Game tester requirements

Were paging through the Summer 1986 Strategic Simulations Inc. catalog, with another page of new/converted wargame, RPG and simulation titles on page 2:


Battle of Antietam is another Civil War military wargame, with an improved battle system that was further refined in Battle of Gettysburg (on page 1, see yesterdays post), and was making its debut on the IBM PC, a gaming platform that was just starting to get off the ground, handicapped as it was by the limited CGA graphics standard.  Computer Baseball shows us what detailed baseball strategy games looked like before interactive, animated ballgame visuals became standard; it must have been popular, as it seems to have been converted to most of the extant platforms.  Field of Fire is another wargame, which from the screenshot shown, appears to have originated on the Atari computers and was now coming to the Apple II.  And Wizards Crown was another party-based RPG inspired by Dungeons & Dragons; an official license would become SSIs bread and butter a few years later.

Page 3 takes a brief break from the computer games to announce some games in development, and push posters and Computer Gaming World magazine:



Today, developers keep their upcoming titles quiet until theyre getting closer to market, but SSI was eager to talk about some upcoming products, some of which apparently never saw release.  Of the new games, we can guess that the hinted-at "in the works" games included Gemstone Healer (1986), sequel to Gemstone Warrior.  I cant see that the promised Shiloh wargame was ever released, though SSI had already released a game in 1981 called Battle of Shiloh so perhaps it morphed into another product or was simply abandoned.  1986s Warship was probably the "tactical simulation of World War II surface naval combat in the Pacific" referred to here; the "monster of a game" seems not to have come out, and perhaps one game about the Pacific conflict was enough for this round.

The conversions likely saw release, as it was good business to port established hits to other platforms.  And I wonder how many people bought the posters -- they are likely rare today, if not particularly valuable.

It was not uncommon to see cross-promotion like the CGW ad at the time -- the industry was still growing, and it behooved every publisher to do its best to bring more people into the market, and SSI was just promoting the publication without taking a cut as a middleman here.  (I trust Computer Gaming Worlds reviewers had also been generally kind to SSIs products!)

To be continued next weekend, if all goes as planned, with more games...

This may have been the first "real" software catalog I ever encountered as a youngster, aside from Radio Shacks TRS-80 publications.  I learned about Adventure Internationals existence through Tandys TRS-80 Software Sourcebook, and sent a money order in for James Talleys Kid-Venture #1, only to learn it was on backorder and I would not see it ship for another few months.  In the meanwhile, I was sent a copy of the Spring 1981 catalog from Scott Adams pioneering software company, and my eyes were opened.  Radio Shack was suddenly not the only source for TRS-80 games!  I spent many hours reading and re-reading this publication in my early teens, so I think its high time we did a page-by-page review.  Three decades have passed, and this is a time capsule from the very early days of the home computer industry.

The cover shows us a company experiencing early, tentative success; the catalog is still in blue-and-white, not full-color, but it weighs in at a substantial 36 pages.  Theres a brand-new computer mascot character named "Whiz," designed by the equally colorful Adventure International cover artist "Peppy," although the mascot didnt last very long if memory serves.


"Whiz" is promoting a couple of products -- a complete, disk-based Apple II port of the classic Will Crowther/Don Woods Adventure, and a database tool called Maxi Manager.  The classic Scott Adams adventures were newly available for the Atari 400/800 home computers, and the company was supporting the TRS-80 Model I/III (and II) computers, as well as the TRS-80 Color Computer, Apple II, Atari 400/800, Commodore PET, and Exidy Scorcerer [sic].  We are also urged to Watch for "WHIZ" in all our ads, just like riding the subway.  Ahem.  Anyway...

Page 2 contains an index, a snapshot of the state of the industry in early 1981.  The TRS-80 Model I/III computers dominate the product offerings, and Adventure International even published some titles for the business-oriented Model II, which used an 8" disk format.  Games were available on tape, disk, or "tape to disk," an awkward term indicating that the game shipped on inexpensive tape but could be transferred to disk by the end user for convenience.


The market shares would shift dramatically within a few years, with the Apple II dominating and the gaming-oriented Atari 400/800 doing well also, as the affordable but relatively primitive "Trash-80" began to fade out.  The TRS-80 Color would become more popular in the Adventure International lineup, with many AI products ported to the 6809-based machine, the Commodore PET would fade away in favor of the VIC-20 and Commodore 64, and the Exidy Sorcerer would fade out quickly.  Scott Adams text-based Adventure series relied on a standard data format, so only the game engine had to be ported to various platforms, and the company supported a number of relatively obscure machines over the years.

More to come...