Three Views of Below the Root for the IBM PC Platform
0Below the Root was an unusual adventure game released in 1984 by Windham Classics. This non-scrolling platform game had exploration, items to collect and puzzles to solve, but is mainly a non-violent game where most of the danger comes from the environment. You can choose from five characters, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, to explore the game world and attempt to complete the game. You also have psychic powers at your command, but you must conserve your "Spirit" for when you need it. One of the most interesting features of this game is the use of the Shuba to be able to glide down to the ground instead of falling and taking damage.
The game was both an adaptation and a continuation of the Green-Sky Trilogy of novels (Below the Root, And All Between, Until the Celebration) written by Zilpha Keatley Synder in 1975-77. Those books told of two very different groups of people inhabiting the world of Green Sky, the Kindar who live in structures built on branches of mammoth trees called Grunds, and the Erlding, who live on the surface and underground. The discovery of one group by the other leads to conflict, but by the end of the books the two societies have managed to tolerate each other's existence. The game picks up where the books left off, for there is great distrust and animosity remaining between the two peoples of Green Sky.
Windham Classics was a label of Spinnaker Software, a well-known publisher of games for the Apple II and Commodore 64. Windham also published Alice in Wonderland with a similar engine (which did not get ported to the IBM PC Platform) as well as text adventures based on The Wizard of Oz, Treasure Island and Swiss Family Robinson.
For the IBM PC Platform, the first segment of this video shows how people often have seen this game being played on Youtube and in emulators. This is IBM CGA 4-color graphics, which will be seen by people playing on an RGB color monitor. The game is being played on an IBM PC/XT with an old-style CGA card and the audio output is being recorded from the PC speaker via the alligator-clip method.
In the second part of this video, 5:14, we see what this game looks like when displayed on a North American color TV or NTSC color composite monitor. The graphic patterns have not changed, but the decoding is very different. Many people in the 1980s would have used a TV or a composite monitor because RGB monitors were very expensive. Below the Root uses 320x200 composite artifact color graphics. 320x200 was more limited in its ability to select color than 640x200, but one set of graphical patterns could be used for both composite and RGB monitors. The same hardware is being used as is demonstrated in the first part of this video.
But there is more to this story, as we see in part three, 10:43, of this video. This time I am playing the game on my IBM PCjr. You will hear the three voice music from the PCjr.'s sound chip during the introduction, but music is almost completely limited to the introduction. In-game sound effects do not sound substantially different from the PC's sound effects. The IBM PCjr. also supports composite artifact color via an RCA video jack, but the same colors will produce very different patterns on an IBM CGA card as opposed to an IBM PCjr. The default capture settings for my capture card were very dark with PCjr. composite color, so I reduced the contrast and increased the brightness to give you a fair presentation of how a TV might display the colors. I decided not to capture the RGB video from the PCjr., it has the same four color limitations as CGA RGB and looks rather similar.
I am not the most familiar with this game, so I decided to start the "Sample Quest", essentially an extended demo of the game, to give the three video segments some consistency between them.
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Currently, Nerdly Pleasures (Great Hierophant) has 233 views for Below the Root across 1 video. Less than an hour worth of Below the Root videos were uploaded to his channel, making up less than 0.59% of the total overall content on Nerdly Pleasures (Great Hierophant)'s YouTube channel.