The Rainbow Book of Adventures

The Rainbow magazine, compiled a collection of text and graphical adventures programmed in BASIC. The default interface of early 1980's microcomputers, BASIC was familiar to every owner. Most of the 108-page manual is listings of BASIC code for each game; the challenge of programming in such a small space is a unifying theme. A couple, like "The Door," fit into just four kilobytes, matching the total RAM of one retailed Color Computer model. "The Door" spoofs the universal frustration of all but a few '80's text adventures: figuring out how to tell the game what you wanted to do was often more difficult than knowing what to do. The games herein offer few exceptions to that rule, but the contributors, both amateur and professional developers, take the player to the limits of earth and outer space. Most of the background color and storyline are contained in the manual's introduction or the first screen of the game.