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). They 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.