Dog Star Adventure - (1979) - TRS-80 - VGG

Lance Micklus © 1979
[Computer] TRS-80 Model 1, Level II
Emulator: MAME 0.215
Rating: 7/10
Shamelessly ripped from the middle act of Star Wars... save Leya, escape the "Dog Star", watch out for "General Doom" (Vader), etc. And yet… this text adventure was notable for its fun, and for setting a template others could follow. The author, Lance Micklus, wrote this in fairly easy-to-follow BASIC code. Not only so you could type in the program from a magazine listing… but once you understood what's going on, could begin to tinker with it and create your own adventure.
Although not as snappy as machine language, it was the ease-of-modification here that was so useful. Using this game as a template created an easy way for people to break into the text-adventure genre. Not many of these homebrew games were good enough to be saved, sold, or widely distributed… but it is remarkable that text-adventures still exist even today. Yes, a niche market since at least the late 80's… but still going, with yearly competitions and recognition. For that, Dog Star is notable, and also a worthy little game on its own.