Eldorado Gold BBC Micro text adventure review [Matter of Import 091]
3Review of the simplistic 1982 interactive fiction game from Program Power. Subscribe to Blown Cartridges for more retro game review videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoDQj54Gd-w8RTdukMrQScQ?sub_confirmation=1
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Eldorado Gold is a short text adventure game for the BBC Micro computer, released by Program Power in 1982. Set in the old west, the player is directed to search for the lost treasures of a miner named Bill McCluskey, recently deceased. Find them, bring them to the hotel, and enter the command “score” to win.
Simple enough.
The game uses a very simple verb-noun parser that’s light on synonyms and lacking in many of the command shortcuts now common to the genre - I for inventory or X for examine. It doesn’t understand prepositions or compound sentence structures, and really reminds me of the simple BASIC parsers I was coding when I was in junior highschool.
In terms of puzzles there isn’t much - a map to find your way through the desert, and a mule you need to shoot to get a shovel, which in turn you’ll need to dig in a few otherwise unremarkable spots to find treasure.
While there are a town and an Indian encampment you only need to visit the former at the end of the game, and the latter not at all. The bulk of the adventure is set in the mazelike mine, whose location descriptions are largely featureless.
So, to sum up, the parser is primitive and poorly implemented with vague “that didn’t work” error messages, the location descriptions are sparse and not very evocative, and the design and flow of the puzzles is lackluster.
The game does sport some graphical representation and a little sound, but it feels sporadic and uninspired as to when it’s implemented. Mind you, this came out five years after the original Zork and the same year as Beam Software’s "The Hobbit."
In short, if you’re really into the interactive fiction genre and want to play absolutely every game ever, give Eldorado Gold a play, otherwise skip it. I give the game a D ranking.
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