Arena: Not Completely Entertained

I could have sworn that "in a flash of blue light" was a song lyric. I can even hear the melody. But Googling gives me nothing.

        

Arena is a good game to play in small chunks. Its predictability makes it ultimately a bit boring, but if you just focus on one quest at a time and take a few days' break in between quests, you don't really start to feel the boredom until the end of each session. That's what I thought going into this session, anyway, although I noticed that my boredom and impatience started to arrive a little bit earlier with each new dungeon, and I'm afraid by the end of this game, "small chunks" is no longer going to do it. 

      

I found two more pieces of the staff during this session, which means I'm halfway through the main quest. The quest for the third piece started when I randomly chose Eldenroot as my destination in Valenwood, home of the Wood Elves (called Bosmer in later games). I arrived about a month later. The city had more greenery, fountains, and open spaces than the cities in the other provinces, but the native Wood Elves didn't look anything like their later appearances in the series, or indeed even anything like elves.

     

A Valenwood city.

         

I immediately started asking about Elden Grove (where Ria told me I'd find the third piece of the staff). NPCs responded that I should ask at the palace.

 

There, Queen Ulandra told me she'd tell me where to find the grove if I first completed a mission for her. Her people have recently been plagued by Selene, "High Priestess of Shagrath, the God of Spiders." Selene has demanded that the Wood Elves surrender Valenwood. "We are not a fighting people," the queen pleaded, "and have no standing army." She asked me to travel to Selene's Web, find the jewel in which Selene had infused her lifeforce, and bring it back to the queen, after which, "She would not dare attack us with her life in the balance." I wondered if maybe "Shagrath" was an early version of Sheogorath, but I don't really see any connections. Also, the Wood Elves not being a "fighting people" was definitely retconned in future games.

       

Based on later Elder Scrolls lore, I think this should be happening in a tree.

        

"The dank, moldy corridor leads to Selene's Web," a message read as we entered the dungeon. "The smell of wet earth lingers in the air." It was a standard stone dungeon of corridors and rooms. Spiders were definitely the default enemy, but there were also a lot of rats, skeletons, and minotaurs. Spiders can paralyze, and I spent a lot of spell points on "Free Action."

 

The dungeon had a curious lake in its center, with multiple rectangular islands. I didn't find anything important there. The stairs to the lower level were protected with a magically-locked door that wanted a gold key. I never found the key; "Passwall" worked fine here.

     

The dungeon was, not surprisingly, full of spiders.

        

The lower level was more of a twisty maze with checkerboard walls. In addition to lots of spiders, I faced ghosts, barbarians, and rogues. The Heart of Selene was behind a door locked with a diamond key, but I found the key first this time. Eventually, I found the Heart of Selene, snatched it, and got out of there.

       

The game has no quest markers, but it does frequently remind you where you have to go.

            

Back at the palace, Queen Ulandra thanked me for the jewel and marked the location of the Elden Grove on my map. I spent a few days in town getting my Ebony Sword repaired (at Legolas's Quality Merchandise), then headed out to the location. 

      

I enjoy these pre-dungeon title cards.

         

The top level of the Elden Grove was outdoors, with fog instead of darkness and hedgerows instead of walls. The level was large and open, patrolled by wolves, ghosts, and wraiths. Wraiths and ghosts have magical attacks, which are really my big problem with this game. Magic missile attacks halve my hit points, so I can stand up to maybe two of them. I don't have enough spell points to go around with a resist magic spell active all the time, so what inevitably happens is that I run into a ghost, get killed, reload, and know to activate the spell the second time. Late in the entry, I found that "Force Bolt" paralyzes them, and I had a Mark of Force Bolt, so that made things a bit easier.

     

In the "corridors" of the Elden Grove.

            

The second level was underground and more like a standard dungeon. The staff piece was behind a locked door with this riddle:

   

My second is performed by my first,

And, it is thought,

A thief by the marks of my whole

Might be caught.

       

The best I could figure was FINGERPRINT (the print is "performed," or left, by the finger), and by leaving fingerprints, thieves are caught. I mean, not in a quasi-medieval world, but still. Anyway, it was wrong. So was FOOTPRINT or SHOE PRINT. Unable to figure it out, I tried "Passwall" and was surprised to find it worked.

      

Screw your riddles.

         

To get out, I had to answer another riddle:

   

Elvish mithril and Argonian silver, crumble I can.

But first, I improve all created by man.

I devour all things,

Bird and beast, serfs and kings.

Though my pace is even, men curse my speed,

Wishing I were lazier in their hour of need.

I can creep and crawl, or rush, even fly.

I am all thou hast. Tell me, who am I?

    

I found this one easy (TIME). On the way out, I rested a couple of times, and again Jagar Tharn appeared to taunt me, and again Ria Silmane appeared to give me the clue to the next piece. It is in the Halls of Colossus, "a structure built to honor a race of giants," located somewhere along the south coast of Tamriel.

      

I didn't get a screenshot of the final riddle, but here's a paralyzed wraith.

         

Because my character is a battlemage, I haven't been doing much with thievery. I open doors and chests with spells and by bashing them. But for characters of that bent (i.e., acrobat, assassin, bard, burglar, rogue, thief), there are real rewards for crime—perhaps more than any game so far in my chronology. These sub-classes make up for limited weapon and magic skills with cold, hard cash. These mechanics are technically available to all classes, but I guess thief classes have an easier time (there are no explicit skills, so it's hard to say exactly what the advantage is).

       

Each of these crimes has a chance of summoning town guards who regard all offenses as capital ones. The player either has to kill them all or reset the town by leaving and returning. 

     

The law arrives as I ineptly try to break into a building.

        

• Burglary: The character can break into any generic building during the day or night, or into any shop or service location during the night. Once inside, he has the run of the place and can often find piles of treasure or chests inside the location. Breaking in can be accomplished by bashing, casting a spell, or using the "pilfer" button on the main interface window.

    

Looting a house. A peasant's house, apparently.

        

• Shoplifting: All shops have a "steal" button that gives the character a chance to lift an item.

     

It just never works for me.

        

• Defrauding an Innkeeper: The character has an option, when staying at an inn, to try to burgle a vacant room and sleep there without paying.

• Pocketpicking: The player can use the "pilfer" button on regular NPCs to try to steal their things.

          

Do you have to look at me while I'm doing it?

         

• Murder: While regular NPCs and shopkeepers cannot be targeted with attacks or spells, the same is not true of guards. They can be killed and looted, either by a high-level character or by using the environmental tricks that I covered in an earlier entry. 

      

In most games that offer criminal options, their attraction is muted by the economy—it's either horribly broken, or it rewards non-criminal adventuring as lucratively as crime. Arena isn't quite like that. Characters that can buy magic items (including marks, crystals, and potions) have a far easier time surviving the dungeons. I don't mean to suggest there aren't any problems or that the system is fully formed. There's no sneaking, for one thing. Characters pickpocket NPCs while staring them right in the face. There are no tools (e.g., lockpicks) or traps, no charming or wheedling. Thievery jars with the heroic nature of the main quest. But the game still offers more authentic options for thieves as thieves than most other games I can think of so far.

       

Healing potions can be an inexhaustible resource if you have enough money.

       

Ria had suggested that the Halls of Colossus would be on the south coast. I was already in Valenwood, so that left Elsweyr and Black Marsh. I went to the adjacent Elsweyr first, home of the Khajit. I picked the city of Orcrest at random, arrived in the middle of the night, and was attacked by rogues. I defeated them and a troll, then found a juggler who directed me to the closest inn, Flying Helm.

   

In the morning, I did my normal round of shops and the Mages Guild. The developers definitely had not figured out Elsewyr and the Khajiit yet. The NPCs don't look any different than the ones in Valenwood, and nothing about the terrain suggested savanna or jungle.

    

Not at all what I had pictured.

        

Rumors said that the location of the Halls of Colossus had been discovered in Corinth, so I was soon in that city. Scuttlebutt pointed me to the Mage's Guild, where Turamane ap' Kolthis gave me essentially the same quest as I got two pieces ago: recover a stone tablet that can decipher part of the Elder Scrolls. This time, it was stolen not by goblins, but warrior-priests from the Temple of Agamanus.

   

I was going to do a town quest, but no one had any leads on work, so I went directly to the temple. The first level was a standard dungeon of white-gray walls. Enemies were armored knights, spiders, and hellhounds. The second level was much the same, with hellhounds definitely taking the lead. They often kill themselves with their own "Fireball" attacks, but they kill me often enough, too—especially if they don't see me in enough time to cast "Resist Fire."

    

One down, one to go.

         

The level had lots of jail cells with treasure. I was dismayed when I found another stairway down. I had thought all the handcrafted dungeons were two levels, but this one and the Halls of Colossus bucked the trend by offering three. 

       

Level 3 offered numerous battles with skeletons, ghosts, and wraiths, plus parts of the level connected by rivers. The tablet was in a room blocked by a door with a riddle:

   

I daily am in Elsweyr, and in Skyrim,

At times do all the world explore,

Since time began I've held my reign,

And shall till time is never more.

I never in my life have strolled

In garden, field or park,

Yet all of these things are sad and cold

If I'm not there and it is dark . . .

   

I had this one on the second line (SUN). Very obvious.  

          

The tablet and a pile of gold.

         

Some other notes on the game that occurred to me this session:

    

• The importance of resting on an elevated surface cannot be overstated. You hardly ever get interrupted, whereas on a regular dungeon floor, you almost always get interrupted. It's worth noting furniture on the map for this reason, as some dungeons have precious little of it.

     

A bed at last!

        

• Treasure in dungeons is weird. Most of the time, it's a couple dozen gold pieces and/or some regular equipment. Every once in a while, you find a magic item worth several thousand gold pieces. Almost all wealth comes from reselling these magic items rather than from finding literal gold. I guess, come to think of it, a lot of RPGs are like that.

• I only leveled up twice during this session. While leveling up does make the character stronger, the fact that your only choice is how to allocate 3-6 attribute points makes it a little unexciting.

• The dungeons have offered a recurring problem (this was particularly annoying on Levels 2 and 3 of the Temple of Agamanus) in which I'm unable to progress from a water square because I'm blocked by an enemy above me. I guess a character and an enemy cannot occupy the same square, even on different planes, so one floating in an empty space above the water is enough to prohibit forward momentum. A couple of times, I had to use "Passwall" to cut holes around the obstacle, often from some distance away (requiring multiple castings). 

             

I cannot move forward because of a ghost floating above me.

         

• I kept wondering why my spells wouldn't cast sometimes. It appears you cannot cast while moving. 

• The dungeons often have what we might call "set pieces" with no payoff. For instance, the Temple of Agamanus had a lake of lava with islands on the surface and nothing,  not even treasure, on the islands. Other examples include a square room with a large pit in the middle, and lakes of regular water with different island patterns.

         

Clearly some kind of importance was planned for this screenshot.

         

• I don't know how I didn't notice this before (probably because of my exploration pattern), but levels completely respawn when you leave and return, including treasure. 

• Trying to back away from enemies while swinging straight-up doesn't work. If they initiate their attacks while you're in range, the attack connects. They close the gap too fast for missile weapons to be any kind of real option. Missile weapons are solely for when they can't reach you. 

• Secret doors are nearly impossible to detect visually, but are annotated like regular doors on the automap. I realized towards the end of this session that there are sometimes carpets in front of them. 

• I didn't get a single equipment upgrade this session. My battlemage can only wear leather armor, and I guess there isn't any enchanted leather. Rather than worry about its condition, I've been selling my entire suit (plus my round shield) after each dungeon and purchasing a new set. I was briefly excited by an Adamantium Sword, but it turned out to be worse than my existing Ebony Sword. I'll talk more about equipment next time, but it appears that like Might and Magic III-V, equipment can either be a) made of a durable material like mithril or ebony, or b) enchanted, but not both. So magic weapons always under-perform regular weapons made of tough material. However, sometimes their spell is worth it. Late in this session, I found a long sword with 1,667 castings of "Firestorm." That's a pretty powerful spell. The store will buy it for nearly 20,000 gold pieces.

    

Even if I use it for every attack in every battle, it will probably still be here at the end of the game.

       

• By the end of this session, it was clear to me that the great "money sink" of the game (and the way to break it) is with potions. They have no weight, and they stack, so you can buy as many as you can afford. If you've been selling most of the looted magic items, by this time in the game, that's a lot of potions. 

               

Are these giants ever mentioned again?

       

The Halls of Colossus, like the Temple of Agamanus, had three levels, but Levels 2 and 3 were relatively small. As might be guessed by the name, the authors were clearly inspired by the Colosseum. Level 1 contained the gladiators' cells, complete with iron gates and chains hanging from the ceilings. Monsters included orcs, ghouls, zombies, lizard men, hell hounds, and a couple of ghosts.

   

Level 2 consisted mostly of a huge central hall with tall Doric columns. There were seven separate stairways from Level 1 down to that hall. The hall was swarming with rats, the only enemy on this level. At its far end were a series of doors that had to be unlocked with six different keys found on Level 1. So although the entire dungeon had less physical space than the typical two-level dungeons, it took longer because I had to exhaustively explore every corner of the first level. I think I actually could have bypassed all or most of the doors with "Passwall," but I figured if I resorted to that too often, I'd be under-leveled at some point.

     

The Halls of Colossus.

        

The first level required a lot of swimming. One long channel in the southeast took me to a large, open area with the only hard enemies (a couple of ghosts). A statue of a dragon in the middle of this area had a name: "Theodorus." This turned out to be the answer to a riddle that followed all of the locked doors:

   

I am the architect of this hell,

whose name is forgot in the dust of time.

Yet, where there is no dust,

where the river would speak,

there is my name.

        

Note that I have four keys at this point.

           

The third level soon brought me up against a door with another riddle:

    

I am twice as old as three times the age of

the Sphinx of Gazia, Agamamnus,

divided by one-ninth the age of the Sphinx of Canus, Igon,

who left this world twenty-six years ago.

What then is my age?   

          

The absurd riddle.

          

I couldn't figure it out at all. Knowing that Igon died 26 years ago doesn't help at all with how old he was when he died. I assumed the answer must depend on a clue I had missed somewhere. "Passwall" wouldn't get me around the door. I nearly ended the session here asking for a hint, but I figured that maybe I could narrow it down by just trying multiples of six. I thus started plugging in multiples of 6 starting at 30. (I figured the speaker had to be at least 26.) The first time I got it wrong, a secret door opened next to me and a skeleton attacked, but every time after that, I was fine. I was just about to give up when I got the answer correct at 108.

   

That was a bit lucky on my part, as I later realized that the "divided by one-ninth the age of the Sphinx of Canus, Igon" part meant that the actual factor multiplied against Agamamnus's age could be literally anything. For instance, if Igon was 54, the two multipliers would cancel each other out, and the speaker's age could thus be any positive integer. By that time, I was done and had looked up the solution online, which is to add up the positional values of the letters in the names "Agamamnus" and "Igon":

 

A=1

G=7

A=1

M=13

etc.

 

This gives us 90 for Agamamnus and 45 for Igon. 90*6/(45/9) = 108. How the hell was anyone supposed to figure that out in 1994? Did I, in fact, miss a clue somewhere? Also, is "Agamamnus" supposed to be the same person as "Agamanus"?

   

The door opened into a large area with floating platforms and a new enemy: homonculuses. (I realize the plural of homunculus is homunculi, but I don't see any reason to apply the same logic to the game's misspelling.) These are floating imps that shoot spells. I mostly took care of them by charging into melee range and then casting "Firestorm" from my sword a couple of times.

      

Blasting a "homonculus."

       

With all the floating platforms, I thought there would be a final jumping puzzle, but the fourth piece of the staff was just hanging in the air at ground level. I grabbed it and made my way out. Jagar Tharn didn't appear in my dreams this time (or, at least, not yet), but Ria Silmane made her usual appearance and said that the fifth piece would be in the Crystal Tower. More about that location next time.

      

What was this about?

                

Even though I'm eager to get on with it, I'll make an effort next time to try some side quests and to more thoroughly explore village life.

   

Time so far: 20 hours 

 

BRIEF: Monster Combat (1980) and Its Many Variants, Including Game 573: Giant Monster Combat (1981?)

 

        

Monster Combat

United States

Independently developed; published as type-in BASIC code in 1980 in BYTE. Typed into multiple machines.

Enhanced version called Giant Monster Combat published as BASIC code in 1981 in Creative Computing

Version called Giant Monster Attack published as BASIC code in Big Computer Games in 1983.

Variant called Giant Monster Combat developed by unknown author for the Atari 800 in maybe 1981. 

Date Started: 3 April 2026

Date Ended: 4 April 2026

Total Hours: 4

Difficulty: Very Easy (1.0/5) in the sense that the only winning condition is to leave the forest. Moderate (3.0/5) in the sense that it's a bit hard to survive for long periods. Easy (2.0/5) splits the difference.

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)   

         

We've seen a number of type-in games on my blog (that is, games published as code that magazine subscribers were expected to type in to their own computers), and none of them have been excellent. Most of them are barely RPGs. For this reason, a number of readers have suggested that it's a waste of time to keep including them on my master list.

   

But a few of them are illustrative of a process by which games are created, simplified, re-created, and expanded, and thus worth analyzing. For instance:

    

• Mike Mayfield's Star Trek (1971) for mainframe computers spawned a fantasy version called Hobbit (1975), which Joseph Power recreated as a type-in game called The Wizard's Castle (1980), which in turn inspired a number of variants into the 1990s, including The Cursed Chambers (1981), The Warlock's Treasure (1983), Leygref's Castle (1986), The Yendor's  Castle (1986), Mission: Mainframe (1987; this one merging its source with elements of Rogue), and Bones (1991).

• Epyx's series of Dunjonquest games in the late 1970s encouraged Brian Reynolds's simplified Quest 1 (1981), a type-in game that led to Doomcastle (1982), Super Quest (1983), Dragon Quest (1983), Dungeons, Dragons, and Other Perils (1984), and Cavequest (1985).

   

We see a similar process here again with Monster Combat, which like The Wizard's Castle traces its origins to Star Trek, but through the Think series (1975-1977) for the PLATO system, which includes The King's Mission Game (1977) and Swords and Sorcery (1978). (The Wilderness from 1985 is also in this line but of course post-dates Monster Combat.) Monster Combat's author, Lee J. Chapel, grew up in Springfield, Illinois, and my guess is that he went to Springfield High School, which had a PLATO terminal. In 1980, Chapel published the first version of Monster Combat in the December 1980 BYTE: a tight 104 lines of BASIC code for the KIM-1 microcomputer. He was attending the University of Wisconsin at Madison at the time, which to the best of my knowledge did not have PLATO access, but the game is dissimilar enough from its source that this kind of separation in time and distance makes sense. It feels a bit like someone recreating one of the Think games from memory, and with more limited equipment.

      

Monster Combat in its original appearance.

       

I couldn't find a workable version of the original (1980) game online, so I thought I'd give myself a taste of the classic experience and type it in myself. Chapel wrote it on a KIM-1 computer, but it looked like pretty standard BASIC to me, so I typed it on the TRS-80. I flubbed about 25% of the lines, of course, and spent about an hour troubleshooting it line by line. When the random number generator didn't seem to be working, I did some sleuthing and found that RND(1) produces a random number between 0 and 1 on the KIM-1 but produces exactly 1 on the TRS-80 Model III. I had to change about 25 instances to RND(0) to get the same result. No other modifications were needed, however.

      

Me typing code.

      

This ur-Monster Combat is a primitive game that starts the unnamed character in a 10 x 10 forest randomly seeded with open spaces ("X") and walls ("I"). The character starts in a random position. As soon as the game starts, and every time he moves after that, there's a chance of:

     

• Finding a treasure guarded by a monster.
• Finding a treasure with no guardian.
• Getting picked up by a bat and deposited elsewhere in the forest.
• Falling into a pit.

                

A jeweled sword turns out to be magical.

     

Most of the time, it's the first option. The name of the monster is randomly selected (e.g., minotaur, harpy, zombie, dragon, wyvern, zombie), as is the treasure it is guarding (e.g., a jeweled sword, a treasure chest, a jar of rubies, 100 gold pieces). The monster type is unimportant, as it has a randomly-generated strength.

 

The player can choose to fight, flee, or bribe the monster to let him go. If he fights, he has to wager a portion of his strength (he starts with between 500 and 2000 points) against the monster. The game fights a behind-the-scenes battle and informs the player of the outcome, either "THE MONSTER KILLED YOU. YOU LOSE EVERYTHING." or "YOU BEAT THE MONSTER." If you beat the monster, you get his treasure. A couple of special things can happen here: the jeweled sword can turn out to be a magic sword, which doubles the character's strength; the chest can be trapped, which kills the character immediately; and the chest can contain a magic mirror, which immediately kills any future basilisks.

     

A bit of gameplay.

         

The wagering of the character's strength against the monster's is what makes this entire line stand out. I'm not sure I've encountered this mechanic in any game that wasn't based on Monster Combat. Chapel didn't get it from any of the PLATO games. He likely found their relatively sophisticated methods of combat impossible to implement and invented something simple to replace them.

   

The goal of the game is to simply earn as much treasure as possible before wandering out of the forest, at which point you get a "CONGRATULATIONS" message along with your treasure total.

      

Not a lucrative outing.

          

The game is too primitive to meet my definitions of an RPG, and indeed no online database lists it as such. It is also too primitive for me to trace its origin to the PLATO Think series; the only thing it really retains is the use of a 10 x 10 game world. But the Think connection shows through more strongly in the "enhanced" versions that Chapel published in subsequent years. Still working on a KIM-1, he expanded the code to about 350 lines for Giant Monster Combat, published in the 1981 Creative Computing. (The new title is in the program, but the title page in the magazine still uses Monster Combat.) Again, no one seems to have typed this one into a program that remains online, but substantially the same version appeared as Giant Monster Attack in the 1983 book Big Computer Games, edited by David B. Ahl, converted to Microsoft BASIC by Chris Vogeli. I was able to find Commodore 64 and DOS versions of that one.

         

The game's appearance in Creative Computing.

       

Giant Monster Combat/Attack is recognizably the same game as Monster Combat, but it does a few new things. The ones that have analogues in the PLATO Think series are annotated with an asterisk (*):

   

• It allows the player to write down his strength and spell inventory from a previous game, then re-create his character at the start of a new game.

• Instead of just "forest" and "walls," ASCII characters now distinguish the forest as having trees, paths, walls, inns, and enchanted castles.

      

Starting out in the "giant" version of the game.

      

• Although the player only sees a 10 x 10 area at a time, there are 10 x 10 areas in the game.* Each is fixed in what it contains (i.e., number of trees, inns, castles) but randomized in the specific position of those items every time you leave and return.*

• The player has an inventory of magic spells: "Sleep," "Charm," and "Invisibility." They are found during encounters just like other treasures. If you acquire above a certain threshold of these spells, the game lets you convert them to combat strength.

• The list of monsters is expanded. Monsters now have set strength specific to the type, ranging from 5 (goblin) to 100 (basilisk). The manual now specifies that you have a 50% chance of winning if you wager exactly a monster's strength and a 95% chance at double his strength.

• You can meet multiple enemies at once. Three zombies have a combined strength of 90, for instance. 

• Trees must be chopped down to move through them*, requiring strength.

• Inns provide safe places to rest and restore health (for a small bit of treasure); magic castles provide treasure.* (These were magic circles and treasure chests in Swords and Sorcery and living pyramids and chests in The King's Mission Game.) Innkeepers sometimes offer hints as to the locations of castles. 

     

At the magic castle, I get my strength restored, two treasure points, and a magic mirror.

        

• In addition to direction of movement, the player specifies the distance.* Moving now depletes strength. 

• There are more random encounters (e.g., thick brush, quicksand) that can cost strength or time. 

     

A series of unfortunate events.

        

• If you walk out of the forest before you're ready (or if a giant eagle carries you out of the forest in a random encounter), you can choose to re-enter immediately. 

       

The overall goal hasn't changed (acquire as much treasure as possible), but the game now tracks your time in the forest (*) and enforces a time limit of 30 days. If you survive that long, you're automatically whisked from the forest. You can re-enter with your strength and magic, but with no treasure. In the magazine, Chapel says he earned 7,562 points but that "if you get above two thousand you're doing well." I got 1,009 in my best game out of five.

      

A dubious victory.

           

This version was adapted for the Atari 800 by Sheila Spencer and published in The Creative Atari in 1983. It regresses the name to Monster Combat but otherwise appears to play the same. 

      

Spencer's version is not the Giant Monster Combat variant (supposedly from 1981) that I found linked from the Atari Mania site. This version adds a few new things:

   

• The title screen has the game name in a large font, with some color.

     

The only version with in-game instructions, suggesting it might have been sold independently of type-in code.

      

• There are in-game instructions.

• The game uses ATASCII characters (such as a spade symbol for trees) specific to the Atari.

• There's a compass on the exploration screen.

• The screen fully redraws between actions rather than presenting a constantly-scrolling set of messages and maps.

• When you fight a monster, while the game works out the result, it flashes words like "splatter!," "mangle!," and "bash!," not unlike Stuart Smith's Fracas (1980). 

        

Gameplay in the most advanced version of this title.

        

• In addition to hints as to the locations of castles, innkeepers also provide hints as to the location of the edge of the forest.

• Walls are replaced by "castles that you cannot enter" (+ symbols on the screen above). The serve the same purposes of blocking movement in a particular direction.

• Finding an enchanted castle is accompanied by a screen of ATASCII graphics.

      

Not a horrible job, really.

       

• The victory screen has a "congratulations" message in a large font and does a better job organizing information about your expedition.  

           

No.

          

I don't know whether to trust Atari Mania's claim of 1981 for the year of this version. Attribute information has been stripped from the BASIC code.

    

Other sightings of Monster Combat/Giant Monster Combat/Giant Monster Attack:

   

• Personal Computing Today published a variant of the (non-Giant) original for the Acorn Atom in the September 1983 issue. There is no mention of Chapel; it is credited to A.J. Presvail.

• A TRS-80 version of the original game floating about has misspellings and generates every terrain tile as an impassable wall.

• An independent developer going under Cout Games converted the original (again, non-Giant) to the Commodore 64 in 2017. 

     

A recent C64 adaptation of the base game.

      

• El Explorador de RPG catalogues two TI-99 versions of the original. 

    

It is a sad inevitability, seen with titles such as The Wizard's Castle and The Valley, that someone will try to commercialize just about every type-in game, often with no attribution to the original author. Some of these knock-offs will be quite literally plagiarized from the original; others will gussy it up with graphics, additional features, and better controls. In the case of Monster Combat, we have:

   

• Adventure Dungeon (1983), by David Lo, published in the March 1983 CLOAD cassette magazine. I reviewed it in 2023, not realizing its origin.

• Idol of Monterey (1985), published by MicroSPARC for the Apple II. I reviewed it in 2024, also not realizing its connection to Monster Combat. 

• La Foresta Dimenticata dal Tempo ("The Forest that Time Forgot," 1987), an Italian diskmag game. It adds some graphics and a main quest, although I couldn't figure out how to possibly win it. I BRIEFed it in 2024.

      

The Italian Forest that Time Forgot (1987).

             

For all of these, El Explorador de RPG (correctly) popped up to note that they were just versions of Monster Combat, which I hadn't played because (correctly) no one had tagged it as an RPG—until someone on Atari Mania did so for the Giant version covered above. That's the one I'm rating, with a GIMLET of 9. It joins a long line of type-in pseudo-RPGs that are nonetheless important to have in mind for when someone creates a variant of them.

   

Atari Mania also lists three games written in 1991 by Layton Atari Developers: Monster Combat II, Monster Combat III, and Monster Combat IV. The site only has a download for III, and I can't find the others in any other location. III looks different enough from Chapel's Monster Combat that it's possible that the Layton series wasn't referencing this game at all. If II ever turns up, perhaps I'll be able to demonstrate some kind of transition, but until then I'm happy to see the end of this somewhat limited series.

      

Off the Beaten Star Trail

Star Trail provokes an existential crisis.

     

It would be worth recapping at this point the long road that led us here:

    

• At the beginning of the game, after character creation, we received a quest to recover the Salamander Stone from the Dwarven Pit and bring it to Lowangen. This took place in the city of Kvirasim at the northern edge of the map. We were told only that the Dwarven Pit was to the south.

• We moved south, following clues, stopping to solve a side quest in the city of Gashok. Eventually we reached the mountains in the southeast part of the world map, found the Dwarven Pit, and got the Salamander Stone.

• We moved west to Lowangen in the south-central part of the map, lost the stone, recovered it, and lost it again. The best clues as to where it had gone were to the Blood Peaks on the west side of the map.

• Eager to explore a little, we went far to the north, then west, the south to the Blood Peaks instead of just going west. Along the way, we did a side-quest for the subtitular Star Trail in Tiefhusen (northwest quadrant) that resulted in us not obtaining the weapon.

• It turned out that the entrance—or at least an entrance—to the Blood Peaks was not too far to the west from Tiefhusen. However, in taking this entrance, we ran into a party of orcs who stripped us of all of our items and threw us in a cell.

     

My travels prior to this session.

       

This entry started with a certain amount of eagerness to avoid that fate. I thought I'd avoid the orc encounter and probe at the Blood Peaks to the south and west. I did this before my last entry on Star Trail was published, so I didn't yet have commenter VK's assurances that such an entrance exists. When I didn't find anything, I just kept pushing south.

    

If I was after anything, I guess it was side quests. I had somehow gotten the impression, probably based on my experiences with the first game, that there were a lot more towns and dungeons like Gashok and Tiefhusen, with quests waiting to be completed and corridors waiting to be explored. Accordingly, I moved south, east, and north, trying all of the trails that I hadn't explored on my first pass. I didn't find a single (non-menu) town or a single dungeon, but I did hit a lot of other small miscellaneous encounters, including:

     

• Numerous battles with harpies, orcs, ogres, and wild animals. 

• Somewhere in the southern Blood Peaks, a huntress threatened to shoot us. We got her to talk to us, but she didn't give us any information. However, I did notice that DARK MAGES (presumably, the ones that stole the Salamander Stone from us) was a dialogue option that hadn't existed elsewhere before. 

      

That's a better threat in a world without magical healing.

      

• My explorations to the southwest were stymied by the need for snowshoes, which I'm not even sure exist.

      

I tried snowshoes once. I don't think they made walking in the snow any easier.

      

• An abandoned camp with various sundries.

• A very large party of orcs walking down the road. We refused to hide, got into an impossible battle, and had to reload.

     

We did not win this one.

       

• We spent a long time around Finsterkoppen, mapping all of the routes we hadn't taken, under the theory that if side-dungeons existed, they'd probably be in the mountains. We didn't find any, but we did find the alternate entrance to the Dwarven Pit. It's on the other side of the mountains from the main entrance in Finsterkopp, quite a distance by road.

      

My claustrophobia acted up just reading this description.

      

• I've noticed that Gnomon, my best trapper, has a lot more trouble finding food and water in the mountains than on flat land. I guess that makes a certain amount of sense.

• A mountain road ended with a landslide, which nearly killed us.

• We stopped to help a man whose cart had broken down. It turned out to be a ruse by bandits, and we started the subsequent combat unarmed. 

       

This same thing happens in Red Dead Redemption.

        

• At one point, the game asked: "Say, aren't you the least bit concerned that nothing's happened for so long?" I guess that was a subtle hint to get back on track. 

• We approached a pond and heard a bunch of buzzing. Investigating, we found ourselves attacked by "horseflies of enormous size, and obviously starving." We had an option to act. I'm sure some spells may have helped, but I just tried lighting a torch, which drove some of them off but left us damaged from their stings. 

    

There's no upside to investigating, but we had to know.

     

• On the far eastern side of the map, on a road that looked like it led off the map, we were stopped and threatened by archers. We had an option to attack them, but it ended in our massacre. I think this encounter exists simply to stop the player from trying to leave the map. 

• We encountered a huge brown bear. We decided to run rather than fight. It turned out that the bear was just protecting her cub.

      

I don't like when RPGs (cf. Baldur's Gate, Skyrim, Avowed) make me kill bears. I like bears.

         

• A tinker carrying a heavy load stopped to chat with us, then offered to sell us a copper pot. 

• We followed a blood trail into the woods, found a dead man next to a large, broken hammer, and buried "the poor sod."

     

What was this all about?

     

• A woman rode by on a moose. Later, she rode past us again and said, "You can really ride these beasts, even though I don't think anyone beside me actually does." I wish I knew how. We've been occasionally putting points into the "Ride" skill for nothing. 

           

She's riding side-saddle without a saddle. That's impressive.

       

At this point, we were all the way back at Kvirasim, the first town since Tiefhusen. We took the time to check the stores for snowshoes (nada), buy some spare boots, and restock herbs. Unfortunately, Kvirasim doesn't have what we really needed: a smith to repair our broken weapons. Thus, we went down to Gashok and spent a week in town, getting our weapons repaired at a rate of one per day. We were broke at the end of the week, but fortunately the market came to town on the last day, and we were able to sell some excess weapons to get another 20 gold pieces in our pockets. Just as we were getting ready to leave, we saw that the armorer sold—you guessed it—snowshoes.

   

Having bought them, we commenced a long journey back to the southwest. Taking the route that required snowshoes simply brought us to a dead-end, where we were once again mobbed by orcs, forced to surrender, and thrown into a cell in the Blood Peaks. I should have included this episode with the last entry.

      

Shame on me, I guess.

          

Still, the incident gave me hope. The two encounters that got us automatically tossed into an orc prison are relatively far apart from each other. That meant that there could be an alternate entrance anywhere between the two. I started exploring the network of trails here, taking every side path I hadn't already explored, stopping at every inn. I fought a lot of battles with wild cats, harpies, orcs, and ogres during this period, usually relying on computer combat, the accumulation of which finally got my two weakest characters (the ones who had been left behind in Lowangen) to Level 6. I would just point out that if I had kept my imported party, they would have all started at Level 7 and probably would have been Level 9 or 10 by now.

     

At some of the inns, I got hints as to the dark mages who had stolen the Salamander Stone from me—though  not much more than they came from the southwest where the orcs live. 

       

I assume he means that they were planning to return after their mission.

        

Along one side-trail, we came across an armored warrior limping down the road, her face crisscrossed with scars and bandages. The battered woman introduced herself as Korima of Attica. After we exhausted a few keywords with her, getting nowhere, she offered two things: first, to sell us a spare two-handed sword; second, to adventure with us for a daily rate. We enthusiastically chose the latter. 

      

Seeing actual Baid-Aids® on her face spoils the immersion a bit. 

            

Korima is a Level 7 fighter who comes with her own equipment, though we had to give her a spare sleeping bag. She was a great addition to the party, making combat a lot easier. The first night, we cast "Respondami" to get a sense of her true intentions, but it turned out that she was what she seemed to be: "As long as you pay me a piece of silver daily, I'll fight at your side."

       

I'm not always good at this, but Korima's origin was obvious to me immediately (Sorsha, as portrayed by Joanne Whalley in 1988's Willow). .

        

In fact, I soon prized her presence so much that I began to worry about running out of money and losing her. I was down to about 18 gold pieces at this point, which should have kept her in the party for another 180 days, but time can pass quickly in this game. Hence, we made our way back to Tiefhusen and sold a bunch of excess stuff (the snowshoes, weapons we'd looted from the orcs, hand mirrors, etc.) and earned back another couple hundred gold pieces.

      

I feel like we're taking advantage of her.

       

It's worth pausing here to talk a bit about the game's approach to the economy. It models real life in the sense that money is a tool, and you can make about as much of it as you want to spend the time and effort to make. Having a lot of money in the game is useful but not game-breaking. It allows you to rest in suites, dine out, buy extra herbs and potions, obtain premium healthcare, and buy new weapons instead of taking time to repair the worn-out ones—but there are low-cost or free alternatives to all of these things. I like the idea of an RPG in which most of your expenses are for services rather than goods, and I wish the game had continued on this line by offering coach rides between cities (there are some ferry boats) or allowed you to bribe NPCs to narrow down useful keywords.

    

There are a few major money-related plot points in the game, requiring the party to hand over large amounts of cash, but the game gives you the ability to go out and make that money through battle and trade. Since there are no high-value magic items for sale in any of the shops, you're incentivized not to overdo this, but it's nice to have the option when the occasion arises. 

    

The only real "money sink" in the game is in the form of herbs and potions, and even here, it's really about herbs. Since potions don't stack, there's a limited number that you can carry at any one time, especially with all the other survival gear you have to pack. Herbs stack and weigh next to nothing and can be consumed independently of potions, so they're a better use of both money and inventory space.

      

Lyra's current herb inventory. This doesn't count what the other characters have.

     

The other thing that disincentivizes the use of potions is that you need a recipe to make them. In the entire game, I only found one recipe, during the latest session, for a magic potion. It admittedly would be very useful, but it requires brandy, which I was never able to find after getting the recipe. It also doesn't stack, so you wouldn't carry it around just to make potions. You'd make the potion right there, after buying the brandy, in which case you frankly might as well just find an herbalist and buy the potion itself. In general, I don't think that the game gives you a lot of incentive to make potions, which is why I never bothered to replace my alchemy set after the orcs confiscated it in Lowangen.

   

Herbs on their own, however, are still extraordinarily useful, and I have Lyra spend an hour searching for them every time we camp. As you might imagine, I really bulked up my inventory during this session. Whirlweed, dried whirlweed, and four-leaf loneberry can all be chewed for health points, even in the middle of combat. Tarnele can be eaten just before bed to increase the restorative effects of sleeping. Many of the rest are used in various combinations when a healer uses "Treat Illness." I'm probably carrying a few that have no use unless I get that alchemy set back, but it feels like I'm close to the end of the game. If I didn't fully explore that mechanic, I'm at least glad it was there. I just wish I knew where to find more recipes. You'd think the herbalists would sell them.

       

Lyra on her nightly foraging.

      

With enough money to pay Korima for several years, we went back on the road, wandering the mountain trails, looking for an alternate entrance to the Blood Peaks. We might have found it sooner, but a priestess of Tsa threw us off the track by telling us there was a "path going straight into the mountains to the east." She had her "east" and "west" mixed up, we later figured. 

   

But eventually we found it: cave into a sheer rock face. We had to fight some orcs nearby, but I don't know whether that was a random encounter or a fixed one. I think this was meant to be our exit from the dungeon, as the game congratulates us if we turn around and leave.

      

At last!

         

Before I wrap up, I'll recount what happens to a party that does not reload but simply allows itself to be captured by the orcs. Each bullet point here is a different screen or message window:

   

• The party is completely surrounded by orcs.

• An orc captain tells us that we're prisoners of Ugorzzih.

      

Is that pronounced the French way?

       

• We have the option to fight or surrender. Either way, we wake up in a prison cell, but the surrendering way offers more messages in between.

• The orcs march the party across several mountains.

     

Like hiking with Irene.

       

• It's such a long journey that we stop for the night.

• We reach a cave. The orcs blindfold us and lock us in a cell.

• We are in the cell. Orcs bring us meals in the evening. 

     

Also invites an Irene comparison, but one that would end up with my body in a shallow grave.

      

• We are still in the cell. Orcs continue to bring us dinner. We find an obsidian knife behind a loose brick, left by some previous prisoner. 

• We are still in the cell. It has been two days. We've become aware of a knocking in the distance. Someone is repeating the same pattern: 2 long, 2 short, 3 short, 2 long.

     

Part of me is slightly disappointed that I won't get to find out what this is about.

      

• The same message repeated for another day.

• We've noticed prisoners in other cells. On this day, two guards return again to feed us, one standing guard while the other brings in the food.

• Finally, we can't take it anymore. On this day, we overpower the orcs with our hands and strike out, naked and afraid. 

      

What is an "arbach"?

         

This would be a great beginning to a game, but I've had enough of dancing to this game's tune. So when we pick up, remember that I took the alternate entrance that avoided all of this drama.

     

Time so far: 47 hours