspired me to lend the first Covenant book at the library.
    Should be interesting to see how it hold up to my ancient memories of it.

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    1. Yes Celegorm, Luthien and Curufin are in there. Their icons reminded me of clowns more than anything. No Finwe or Feanor though.

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  5. A friend and I really enjoyed playing this on my Atari 400. The Atari had four joystick ports if I recall correctly, so no need to pass the controller around.

    The sound was excellent (for the time) on the Atari version. During combat, not only did you get the descriptive text ("just a scratch") you would also get an interesting sound effect that played more times when you were hit for more damage.

    Heracles as you noted is more complex, and I remember liking it even more than Ali Baba on the Atari.

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    1. I think I'll play Heracles in a few months, just to have a complete view of the Smith games.

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    2. Heracles was a great game... lots more to do (12 quests I believe), many more characters to interact with, more puzzles and special encounters, and I think the combat was a little more complex. The Atari version had nice animated icons, combat sounds (shorter and not as repetitive as Alibaba), and little musical pieces that would play for each region. Try to use an Atari emulator if you give this one a go.

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  6. I remember finishing the game without killing anything. The key is the game settings. On the Apple 2 vesion, you could turn up the Random Encounter frequency to High, which caused monsters to spawn so frequently that all you needed to do was buy the best armor and run through the game until you got to the princess. By the time you rescued her, most of the monsters had killed each other, but it was tricky keeping the princess alive.

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    1. It never occurred to me that turning the encounter frequency UP would make it easier, but I guess that makes sense.

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    2. Difficulty settings can sometimes be strange in that way. The grand strategy game Europa Universalis gives bonuses to the AI economy on higher difficulty levels, which mean they have generally more money, so you can ask for much more money in peace deals. This in turn makes the player have much more money. There are other consequences though, so overall it is still more difficult.

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  7. I too played this on Atari and really enjoyed it. The silly combat dialog along with the sound effects made the otherwise simple combat pretty fun, especially when a roomful of monsters were going at it. You could calculate how much damage was inflicted ("armor softens the blow") by the difference in attack whacks and damage razzes. The little funeral ditty that accompanied each death was a nice touch. Great enemy variety.. gotta love any game that features an Ooozing Stenchbeast to fight.

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    1. The problem I had with sound might have just been an emulator issue. A few people have said the sound was good, particularly in the Atari version.

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    2. The Atari 8-bit line of computers had great sound capabilities for their time. I think they were only surpassed when the Commodore 64 came out.

      The Apple 2, on the other hand, only had a "beeper" speaker. Sound cards were manufactured for the Apple 2, but I doubt there were games that supported them in 1981.

      This probably explains why those that played the Atari version have fond memories regarding the game's sound and why you found it lacking.

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  8. Graphically, the screenshots gave me a feeling of nostalgia because it looks so much like a Spectrum game.

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  9. Does anyone know if the green and purple pixels, seen in the text and elsewhere, were visible on the original hardware? Or did the analog screen blend them to grey or something like that?

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    1. The green and purple pixels were visible on color monitors and TV sets on the Apple 2 version. It's a result of the weird hacks that Woz used to make Hi-Res graphics work on the Apple 2. I think text on just a text screen was all white, but mixing text and graphics produced those strange colorings.

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  10. You can get a good example of the sound in the Atari version at the start of this video and at around the eight minute mark (for combat):

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeSI78DqyAA

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  11. Apple 2 did display the green/purple artifacts on original hardware, but they were blurrier. Artifacting is the only way the Apple could produce high-res color screens. One value of white artifacted to green/purple, the other artifacted to orange/blue.

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  12. And remember, if you want to play an updated version of both Ali-Baba and Heracles, Electronic Arts released, "Age of Adventure" back in 1986 for the Commodore 64, Atari and Apple II. I believe that was Stuart's last game before moving on to other things.

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    1. I thought they had just been packaged under that title; I didn't realize they were updated, too.

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    2. I doubt they were updated. Age of Adventure is marked as a compilation everywhere. it was the first time the games were released on the C64, but for the other systems it just sounds like a re-release.

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    3. On C64, it wasn't the first release for Return of Heracles, and it was updated a little. Both versions are available on gamebase64 and other sites. I don't know about the other computers though

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  13. That's an awfully scantily-clad woman for one from the Middle East...

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    1. The Middle East was not always so prudish.

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  14. One of the runes said, "To rescue the princess unaided, attack only the unseen." If you attacked a blank space at the end of a little back hallway someplace, it opened up a shortcut to the princess's room. I'm pretty sure this was how they expected you to win without killing anyone or adding player characters.

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    1. I remember this. The room was called 'Roy G. Biv' and it was off of another, larger room the name of which I can't recall, but I'm pretty sure you hit it fairly early in the game (not far from the cemetery with the three zombies, I think).

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  15. For posterity: "OH MA, I THINK ITS MY TIME." is likely the original. It appears this way in the edition cracked by "Dr. Death", whereas the crude language you cited appears in the edition cracked by "Long-John Silver". It bothered me too, having just finished a playthrough of my own, so I tracked it down. Both editions can be found at the famous Asimov archive of Apple II software. The string in question appears at byte offset 0x009A2A in both disk image files.

    Other liberties taken by Long-John Silver include changing "DEPARTS THE LAND OF THE LIVING." into "KICKS THE PROVERBIAL BUCKET ." (at offset 0x009ADA), "ALI BABA HOME" into "PIRATES COVE " (0x013240), "THORA" into "BUCKY" (0x14801), and of course, "PRESS SPACE BAR TO CONTINUE" with "BROKEN BY: LONG-JOHN SILVER" (0x0051B0). Numerous other non-string differences can be found throughout the disk image, not just in the boot loader, so who knows what else he changed. Dr. Death appears to have been content with simply replacing "LOADING ALI BABA..." with "DR. DEATH PRESENTS." during startup (0x0001C2).

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    1. Wow, that is really cool, thank you.

      Man, it would suck if he made the game a lot worse, the cracker I mean.

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    2. Thank you from clearing that all up. I wish I'd played the other version.

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  16. In the game, there is a room called gold for the lucky. The rune says one must "b" lucky to get the treasure and there is a door below the chest. Did you ever find a way to get that treasure and see what room was below there?

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    1. You have to ask me such things right after I played, not three years after.

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    2. I figured it out. It was accessed off of the random portal in the room called "b" as in the roy g. biv room.

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  17. ...and I finally reach the beginning, for me.

    Back in Dec 2014, I googled this game and found this blog. After reading a dozen or so entries, I started from the beginning. Many mornings at breakfast I will read an entry. A year and a half later I've reached the middle of 2013.

    Funny to read the "I quit" or "I'm writing a book" posts years later. :)

    Love the blog, love your writing style, love being able to experience these games vicariously through the blog.

    ...still haven't tried a gimlet. I'm more of a Negroni guy.

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    1. I'm glad that it's kept you entertained. Try a Moscow Mule, maybe.

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  18. I used to play this back in the early '80s, when I was 12 years old. I lived in Auburn, CA, near Nevada City where Stuart Smith lived. My teacher Mr. Fonda had a couple of Apple II computers in his classroom, with Ali Baba on a 5.25" floppy. When I was an adult, some friends of mine lived in his old house. They described one of the walls in one room as being covered in pinholes, which evidently Mr. Smith used as a place to tack up his development notes. Just thought I'd share that.

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  19. Whatever happened to Stuart Smith? Seems like he got out of games after ACS. Any idea what he did next?

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    1. Stuart has commented a couple of times, on my entry for Fracas and Adventure Construction Set, and we've exchanged several e-mails offline. Looking through them, however, it doesn't seem that the topic of his post-RPG employment came up.

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  20. Wow, this was a trip down memory lane, played this hour upon hour at my friend's house in 3rd grade.

    I will add that there's a rarely seen damage term that, I believe, is at the top of the list. 'lambaste' As in 'Jatte lambastes Doctor Who'. Only saw it once, and it annihilated the unfortunate weak monster that got tagged...

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  21. Roy G BIV or the entrance to the Crystal caves is what they were reffering too regarding rainbows.

    ITs a clue how to find and rescue Princess Buddhir who was in a duplicate Gemini room.

    You can either go through the crystal cave and in room V go backward and endup in a staircase that takes you to the Minataur labyrinth. From their to a few other rooms plus the guilded pathway up to Buddhir.

    You can also get to the minataur labyrinth through a secret chute in the Astrologer's maze

    Also, There is a room past the Air duct called Roy G. Biv. It leads straight to Buddhir. Only Ali Baba can get to the door. He cannot have killed anything and must attack the space near the door to go through. Or in my case have a NPC materialize in the space, have any character tackle it than leap one side to the door.

    Gold for the lucky is accessed either from the random portal in B or two secret doors near the end of the Minotaur place.

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  22. The images seem to be gone (they are visible in https://web.archive.org/web/20220524002347/http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2013/07/game-103-ali-baba-and-forty-thieves-1981.html though).

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    1. They appear fine for me, probably a temporary glitch

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  23. Reading this article 10 years later because I saw the game mentioned somewhere and had never heard of it: what a cool game for 1981. I am really impressed.

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Blogger has a way of "eating" comments, so I highly recommend that you copy your words to the clipboard before submitting, just in case.

I read all comments, no matter how old the entry. So do many of my subscribers. Reader comments on "old" games continue to supplement our understanding of them. As such, all comment threads on this blog are live and active unless I specifically turn them off. There is no such thing as "necro-posting" on this blog, and thus no need to use that term.

I will delete any comments that simply point out typos. If you want to use the commenting system to alert me to them, great, I appreciate it, but there's no reason to leave such comments preserved for posterity.

I'm sorry for any difficulty commenting. I turn moderation on and off and "word verification" on and off frequently depending on the volume of spam I'm receiving. I only use either when spam gets out of control, so I appreciate your patience with both moderation tools.