Time Zone (computer game)

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Time Zone is a multi-disk graphical adventure game written and directed by Roberta Williams for the Apple II. Developed in 1981 and released in 1982 by On-Line Systems (now Sierra Entertainment), the game was shipped with six double sided floppy disks and contained 1,500 areas (screens) to explore along with 39 scenarios to solve. Produced at a time when most games rarely took up more than one side of a floppy, Time Zone is believed to be one of if not the very first game of this magnitude ever released for home computer systems.[1]

Contents

[edit] Gameplay

The game allowed players to travel through time and solve puzzles while meeting famous historical figures such as Benjamin Franklin, Cleopatra and Julius Caesar.

The screen was a split graphics/text screen. The graphics were done in the Apple's high-resolution format, and the text was four lines at the bottom of the screen. The text described the current scene, including any objects that were in the scene, and allowed the player to type in two-word commands of the form [VERB] [NOUN]; e.g., "GET KEY", similar to that used in text adventure games.

[edit] Reception

Ultimately the game bombed due to the original retail price of US$99, which was considerably higher than usual for games of the time. It was promptly reissued the year of its release as part of the short-lived SierraVentures line.[2]

[edit] References

  1. ^ “Time Zone: An interview with Roberta Williams”, Computer Gaming World: 14-15, May-June 1982 
  2. ^ IF-Legends.org entry on Sierra On-Line. Retrieved on 2007-04-27.

[edit] External links

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