Half-Century Challenge Series: https://www.backloggd.com/u/C_F/list/half-century-challenge/

HCC #5 = Wander (1974)

Hey folks, it's been a while. Me and Mega are still doing this challenge at a steady pace, so be sure to check out Mega's newest review too! https://www.backloggd.com/u/MegaTheRealOne/review/1619202/

Let's talk about release dates. Before the internet was used by the masses, before people truly gave a shit about video games as an artform, there was a trend that always bugged me; release dates. One need only look at the sheer number of games with release dates on IGDB of "December 31st" to figure out there's a widespread problem with retro games: https://i.imgur.com/5QhAvK9.png

That's right, December 31st is the default date used when a game's release year is narrowed down. Wander (which has dual status as both a video game and an engine, much like MUGEN) suffers from this as well.

Why does that matter? Well, for one thing, sometimes we aren't even sure if release dates in this context for very old games refers to the time period where it was shared around a college campus or if it refers to a wide release. For another reason, well, I just about had a heart attack when I encountered the magic word "xyzzy" in Castle's text: https://i.imgur.com/v3ROA4y.png

Why is this significant? Well, Wander came out in 1974. This is 4 years before Colossal Cave Adventure came out. One of the games in Wander, Castle, uses the magic word "xyzzy" which would mean that the original story of xyzzy being invented for the vastly more iconic Colossal Cave Adventure was a lie. The word xyzzy is one of the most famous keywords for programmers, even appearing as an easter egg in things like Monkey Island. To say this would be a history changer is putting it rather lightly.

But there's a problem with saying Wander had the word first. https://ahopeful.wordpress.com/2015/04/22/wander-1974-a-lost-mainframe-game-is-found/

According to this blog, Wander's compiled source files here were for a 1980s release, and Castle was built in Wander.

I have seen conflicting speculation on whether Castle predates Colossal Cave Adventure. According to this blog, Castle was the first game built in Wander during 1974 and the author of this blog even declares it to be the first adventure game ever created
http://crpgadventures.blogspot.com/2016/03/castle-designed-using-wander-1974.html

Yet, I cannot find anything concrete. In fact, I found another blog which concluded the sub-game Castle came after Colossal Cave Adventure:
https://bluerenga.blog/2015/12/21/castle-using-wander-system-1974/
https://bluerenga.blog/2015/04/23/wander-1974-release-and-questions-answered/

Yet, even if I had smoking gun evidence Colossal Cave Adventure (generally cited as the most important adventure game ever made) had actually ripped off Castle all this time, would it matter? Mega Man Legends never gets credit for having Z-targetting before Ocarina of Time; hell I feel like I live in a world where progenitors of their medium in general are neglected to keep up the narrative that Nintendo invents everything in the industry. Monster hunting games like Dragon Quest and Shin Megami Tensei are called Pokemon ripoffs with videos getting millions of views for this obvious lie that can be debunked with 5 seconds of Google searching. The narrative that Ocarina of Time was the first game with shit like a day/night cycle or generational storytelling is continuously pushed despite the existence of Dragon Quest 5 or Breath of Fire. Super Mario 64 is obviously the first 3D platformer if not game in existence. Jumping Flash, Alpha Waves, earlier 3D platformers... what are those?

I went into this game wanting to write a positive piece about a wacky old adventure game. However, as my copy of the game kept bugging out and refusing to let me progress... (you have to grab the rope to go down and grab the keys, but then the rope fades away unless possibly some strict order of events from this video is followed? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEvGJnyfbVo )
I honestly don't know what to say. I am left alone with my thoughts of how video games are treated almost exclusively as toys rather than an artistic medium. Nobody would call Halloween 2 a ripoff of Friday the 13th the way Dragon Quest Monsters is called a ripoff of Pokemon. Nobody would cover an Elvis song, sell the cover, and then DMCA every pirated copy of OG Elvis music on the internet while also refusing to sell the original. Yet this is what what happens with say Squaresoft games when Square Enix sells quarter-assed remakes of games like Portopia or Front Mission while removing roms of the originals from the internet and refusing to resell those anyways, all while their fanboys happily cheer on this behaviour since we all must welcome the HD future. There is constant investigative work on the early history of anime to the point it is a big deal when 100 year old commercials are discovered but nobody except for me and about 3 other people have done a deep dive into the history of what is basically the first adventure game. Nobody would call Iron Man the first superhero movie ever made just because the MCU is the highest grossing film franchise, but this is what happens with Mario 64 allegedly being the first 3D platformer.

The truth is Wander is not really worth talking about as a game. In particular, its most noteworthy subgame Castle is a sloppily made mess where the text parser sucks to the point attempting to read the game's guide sometimes reads unrelated things. Hell, even 2 expert adventure gamers have failed to map out a walkthrough for it. It's so shoddily put together that I straightup just ignored the game over screen and kept moving after my so-called death, to say nothing of how vulgar the game can be: https://imgur.com/a/pYEfhm0

However, if video games are to be treated as a serious artistic medium, this treatment has GOT to change. Roms should not be removed from the internet without any legal avenue to buy them with the justification that the shiny new remakes exist to minmax megacorp profits via safe business moves. We cannot brush aside games that were the first to pull off a particular concept like generational storytelling or monster taming or z-targetting simply because those games didn't have hundred million dollar marketing campaigns like tentpole Nintendo games. We cannot give this little of a shit about documenting the early history of video games when I see news stories blow up like this for the perhaps even nerdier medium of anime https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElY52feA7_k

Wander isn't an interesting game or engine, but it is truly representative of all my frustrations as somebody who appreciates games in an academic sense. It deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as things like Colossal Cave Adventure in my book, and I am truly baffled at the fact it was lost media for so many decades before anybody cared to find it. However, I suppose that it being found at all is progress enough I should be happy with.

I promise this will be my only negativity-laden review for the entire rest of the half-century challenge, guys.

Next time: Gun Fight (1975)