Does anyone remember the old CompuServe text adventure game, "CastleQuest?"

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posted by Juffo-Wup to Computers & Internet at 5:10 PM on September 11, 2011

Back in the late 80s or early 90s, the public library in my hometown had a text terminal with some sort of leased line to CompuServe. I used to get on this terminal at every available opportunity in order to play a text [text-ONLY; no ASCII graphics] adventure game called CastleQuest. I would love to play this game again, to see its source code, or even to hear from anyone else who played it, but I cannot find anything about it on the Internet. 

I only remember a few things about the game, but here they are: 

In the room where you started at the beginning of the game, the description was something like this: "You are in a musty, dusty bedroom. Cobwebs hang from the ceiling. The shutters are closed." I know there was a key somewhere to the shutters, and there was also a pistol and I think a silver bullet. 

Unfortunately, that's all I can remember. If anyone remembers this game or knows where I can find any information about it, I'd be grateful to hear from you.

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posted by Knappster at 6:48 PM on September 11, 2011

From Compuserve for Dummies (1995):

  Did you ever want to get away from it all and take off to an exotic location
  where nobody can find you? Playing CastleQuest gives you that experience,
  with a little twist. In this game, you play the role of a tourist traveling
  through Romania (which is a country that most American high-school students
  can never identify on a map). As you travel through Transylvania, your
  Soviet-built car breaks down (no surprise there), leaving you stranded near
  a castle (what a coincidence!). Like a moronic character in a bad horror
  movie, you enter the dark, forbidding castle; find a spare bedroom; and drop
  off to sleep. The next morning, you wake with an inexplicable sense of dread.
  Rather than leave right away, you decide to repay the castle's hospitality
  by looting the place and killing its owner. (As most countries can readily
  testify, this behavior is typical of the average American traveler.)
  To play CastleQuest, use the GO CQUEST command.

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posted by koeselitz at 10:21 PM on September 11, 2011

Okay, on doing some googling, it appears that this game is often referred to as "Bob Maples' Castle Quest" - for example this Wiki page. There isn't much info on Bob Maples, but he appears to have been writing adventure games since the early eighties since I guess he wrote "Black Dragon," a game which appeared on The Source around that time, and which was also apparently later on CompuServe. (Maybe CastleQuest originated before CompuServe, too?)

My biggest lead is frankly another guy who has apparently been trying for some years to locate a game he remembers from The Source. He mentions Bob Maples briefly in his web page about his search. In the same page, he maps out a number of people involved in CompuServe and their online gaming apparatus.

I'll bet that, if you emailed him, he would at least be able to point you in the right direction on where to look, and maybe even refer you to folks who would be able to give you more information.

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