Eric the Unready
1993 – Legend Entertainment
DOS but ran fine under W98 with colors set to 256
Mouse/keyboard (movement by mouse but you need to type in most commands)
Knight’s Union Hall
“Once long ago many knights rode out on a great quest. Their holy mission
was to recover the most sacred artifact know to man, the vessel used at
the Last Supper. After a year and a day one knight returned from the
quest, mortally wounded. With his dying breath he asked that the vessel he
found be permanently enshrined here in the union hall. His will was done
and thanks to his brave deeds all who entered here were granted the
sublime honor of seeing with their own eyes…………………The Holy Grill”
And then there’s the pig in the privy lol. Yes, I typed in "eat s***" to
see what would happen <g>
Story
You play Eric the Unready a somewhat accident-prone knight. You are a
member of Local 704 and your shop steward is none too thrilled with you
for burning down a certain establishment (the union is on the hook for the
cost of re-building) but never the less you are chosen to go on a quest to
rescue the Princess Lorealle who has been kidnapped. Seems that that the
one who is by the king’s side when he dies (according to the prophecy King
the Bewildered is scheduled to die at noon in one week) shall inherit the
kingdom – and the king’s second wife (who just so happens to be a witch)
very much wants her daughter Grizella to inherit.
You meet Bud the Wizard who tells you about five items you will need in
order to break into the witch’s castle so you can rescue Lorealle – a
pitchfork, a wrench, a crowbar, bolt cutters and a steak (we’re taking the
meat kind here). So begins your journey to rescue the Princess and keep
the evil witch’s daughter from inheriting the throne – on the way you
visit Monkey Island, Phantasy Island, Milligan’s Island, Treasure Island,
a white house with a mail box in front, virgins, gods (as in Mount
Olympus), the original cast members of Star Trek and all other assorted
adventuring type folks.
Game Play
This game is unique in that you can move via the mouse – there are
direction arrows at the top of the screen that you click on in order to go
that direction or you can just type in the direction you want. Same with
most of the commands. If you double click on an item you will take it (as
opposed to typing in “take”) Single click allows you to look at an item or
read the item if it can be read. There is a dialogue tree to the right of
the graphics that you can click on each word but it’s much easier just to
type in the sentence. Sometimes coming up with the correct sentence was a
pain and there were a few times that I got frustrated because I couldn’t
get the correct wording that the game wanted but for the most part it was
pretty easy –
The game is full of clever dialogue and responses to things you type in.
Case in point – in one part of the game you need to open a case to
retrieve the item inside. So I typed in “open case”. The game responded
with: “Ah. Well. We have a slight difficulty there. The case appears to
be locked and as this is an adventure game, I can hardly allow you to open
it unless you supply the proper key. I consider your input to have been
absolutely first rate however” In another part of the game I decided to
try talking to an iceberg (heck I talked with a tree – an iceberg was not
that much different). The game came back back with : “Don’t you feel
rather silly trying to talk to an iceberg?” I typed back “no” – the game
came back “Well looks like you’re playing the correct game then”. Still
couldn’t talk to the iceberg however <g>
Graphics and Sound
Very little of both – this is more of a text adventure with pictures than
anything else. There is music but all dialogue is read. Did I miss the
voices? No – did I mind very few graphics? No. Will others? Well let’s
just say this game is definitely not for those who want state of the art
anything – nor that have to have their games “reality” based. You have to
suspend your disbelief so far that it takes awhile to get it back.
I have no idea where you can even find Eric the Unready anymore. I think I
got mine on e-bay, but that was about a year ago. If you can lay your
hands on it – by all means give it a whirl - and prepare to have fun.
copyright © 2002
GameBoomers
