''Ballyhoo'' is an interactive fiction

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

circus A circus is a company of performers who put on diverse entertainment shows that may include clowns, acrobats, trained animals, trapeze acts, musicians, dancers, hoopers, tightrope walkers, jugglers, magicians, ventriloquists, and unicyclis ...

-themed game was released for ten systems, including

DOS DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems. DOS may also refer to: Computing * Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel * Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicat ...

, Atari ST, and Commodore 64. ''Ballyhoo'' was labeled as "Standard" difficulty. It is Infocom's nineteenth game.

Plot

The player's character is bedazzled by the spectacle of the

and the mystery of the performer's life. After attending a show of Tomas Munrab's "The Travelling Circus That Time Forgot", the player loiters near the tents instead of rushing through the exit. Maybe some clowns will practice a new act, or perhaps at least one of the

trapeze A trapeze is a short horizontal bar hung by ropes or metal straps from a ceiling support. It is an aerial apparatus commonly found in circus performances. Trapeze acts may be static, spinning (rigged from a single point), swinging or flying, an ...

artists will trip... Instead, the player overhears a strange conversation. The circus' owner has hired a drunken, inept detective to find his daughter Chelsea, who has been

kidnapped Kidnapped may refer to: * subject to the crime of kidnapping Literature * ''Kidnapped'' (novel), an 1886 novel by Robert Louis Stevenson * ''Kidnapped'' (comics), a 2007 graphic novel adaptation of R. L. Stevenson's novel by Alan Grant and Ca ...

. Munrab is convinced that it was an outside job; surely his loyal employees would ''never'' betray him like this! As the player begins to investigate the abduction, it soon becomes clear that the circus workers don't appreciate the intrusion. Their reactions range from indifference to hostility to attempted murder. In order to unravel the mystery, the player engages in a series of actions straight out of a circus fan's dream: dressing up as a clown, walking the high wire, and taming lions.

Release

''Ballyhoo'' included the following physical items in the package: #An "Official

Souvenir A souvenir (), memento, keepsake, or token of remembrance is an object a person acquires for the memories the owner associates with it. A souvenir can be any object that can be collected or purchased and transported home by the traveler as a m ...

Program" from The Traveling Circus That Time Forgot describing each of the featured acts and listing common circus slang #A ticket to the circus #A toy

balloon A balloon is a flexible bag that can be inflated with a gas, such as helium, hydrogen, nitrous oxide, oxygen, and air. For special tasks, balloons can be filled with smoke, liquid water, granular media (e.g. sand, flour or rice), or light so ...

imprinted with the circus' name and logo (blue was the most common color, although a few orange or black ones were also shipped) #A

trade card A trade card is a square or rectangular card that is small, but bigger than the modern visiting card, and is exchanged in social circles, that a business distributes to clients and potential customers, as a kind of business card. Trade cards fir ...

for "Dr. Nostrum's Extract", a fictitious

patent medicine A patent medicine, sometimes called a proprietary medicine, is an over-the-counter (nonprescription) medicine or medicinal preparation that is typically protected and advertised by a trademark and trade name (and sometimes a patent) and claimed ...

hailed as a "wondrous curative" containing 19% alcohol

Reception

Compute!'s Gazette ''Compute!'s Gazette'' (), stylized as ''COMPUTE!'s Gazette'', was a computer magazine of the 1980s, directed at users of Commodore's 8-bit home computers. Announced as ''The Commodore Gazette'', it was a Commodore-only daughter magazine of the ...

'' in 1986 called ''Ballyhoo'' "richly evocative, often exasperating, and very clever". The magazine approved of the splendid feelies and "surprisingly flexible" parser.

Legacy

The Lost Treasures of Infocom ''The Lost Treasures of Infocom'' is a 1991 compilation of 20 previously-released interactive fiction games developed by Infocom. It was published by Activision for MS-DOS, Macintosh, Amiga, and Apple IIGS versions. It was later re-released on ...

'' bundled 20 Infocom releases, including ''Ballyhoo''. This package as shipped lacked some information necessary to complete the game; the final page of the souvenir program was omitted. This page was an ad for a classical music

radio station Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radi ...

; at one point in the game, the player must tune a radio to the

frequency Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit of time. It is also occasionally referred to as ''temporal frequency'' for clarity, and is distinct from ''angular frequency''. Frequency is measured in hertz (Hz) which is eq ...

listed in the ad ( AM 1170) in order to proceed.

References

External links

Infocom-if.org entry

* {{Infocom games 1980s interactive fiction 1985 video games Adventure games Amiga games Amstrad CPC games Apple II games Atari 8-bit family games Atari ST games Classic Mac OS games Commodore 64 games DOS games Infocom games MSX games TI-99/4A games TRS-80 games TRS-80 Color Computer games Video games developed in the United States Video games featuring protagonists of selectable gender Single-player video games