Mindwheel
From IFWiki
 Adventure  Surreal  Virtual reality |
| Mindwheel | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Robert Pinsky (author), Steve Hales and William Mataga (programmers) |
| Publisher(s) | Synapse Software (developer), Brøderbund Software (distributor) |
| Release date(s) | 1984 |
| Authoring system | BTZ |
| Platform(s) | TBD |
| Language(s) | English |
| License(s) | Commercial |
| Multimedia | |
| Color effects | none |
| Graphics | none |
| Sound/Music | none |
| Ratings | |
| Cruelty scale | Cruelty to be determined |
How It Begins
You are a Mind Adventurer. You are lying face up on a table in a laboratory. Doctor Virgil asks you if you're ready to begin your journey, or if you'd like to know more about the situation or the Minds.
The situation is dire. The world is in chaos and at the brink of disaster. Mankind's only hope is for you to make a telepathic journey through a neuro-electronic matrix dominated by the thought-patterns of four dead people of unusual mental power. These Minds are:
- Bobby Clemon, an assassinated rock star;
- The Generalissimo, an infamous and ingenious dictator and war criminal;
- The Poet, author of famous epics and plays, killed for his forbidden love for a princess;
- Dr. Eva Fein, the "female Einstein", a scientist, humanist, and distinguished musician.
By traversing this mental labyrinth, you must find and recover the Wheel of Wisdom at the dawn of civilization itself.
Notable Features
- First game released that was written in BTZ. This allowed the game to enjoy a large vocabulary, effects running in real-time, and a notion of distance between adjacent locations.
- Marketed with a hardcover book, also called Mindwheel. The book has 93 numbered pages: the printed material is by Richard Sanford, the front cover is by Richard Blair, the illustrations are by Kazuko Foster, and the photographs are by Thom Hayward. The book contains some previously written poems by Robert Pinsky, and the book is used as a source of information for answering copy-protection questions in the game.
- Poetry is used several times in the game, for both the story and for puzzles.
Versions
TODO
Links
- Mindwheel listing at MobyGames.
- Mindwheel listing - at Home of the Underdogs.
- Mindwheel walkthrough - at GamesOver.
- Mindwheel cheats and walkthrough - at GAMEZ.com.
- Condemned to Reload It by Nick Montfort, November 2003. Includes a discussion on the difficulty of playing Mindwheel today because of discontinued support for the medium and technologies it depends on.