''Waxworks'' is an

interactive fiction '' Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, is software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives, either in the ...

game by

Brian Howarth Brian Howarth is a British video game designer and computer programmer. He wrote many interactive fiction computer games in the early 1980s in a series called ''Mysterious Adventures''. He was born in Blackpool in 1953. After leaving school he ...

and Cliff J. Ogden. It was published by Digital Fantasia in

1983 The year 1983 saw both the official beginning of the Internet and the first mobile cellular telephone call. Events January * January 1 – The migration of the ARPANET to Internet protocol suite, TCP/IP is officially completed (this is consid ...

for the

Commodore 64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in the Guinness ...

Plus/4 The Commodore Plus/4 is a home computer released by Commodore International in 1984. The "Plus/4" name refers to the four-application ROM resident office suite (word processor, spreadsheet, database, and graphing); it was billed as "the produc ...

ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer that was developed by Sinclair Research. It was released in the United Kingdom on 23 April 1982, and became Britain's best-selling microcomputer. Referred to during development as t ...

, and

BBC Micro The British Broadcasting Corporation Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, is a series of microcomputers and associated peripherals designed and built by Acorn Computers in the 1980s for the BBC Computer Literacy Project. Designed with an emphas ...

. It was the 11th game in the Mysterious Adventures series. The story is about a waxworks in which the protagonist is trapped. Escaping involves finding statues of famous people (like Hillary and

Tenzing Tenzing Norgay (; ''tendzin norgyé''; perhaps 29 May 1914 – 9 May 1986), born Namgyal Wangdi, and also referred to as Sherpa Tenzing, was a Nepali-Indian Sherpa mountaineer. He was one of the first two people known to reach the sum ...

). Whilst some of the statues are exceptionally easy to identify, others are not so simple without acquiring the necessary clues earlier in the game. For example, identifying the British Prime Minister

David Lloyd George David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor, (17 January 1863 – 26 March 1945) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1916 to 1922. He was a Liberal Party politician from Wales, known for leading the United Kingdom during t ...

is exceptionally problematic without first finding a clue to his whereabouts.

Reception

CRASH Crash or CRASH may refer to: Common meanings * Collision, an impact between two or more objects * Crash (computing), a condition where a program ceases to respond * Cardiac arrest, a medical condition in which the heart stops beating * Couch su ...

'' magazine reviewed ''Waxworks'' in the July 1984 issue. The text parser was described as "eccentric" but with "some noteworthy flexibility", being a modified verb/noun form that also allows adverbs and conjunctions ("QUICKLY GET THE LAMP, SWORD, CLOAK AND STAFF", for example). The graphical display was also highlighted, making up for the absence of long room descriptions. ''

Your Commodore ''Your Commodore'' was a magazine for Commodore International, Commodore computers, including the Commodore 64, Amiga, and the Commodore Personal computer, PC range. It was published in the UK from October 1984 until late 1989 when the name was s ...

'' thought the game was not as good as the ''

Zork ''Zork'' is a text-based adventure game first released in 1977 by developers Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling for the PDP-10 mainframe computer. The original developers and others, as the company Infocom, expanded and ...

'' series and with inferior graphics to rival title ''

Dallas Quest ''The Dallas Quest'' is a graphic adventure game based on the soap opera ''Dallas''. The game was programmed by James Garon for the TRS-80 Color Computer and published by Tandy Corporation in 1984. It was the second game in the "Animated Advent ...

''. Overall it was considered to be "a standard adventure with standard graphics." ''Personal Computer Games'' said the game had good graphics, but they took a while to draw so the option to skip them was useful. They also noticed that the response to commands was "nice and fast." The reviewer thought it likely that the game would become as much of a favourite as the other titles in the series.

References

External links

Waxworks
at

World of Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit home computer that was developed by Sinclair Research. It was released in the United Kingdom on 23 April 1982, and became Britain's best-selling microcomputer. Referred to during development as the ''ZX81 Colour ...

1983 video games BBC Micro and Acorn Electron games Commodore 16 and Plus/4 games Commodore 64 games Dragon 32 games Oric games 1980s interactive fiction Video games developed in the United Kingdom ZX Spectrum games {{adventure-videogame-stub