Adventure games have come a long way since the beginning and even though they have been with us since the earliest mainframe computers recently there haven’t been a lot released of them. Journey to the center of the earth is a very early game written originally by Greg Hasset but this version was translated from the original TSR-80 to the C64 by S. Prenzel. The story does not tie in with the book as far as I can tell but instead you have a ship (which kind of ship is unknown) that has broken down and not only do you have to find something that can fix you ship but gather some treasure in the process as well.
You start the game inside your ship and the computer tells you that the fribulating gonkulator is broken. You can exit you ship in four directions and any of them will lead you to inside a cave where you can explore to find items of value like gems and silver. These valuables will raise your overall score if you manage to beat the game but there are also other objects which you need to solve puzzles and complete the game. There are also evel creatures lurking around and can appear at random so better be carefull and fight if neccessary. If you fix you ship and get away you are shown the total amount of points so you can try again if you haven’t got the maximum.
This adventure game is quite simple and there are occasional annoyences like dying suddenly when a creature appears out of nowhere and kills you. The game is also rather hard to map as many rooms have the same description and the paths don’t always line up. Still when Greg Hasset wrote the game he was like 13 or so and the best thing for me at least is looking at the code and how the game was made. If you like this kind of game or if you would like to see how it was coded then check out this old piece of interactive fiction.
Overal rating: 6/10
This game was released for one system here are some notes:
| C64 | Released in 1981. Game has been tested but not completed with CCS64 v2.0 win. I’m not sure about when the game was released but I think it’s fairly accurate. |
| Others | The original version was created bij Greg Hasset and was released on the tsr-80 somewhere between 1978 and 1981. The game was probably ported to other systems as well as the game was released with some magazines and because the game is made in basic that means the source code was included by default. |
| Date added | Aug-17-2005 20:42 |
| Name | Journey to the center of the earth |
| Developer | S. Prenzel |
| Publisher | S. Prenzel |
| First released | 1981 |
| Genre | Interactive Fiction |
