The Hobbit (1982 video game)
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The Hobbit is an Interactive Fiction game published in 1982 by Melbourne House. It was written by Philip Mitchell and Veronica Megler at Beam Software and based on J. R. R. Tolkien's novel of the same name. The initial release included a copy of the novel with every purchase.
Originally released on the ZX Spectrum, The Hobbit was ported to several other platforms including the Commodore 64, BBC Micro, and Oric.
The game became famous for its advanced (for the time) AI: Non-Player Characters wander around the game independently, interacting with objects and each other and 'playing' by the same rules that constrain the player. A slow player might find that Gandalf has gone on ahead and defeated the trolls; or, if unlucky, that an important character has got into a fight and been killed.
Mitchell and Megler also included an advanced command parser that far outdid the simple "verb-noun" parsers of most interactive fiction at the time, and consistent in-game physics to define how objects can be combined and carried.
The Hobbit's complexity brought with it a lot of bugs, with at least one published version being Unwinnable by Mistake. Even so, it soon became a bestseller with over half a million units sold in Europe, and has been remembered for years after as a classic of its genre.
Beam followed The Hobbit with three Lord of the Rings-based sequels, Lord of the Rings: Game One, Shadows of Mordor: Game Two of Lord of the Rings, and The Crack of Doom. They also reused the text parser for the game Sherlock.
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- The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Averted: the NPCs have the same rules as the player's character (although they might have more strength and a better grasp of in-game commands).
- Lost Forever: Bilbo frequently needs help from another character, notably Gandalf, Thorin and the wood-elves' butler. Unfortunately, any one of those characters can be killed by a randomly-spawning enemy. This can happen while Bilbo is busy elsewhere, so the player might not even know why they're stuck.
- Memetic Mutation: "You wait. Time passes..." and "Thorin sits down and starts singing about gold." found their way into 80s/90s game culture.
- Both phrases were used in a Shout-Out in the game Discworld Noir.
- Real Time with Pause: If a player goes too long without typing anything, the phrase "You wait. Time passes..." appears, as if they'd typed "Wait". The NPCs continue to do things during this time. This can be avoided with the "pause" command.
- The Problem with Licensed Games: Averted - the game was advanced for its time and very popular (for a text adventure, at least).
- You Can't Get Ye Flask: Largely averted by the text parser - but with a 400-word vocabulary, it still has its limits.