Techtite's What Went Wrong --- When Entertainment Goes Awry!

There are two types of games emblazoned into gaming history: the games that created a genre, and the games that finalized them. Spellcasting 301: Spring Break is one of the latter. Sure, many a text adventure fan will tell you it was great, but for them to admit the truth would be confessing that the last "mainstream" text adventure of all time was bad. Yet games that are good do not usually "finalize" a game genre. This game was not only the last official text adventure sold on store shelves; it was the last game in its series. That's pretty major, when the game itself promises a sequel in its finale! What Went Wrong?

What Went Right? Among all the CD-ROM and DVD-ROM technology out there, what people could do with a mere floppy disk game back in the day, was very impressive. It was also fun, especially where text adventure games were concerned; an entire world to explore on one floppy disk, thanks to the low space requirements of standard ASCII text. Then there was the best of both worlds, when late 1980's games used graphics to illustrate the story, yet still maintained the text-based storytelling and text-interface puzzle solving that made interactive adventures so grand. The rest, as they say, is PC game history. Spellcasting 301 was the last noteworthy release of this genre.

Why was it the last? Admittedly it was because such old-school storytelling was being phased out due to flashier graphics cards and even flashier adventure games therein. To be fair, many of these next-generation, mouse-interface graphic adventures were extremely good. Old school adventure game designers like Steve Meretzky tried in vain to keep the genre alive, within a little game company calling itself Legend Entertainment...which at the time, insisted on making only text-parser adventure games. One of their games, FYI, was Time Quest, which was even among Techtite.com's listing of the 50 Best PC Game Classics. Yet even that game was not so popular that it warranted a three game series. Spellcasting would foot that bill.

Admittedly, this was a very neo-text-adventure, in that it was hardly text only. One third of the screen at upper left showed a still graphic of whatever was happening in the story. The lower left of the game screen consisted of all the commands you could use, most of which could either be typed in manually or by mouse, via a very elaborate, dictionary-quality command list. At the upper left of the screen was a game map which would slowly reveal itself as you explored. The screen sounds moderately "busy" when described but it was actually quite fun.

The title could've used some work though: Spellcasting 101: Sorcerers Get All The Girls.Though as juvenile as the game title was it was appropriate to the subject matter; imagine a Leisure Suit Larry game mixed within the classic text adventure, Sorcerer. Yet for all the pubescent nature of the storyline, this first game had not just good puzzles, but what in this diehard text adventure fan's estimation was among the finest puzzles ever seen in all text adventure gaming.

Here's one example. Among the puzzles in Spellcasting 101 was "The Island of Lose Soles." This island had people a la Beauty and the Beast, enchanted into objects scattered across the island. In order to break the islands' curse you had to turn each person back to normal. The catch...? You have to know their human name first, and that is only discernable based on the object they have become. This was far more elaborate than simply noticing a chip on a cracked teacup and saying "Disenchant Chip." There was a lot of humorous word play here. Among the many funny names that you'd discover based on the objects they became are: Dawn, Leif, Dolly, Peg, Mikey, Penny, Stu, Patty, Bill, Lacey, Gabby, Daisy, Dusty, Lulu, and...well, you get the idea. This was just one island among many, and it was quite the "Lulu," as it were.

You may notice that we're half a dozen paragraphs into the "What Went Right" column and we still haven't said one thing about the third game in this series. I guess that's because the first game was everything the third game hoped to be and more. Spellcasting 101 not only kept the text adventure genre alive for a few more years: it was frankly a smash hit. The game's finale even boldly promised a sequel, and fans got one, via Spellcasting 201: The Sorcerer's Appliance. The star of the first game was now a sophomore, with the intention of the game series becoming apparent: a four-episode saga, based on the spellcaster's years in college. In this second installment our hero, Ernie Eaglebeak, would be attempting to re-assemble a Sorcerer's Appliance. Why? I don't remember...but at least the puzzles were still cool.

Jump to Spellcasting 301: Spring Break. To be fair this third installment gave the diehard fans of the series everything they wanted the most of. They wanted babes; they got babes. They wanted college fun with magic; they got a spring break vacation, with such spells as a "breast enlargement" spell. Indeed; many a gamer who attended junior high school or early high school in 1992, insists to this day that this game was a horny --ahem-- happy memory. To each their own I suppose. Oh, but lest we forget; it was also the last in the series, so something did go wrong here. Just FYI kids.

Yet let's be candid: the premise was still good. This game series was like Leisure Suit Larry, with magic. Sounds like a hit, doesn't it? Well that's what we look for in What Went Wrong; product concepts that had hope and promise yet didn't make the grade. Obviously, "Leisure Suit Larry with magic" qualifies, so what did go so very wrong here?

What Went Wrong? Allow me to begin this part of the column with a warning: this is the brutal truth. The problem with the brutal truth in this case, is that it totally contradicts (almost) every so-called "review" of this adventure game you may have read online, on many a text adventure fan site. Lots of reviews claim this was a great game and "the only thing wrong with it is that they never made a sequel." Who's right? Well, let's put it this way: games that are good get sequels, and games that aren't good...don't. This game was even "guaranteed" a sequel, yet the series was never finished. What's more; this was the last mainstream text adventure ever made. Yikes!

That said, the three words fanboys are trying so hard to brush off of the tip of their tongues is:

So why all the spin control...? Well, lest we forget this was indeed the last mainstream text adventure ever sold. Oh, sure, there were a few amateur "text adventure editors" that led to an amateur "game" here and there, but nothing sold nationwide from a mainstream software company. This was the last such game. So yes, there was a lot to lose here if you were to admit that the last mainstream text adventure ever sold was flawed...though over a dozen years later, the truth must be finally told. This was garbage.

That being said; what went wrong? One goof, quite simply, was a common case of "jumping the shark" in the very first game. At the time Spellcasting 101 was created, game designer Steve Meretzky had no idea if he was making a hit or not, based on the diminishing fan base of text adventures as a whole. So, Meretzky wound up taking every awesome puzzle concept he could think up, and put it in that first game in the series. The result simply couldn't be topped. Every game afterwards would need to come up with puzzle concepts of equal or greater value. What's worse; not only did it appear that such equal-value puzzles were improbable, but looking at the two Spellcasting sequels, the well had clearly run dry.

Not that the second game, Spellcasting 201, was bad: it was just a typical sequel. It was the same story with the same characters, albeit with a "2" of some form on the game box. In fact; it even had the same ending. I'm not kidding: the...exact...same...ending! Mind you, oh annoying "spoiler warning police" online, I don't mind spoiling the ending to this game here, because the game is unavailable anymore. That said: the final "big bad" is exactly the same. Once again someone pulls off a mask and it's your stepfather. Once again you pour a pile of manure onto him, har de har har har. How very disappointing. Now imagine that disappointment being tripled, when I tell you that even the third game had...the...exact...same...ending...!

True; many a game series have a recurring "big bad". The Monkey's Island adventures had LeChuck. Just about every Star Wars game has some bad guy with the title of "Darth." Yet those games succeed because the endings are concluded in different and ingenious ways. This whole "pouring manure on the evil stepfather" deal was old as early as the very first game...yet that's the exact same, ho-hum ending Meretzky offered, three games in a row. This was lazy storytelling, any way you can look at it.

Indeed; any ending is just the icing on the cake. The biggest sales pitch of all adventure games are their puzzles, and the story. This game failed on both fronts. Consider all the cool islands of the first game, from the aforementioned Isle of Lost Soles, to an island where time ran backwards and you had to discern what "you" did just moments ago, in order to get back to whatever you did wrong and set time "forward" again. In Spellcasting 301, one puzzle was as easily solved as having peanut butter in your inventory. Yeah, see; a jellyfish that can otherwise instantly kill you (?) thinks you want to make a "peanut butter and jellyfish sandwich" and automatically leaves. What sort of "puzzle" concept was this supposed to be? The intended joke isn't even funny!

Then there's the graphics. Yes, graphics are just icing on the cake in a text adventure, yet if you are going to litter the screen with graphics, I would hope one would not use graphics that looked like something drawn by a junior high schoolboy on some forgettable Usenet group. I'm all for Leisure Suit Larry, but what I am not for are the idiotic oversized boob fantasies of 12 year olds, where they draw a low quality photo of some woman with breasts so large that the artist clearly has some seriously sick "mommy" issues. Fanboys who insist that the photo of this woman included here is actually funny will have their letter deleted. This is dumb.

Yet let's look at the flaws so far: rushed puzzles involving simple inventory searches, rushed graphics that look like your teenage nephew drew them, and a storyline which was even more rushed than that. The apparent conclusion: this game was rushed. Don't argue;. Just look at the release dates. The first game came out in 1990. The second came out in 1991. This game came out in 1992. Sure, you can come out with a sequel to the typical action game in one short year, but that's because all you're doing is changing the level maps a little. Adventure games are different...or at least they should strive to be.

Yes, many a fanboy will still insist they would've loved to play the promised conclusion to the series, which is even given a title upon the end of this game! Ah, yes, even 13 years later, people are still waiting for the next game promised in the epilogue, Spellcasting 401: The Graduation Ball. Look at the bright side: we're 99 percent sure how this game would've ended had it been made; namely, the exact same way all of the prior games ended. Your stepfather would be the main bad guy, again. You would find one last spell, again. That spell would be a "pour manure on bad guy" spell, again. You would pour manure on your stepfather, again. The finale would be that simple, again. Fanboys would call it "a great end to the series," again. Come on kids; did you really need to shelve out $40 more bucks to see this ending again?

As a parting thought it is fair enough to say that this game did not mark an end to adventure gaming as a whole; only text adventures. As I type this I look forward to 2005's intended sequel to The Longest Journey, with a sequel to Syberia released just last year. So it's not like this was the end of adventure gaming (or great storytelling in games) as we know it to be, at their best. It is just the last text-based adventure game which ended badly. That's bad enough.

Article contents by "Techtite", copyright 2005-2006; all rights reserved. Title graphics, and pix not of reviewed product, are created by Techtite, copyright 1999-2005; all rights reserved. Screen captures and publicity photos are only for the purpose of this commentary, and by no means represent any affiliation with Techtite and the distributors of that product. For further "legalese" & disclaimers, click here...

What Went Wrong?

An Analysis Column, by Techtite

Spellcasting 301: Spring Break

(PC Game, Legend Entertainment, 1992)