Between 1983 and 1984 I was consumed by the mission to write my own text adventures for the Commodore VIC 20 Home Computer. During this time I completed two adventures, and partially completed another four.
#1 – Pirate House -> released
#2 – Sunken treasure -> released
#3 – Escape from Alcatraz
#4 – Search for the Golden Eagle
#5 – Rebel Fighter
#6 – House of Terror *
With two being released I was on my way to creating a collection of text adventures that would fit in the unexpanded memory of the VIC 20. But as I was learning the art of writing a text adventure and making it fit into the limited 3.5K memory of the VIC was lucky enough to receive a Commodore 64 for Christmas.
Deciding that the VIC 20 was too limited I moved over to the C64 and started coding bigger games and in the process, I sold the VIC 20 to buy a Commodore 1541 Disk Drive. So that was the end of the VIC 20 text adventures, although to did write several other types of games for the VIC.
Of special note was adventure #6 – House of Terror. For this game I also wrote a short story which lucky for me has survived 37 years in storage and it makes me wonder whether I should sit down and create the game that never was.