Arthur: The Quest for Excalibur
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| Arthur: The Quest for Excalibur | |
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| Developer(s) | Infocom |
| Publisher(s) | Infocom |
| Designer(s) | Bob Bates |
| Engine | ZIL |
| Release date(s) | Macintosh/Amiga: June 6, 1989 |
| Genre(s) | Interactive fiction |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Rating(s) | n/a |
| Platform(s) | Amiga, Apple II, MS-DOS, Macintosh |
| Media | 3½" or 5¼" disk |
| System requirements | 128K for Apple II systems |
| Input | Keyboard |
Arthur: The Quest for Excalibur is an interactive fiction computer game written by Bob Bates and published by Infocom in 1989. Typically for an Infocom title, it was released for many popular computer platforms of the time, such as the Macintosh, PC, and the Apple II series. Quite atypically for an Infocom product, it featured illustrations of locations, characters and objects within the game. It is Infocom's thirty-fourth game.
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[edit] Plot
The player assumes the role of a young Arthur, before the legendary days of Camelot. The "sword in the stone" (which in the legends was not Excalibur, but is often confused with Excalibur by people unfamiliar with the legends) that would signify Arthur's destiny to rule, has been stolen by the evil King Lot. In the quest to regain the sword, the player must prove to Merlin that he has the qualities needed to be a great king: chivalry, experience, and wisdom. Merlin assists Arthur by giving him periodic advice as well as the power to transform into animals, but also tells Arthur that unless Excalibur is recovered within three days, Lot will usurp his destiny as a king of legendary stature.
[edit] Feelies
Although Arthur was one of the last interactive fiction games Infocom released before closing, the packaging still included a modest attempt at the extra objects, or feelies, that had been a long-standing tradition for the company. The package for Arthur contained a copy of a Book of Hours, which explains the Canonical hours such as Matins, Lauds and Vespers. The book also contains a poem, lines of which are used as passwords in the game as a form of copy protection.
[edit] Notes
Arthur was one of only two games Infocom published under the "Immortal Legends" banner; the other was the 1987 release Sherlock: The Riddle of the Crown Jewels.
By the time of Arthur's release, Infocom had stopped rating their games in terms of difficulty. Arthur roughly corresponds to the level of their previous "Standard" games.
This was the first game to incorporate the once-heretical notion of graphics into an Infocom work of interactive fiction (it is debatable whether the use of simple line drawings in Beyond Zork to render maps can be regarded as "using graphics" in a non-trivial sense). Many fans see this reversal as a change demanded by Infocom's corporate owner Activision in an effort to boost sales. The few games Infocom released after Arthur, such as James Clavell's Shogun and Journey, also used graphics.
