Mindshadow -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author(s): Brian Fargo Genre: Mystery Language: en First Publication Date: 1984 License: Commercial (Out of Print) Rating: 3.5 (based on 8 ratings) ABOUT THE STORY You find yourself lost in the middle of nowhere. In the middle of a mystery. Who are you? Where will you go? What will you do? London. Luxembourg. Across oceans and continents. You struggle for answers. For your identity. And the faceless betrayer who left you to perish. Deception abounds. As do twisted traps and devious characters. But a wise, legendary bird named "Condor" helps in the worst of times. This brilliantly wrought mystery echoes with intricate challenges and unexpected reversals. Yet skillfully, it speaks to you in direct, simple prose. And its greatly expanded vocabulary allows you to talk to the computer in plain English. And that means hours of true enjoyment for both novice and advanced adventure. EXTERNAL LINKS Play online MS-DOS version zx.zip Requires an interpreter program - refer to the game's documentation for details Sols3.zip solution Sols2.zip solution Sols1.zip solution jgunness.zip solution mindshadow.txt solution Mindshadow.step solution Map at CASA EDITORIAL REVIEWS Crash > "As you may be aware, everyone who hasn't 'made it' and settled into the > placid waters of The Civil Service must become a small business. This > generally entails either clothing, feeding or entertaining those who work in > the public sector and the buzz word for success is USP: the unique selling > point which will give your business the edge over the competition. (Of > course this country really needs small businesses to create wealth, like > manufacturing or new technology - but no-one's told the bank managers who > give respectability a bad name). Anyhow, I digress. The point is where on > earth is the unique selling point in this product? There isn't one. > > Having said all that above, this program really is good and commercial and > knocks spots off the opposition. 'Good' because it sports many classy > features like a superb tutorial which provides a marvellous introduction to > playing adventures and includes an adventure simulation taking you through > the step by step thinking behind the moves, GET ALL and DROP ALL, a strong > EXAMINE command, QUICK SAVE and QUICKLOAD which allows saving within RAM, > and a HELP ME CONDOR command which can be used three times when all else > fails (Condor is the bird which featured in that superb BBC program set in > South America). Unlike the idiotic, condescending quips of so many > disappointing rivals this game's HELP function is truly superb. When you ask > for help, help is exactly what you get. How this game has ticked all the > boxes and managed to get every last sophisticated feature into 48K will > leave the opposition scratching their heads for some time to come. > 'Commercial' because it has a superb picture at each location, very > well-designed and drawn. Rivals will be particularly impressed by the subtle > use of colour and shading to give the graphics a very distinctive flavour. > Whoever designed the graphics certainly deserves a pat on the back." SynTax > During the stay in Luxemburg the atmosphere though portrayed in hues of > magenta, blue and green is really quite tense, and the more wary will save > often to ensure death is not the final frontier. As the plot thickens, and > you piece more clues together in order to regain your memory, it becomes > apparent that they didn't knock the game together in a couple of days, but > really made an effort to make an interesting and engaging adventure. Page 6 > Mindshadow is a relatively new release from Activision which follows the > tried and tested format of the good, old-fashioned illustrated text > Adventure. It comes on a double-sided disk for the 8-bit Ataris, but I > believe it is also available for the ST. I played the 8-bit version, but I > have no doubt that the ST version is similar. > > The concept of the illustrated Adventure should not be new to long time > readers of this column, as I've covered many illustrated Adventures in the > past. The basic format was pioneered by Sierra On-Line, but has since been > refined by the big name companies like Datasoft, Sirius, Penguin and > Broderbund. Improvements have generally been in the areas of graphics, > vocabulary and the all important parser. The complexity of the puzzles has > never really expanded beyond that of the early games and has certainly not > reached the sophistication of some of Infocom's best puzzles. This doesn't > mean to say that the games are easy. Some are. Some aren't.