Tass Times in Tonetown
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Tass Times in Tonetown | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Developer(s) | Interplay Productions, Brainwave Creations |
| Publisher(s) | Activision |
| Designer(s) | Michael Berlyn,Muffy McClung Berlyn, Bill Heineman |
| Release date(s) | 1986 |
| Genre(s) | Adventure game |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Platform(s) | Atari ST, Amiga, Apple IIGS, Commodore 64, DOS, Macintosh. |
Tass Times in Tonetown is a 1986 adventure-themed computer game by Activision for multiple computer platforms. It was written by veteran Infocom designer Michael Berlyn and his long-time collaborator Muffy McClung Berlyn, and programmed by Bill Heineman of Interplay Productions, in cooperation with Brainwave Creations.
Tass Times was released for the Atari ST, Amiga, Commodore 64, Apple IIGS, Macintosh and DOS. MobyGames notes that the PC port was released in the form of a booter, making the program effectively OS-agnostic.
The game has the distinction of being the first commercial game made available for the IIGS.[1]
Contents |
[edit] Plot
The plot of the game involves the player getting sucked into Tonetown, a surreal alternate world seemingly based on a distillation of 1980s culture, with overtones of punk and New Wave culture (such as pink hair, etc.). Tonetown is seemingly a world created by the imagination of the unnamed main character's relative, Gramps, who is sucked into Tonetown through a hoop and held captive by the villainous Franklin Snarl. Snarl himself is a surreal combination of a pig, a raccoon and (most obviously) a crocodile.
While in Tonetown, the player uses guitar picks as currency and partakes of Tonetown culture, including its party culture, its "tass" music, and such delicacies as "GloBurgers".
A major supporting character in the game is "Ennio the Legend", a.k.a. Gramps's dog, Spot, in the real world. As Ennio, Spot can talk and wisecrack, and he's a popular figure with the locals of Tonetown.
The word "Tass" in the title refers to an adjective used within the parallel world of Tonetown. Its basic meaning is somewhat akin to "cool" or "hip". Game designer Michael Berlyn gives the following source for the word:
| “ | Muffy and I were employed there [at Harvard], teaching creative writing. And the motto of Harvard is 'Veritas,' which means 'truth.' We took to saying 'very tass' to mean, 'very true,' or 'too true.' Our students picked it up and started applying it to something that was cool. So very tass turned into very hip or cool.[2]" | ” |
[edit] Gameplay
The game's genre was the now nearly-extinct "graphical text adventure". Somewhat like classical text adventures or the early Sierra games, players use text commands (e.g. "TAKE HOOPLET") to interact with the game, but like Lucasarts adventure games (or the later Sierra games), they also use an intuitive GUI. It is possible to complete the game using solely a mouse. The player viewed the world of the game through a small window at the top left of the screen in which their surroundings were displayed. Much like The Bard's Tale, this view was static (or mostly so); it was not animated, though it was context-sensitive (players could click on objects in this window rather than typing their names).
[edit] Trivia
- One unusual feature of the game is that entering the word "burger" into the parser causes instant death for the character. This is a nod to the game's programmer, "Burger" Bill Heineman who was known to keep old fast-food burgers stashed in various desk drawers.
- The game's distinctive world and quirky humor made it memorable for many players long beyond its mid-1980s release. A floppy disk bearing the label "Tass Times in Tonetown" has even been sighted on the popular cartoon site, Homestar Runner.[3]
- A version of the game for the Apple IIe also exists with lower quality graphics than the GS version.
[edit] References
- ^ Tass Times in Tonetown entry at The Apple IIGS Gaming Memory Fairway
- ^ Tass Times trivia from MobyGames
- ^ Floppy Disk Container page at Homestar Runner
