''James Clavell's Shōgun'' is a graphic and

text adventure Interactive fiction (IF) is software simulating environments in which players use text Command (computing), commands to control Player character, characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narrati ...

game written by

Dave Lebling Peter David Lebling (born October 30, 1949) is an American interactive fiction game designer ( implementor) and programmer who has worked at various companies, including Infocom and Avid. Life and career He was born in Washington, D.C., grew ...

game and published by

Infocom Infocom, Inc., was an American software company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that produced numerous works of interactive fiction. They also produced a business application, a relational database called ''Cornerstone (software), Cornerston ...

in 1989. It was released for the

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers produced by Commodore International, Commodore from 1985 until the company's bankruptcy in 1994, with production by others afterward. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16-b ...

Apple II Apple II ("apple Roman numerals, two", stylized as Apple ][) is a series of microcomputers manufactured by Apple Computer, Inc. from 1977 to 1993. The Apple II (original), original Apple II model, which gave the series its name, was designed ...

, MS-DOS, and Mac (computer), Mac. The game is based on the 1975 novel ''Shōgun (novel), Shōgun'' by James Clavell. It was Infocom's thirty-third game.

Plot

The game reproduces many of the novel's scenes, few of which are interconnected in any way. The player assumes the role of

John Blackthorne John Blackthorne, also known as , is the protagonist of James Clavell's 1975 novel ''Shōgun.'' The character is loosely based on the life of the 17th-century English navigator William Adams, who was the first Englishman to visit Japan. The char ...

, pilot-major of the

Dutch Dutch or Nederlands commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands ** Dutch people as an ethnic group () ** Dutch nationality law, history and regulations of Dutch citizenship () ** Dutch language () * In specific terms, i ...

trading ship ''Erasmus''. During a voyage in the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five Borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is ...

in the year 1600, the ''Erasmus'' is shipwrecked in

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

. Blackthorne must survive in a land where every custom is as unfamiliar to him as the language. After learning some of the society's ways, he is drawn into a political struggle between

warlord Warlords are individuals who exercise military, Economy, economic, and Politics, political control over a region, often one State collapse, without a strong central or national government, typically through informal control over Militia, local ...

s and falls in love with a Japanese woman. Eventually, he embraces Japanese life and is honored as a

samurai The samurai () were members of the warrior class in Japan. They were originally provincial warriors who came from wealthy landowning families who could afford to train their men to be mounted archers. In the 8th century AD, the imperial court d ...

Development

James Clavell contributed little to the design of the game, although he and Dave Lebling met several times. He treated the game as a traditional licensing agreement rather than a collaboration. Consequently, the game contains many scenes from the novel presented

verbatim Verbatim means word for word. It may refer to: * ''Verbatim'' (album), a 1996 album by Bob Ostertag * "Verbatim" (song), a 2015 song by Blackbear * Verbatim (brand), a brand of storage media and flash memory * Verbatim (horse) Verbatim (1965 ...

or made thinly interactive. Dave Lebling has said that he considers ''Shōgun'' the worst game he was ever responsible for overall, although he is proud of several of the ''timing'' puzzles.

Release

The ''Shōgun'' packaging includes two physical objects: a map representing John Blackthorne's "known world" of 1600, and ''The Soul of the Samurai'', a booklet describing the history and significance of samurai swords.

Reception

Dave Arneson David Lance Arneson (; October 1, 1947 – April 7, 2009) was an American game designer best known for co-developing the first published role-playing game (RPG), ''Dungeons & Dragons'', with Gary Gygax, in the early 1970s. Arneson's fundamental ...

gave ''Shōgun'' a negative review in ''

Computer Gaming World ''Computer Gaming World'' (CGW) was an American Video game journalism, computer game magazine that was published between 1981 and 2006. One of the few magazines of the era to survive the video game crash of 1983, it was sold to Ziff Davis in 199 ...

''. He wrote that the linear nature of the game and poor hints contributed to

guess-the-verb This is a glossary of terms common in multi-user dungeon (MUD) multiplayer virtual worlds. A–Z See also * Glossary of video game terms ...

and trial-and-error gameplay, and that the illustrations—while "nice to look at"—did not provide information to play the game. Arneson praised the game's large size, but concluded that ''Shōgun'' was only "mildly interesting" and inferior to ''

Zork Zero ''Zork Zero: The Revenge of Megaboz'' is an interactive fiction video game, written by Steve Meretzky over nearly 18 months and published by Infocom in 1988. Although it is the ninth and last ''Zork'' game released by Infocom before the company's ...

''. Dave Morris reviewed ''James Clavell's Shōgun'' for ''

Games International ''Computer Games Magazine'' was a monthly computer and console gaming print magazine, founded in October 1988 as the United Kingdom publication ''Games International''. During its history, it was known variously as ''Strategy Plus'' (October 1 ...

'' magazine, and gave it 1 star out of 5, and stated that "I would rather have seen this game taking the novel as a springboard for much more open adventure possibilities. As it stands, I can't see who could get anything out of it. Except Infocom and James Clavell, that is."

References

External links

Infocom-if.org entry
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Shogun, James Clavell's 1980s interactive fiction Interactive fiction based on works 1989 video games Adventure games Amiga games Apple II games Asian Saga Classic Mac OS games DOS games Infocom games Japan in non-Japanese culture Video games about samurai Video games based on novels Video games developed in the United States Video games set in Japan Adaptations of works by James Clavell Single-player video games