Grumpy Gamer – SCUMM Notes from the C64 | Hacker News Reader

Grumpy Gamer – SCUMM Notes from the C64

grumpygamer.com

110 pointsksherlock10 comments

Grumpy Gamer is a fun site. Its basically Ron Gilbert's blog. He worked at Lucas Arts (Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island) making some inovative adventure games. is still making games and blogging about them.

I like the game dependency charts post.

http://grumpygamer.com/puzzle_dependency_charts

As someone pointed out in another post, he has a kickstarter for a "old school" adventure game. (Not affiliated. But backing!.)

http://grumpygamer.com/kickstarter

Thank you. Not sure why it took me ten years to discover Ron Gilbert's website. I've been a Monkey Island fan since I was a kid, and just completed replaying MI1 on my newly acquired Tandy 1000. Really looking forward to Thimbleweed Park as well.

Oh, man. A Tandy 1000 was the first "real" computer I ever had, as a kid. (An original 1000, with no hard drive, just two 5.25" 360K floppy drives. Two floppies! Luxury!) Brings back memories just thinking about it...

For those too young to have encountered one, the 1000 was probably the most popular of a wave of mid-'80s PCs that could be described as "kinda sorta nearly almost IBM-compatible." Meaning that they offered software compatibility with MS-DOS and the original IBM PC, but with some slight differences, usually put in place in an attempt by the manufacturer to differentiate their product from IBM's.

In the case of the 1000, these features were mostly swiped from another IBM product, the ill-fated PCjr (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PCjr). So unlike the IBM PC, the Tandy 1000 included joystick ports, 16-color graphics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tandy_Graphics_Adapter) and 3-voice sound.

This happened to make it an excellent machine to play PC games on for many years, as game developers who added Tandy support to their titles could offer a much enhanced presentation that wouldn't be matched by mainline IBM-compatible machines until EGA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_Graphics_Adapter) support became widespread.

My father bought the 1000 as a home business machine, but it didn't take long for me to discover its excellence as a game machine, and that in turn became the gateway drug that got me into programming. So I guess I owe Radio Shack something.

I had the 1000 TX as a kid. It had a 286 chip, but was still an XT-class system. The one I had originally had a hard drive (hardcard format, of course) and color monitor, but both of those parts failed after a while. By the time I got it to hack around on, it had an amber monochrome monitor harvested from an older computer (a Sanyo of some sort that I barely remember), and was floppy only. Since the computer was already a hand-me-down with mismatched parts, I was free to mess with it as I pleased. In addition to trying various hardware combinations, I also learned to program on that machine using ZBASIC.

The one I recently bought on eBay is also a TX. It came complete with a 20 MB hardcard, Smartwatch clock chip, color monitor, under-monitor power station, dot matrix printer, print buffer, joysticks, and original software and manuals. Everything works perfectly (well, I haven't tried the printer yet).

Edit: Here's a picture of my "new" system running Monkey Island: http://imgur.com/zlWs3hK

The funny thing about the 1000's lineage: Initially the PCjr compatibility was supposed to be a big selling point. However, when the PCjr tanked, it became a liability, so Radio Shack switched the advertising to play up its "MS-DOS compatibility" instead.

Getting back to adventure games (albeit of poorer quality than Ron Gilbert's): Apparently the Tandy's success saved Sierra from some serious trouble, as they had primarily targeted the PCjr platform for the King's Quest series.

Yeah but once VGA/SVGA and Adlib/SoundBlastaer cards came out, it broke the Tandy 1000 series.

Still early games like Bard's Tale 1 played better on the Tandy 1000 than an IBM PC Clone with Monochrome/CGA and the PC Speaker beeping.

I had a friend with an IBM PCJr, had to do some work to get it over 512K by modifying some expansion packs, and the PCJr also had a cartridge slot.

I think the PCJr was aimed at home use to fight Commodore and Atari, then Apple entered with the Apple //c to enter the home market. Eventually Atari and Commodore won the home computer wars with cheaper systems that got upgraded ala cart. When the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga came out both Commodore and Atari had switched management but lost to Microsoft and Windows on PC Clones with VGA/SVGA and Adlib/Soundblaster cards. Windows 95/98 was the final nail in the coffin.

Quick! Swap the cups before the grog melts through!

A flood of memories just returned from the days when I would play WC1 and MI1 on my sister's piano teacher's computer during her sessions.

"You are a pain in the backside, sir!"

"Your hemorrhoids are flaring up again, eh?"

I have not found any other games that have implemented the insult and comeback system as well as MI.

My, don't you think you're special, going straight to Swordmaster-level insults. :-)

Better to start with, "I won't take your insolence sitting down!"

The full (?) list:

http://www.gamesradar.com/cheats/17781/

This is fascinating! Last semester I made a clone of Maniac Mansion in Java for a game development class and it was probably the most fun I ever had making anything. Does anyone know what the doodle on the left is on the last picture? http://images.grumpygamer.com/gg_scumm_docs11.jpg Or is it just that (; a doodle)?

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