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User:Auric/Mindwheel

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Mindwheel
Developer(s)Robert Pinsky for Synapse Software
Publisher(s)Brøderbund Software
Designer(s)Steve Hales, Mataga
Platform(s)Apple II, Atari 8-bit, Atari ST, Commodore 64, DOS
Release
  • US: Apr. 1985
Genre(s)Adventure, interactive fiction
Mode(s)Single-player

Mindwheel is a 1984 text adventure game created by Robert Pinsky for Synapse Software.

Plot

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The premise of the plot is that the player is a "Mind Adventurer", who is asked to journey back through the minds of four deceased people, in order to find the "Wheel of Wisdom", to rescue the planet from its current predicament.

Copy Protection

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Copy protection required players to enter a word from the user manual, a hardback book of novella length by Robert Pisky.

Technology

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The game retailed for US$39.95 (equivalent to $113 in 2023) on a 48K disk (2 drives required) for the Atari and C-64, and US$44.95 (equivalent to $127 in 2023) for Macintosh. Room for 8 saves. [1]: 11 

The game ran on the Atari 130XE and used the extra RAM feature.[2]: 76 

The game used the BTZ ("Better Than Zork") engine, which had been developed in 1982 by Synapse programmers Cathryn Mataga (then William) and Steve Hales. This engine's parser understood about 1200 [3] or 1500 words.[4]: 33 

Reviews

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The game received critical acclaim.


References

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  1. ^ Shay Addams (March 1985). "Mindwheel". QuestBusters: The Adventurer's Journal. Vol. 2, no. 3. pp. 1, 3, 11.
  2. ^ Harvey Bernstein (Nov 1985). "Mindwheel". Antic Magazine. Vol. 4, no. 07 (New Communications). pp. 75–76.
  3. ^ Maher, Jimmy (2014-12-04). "Bookware's Sunset". The Digital Antiquarian. Retrieved 2022-11-01.
  4. ^ Arthur Leyenberger (Dec 1985). "Mindwheel". Analog Computing Magazine. No. 37 (Telecommunications Holiday). pp. 33–34.



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