Eric the Unready (MS-DOS) - Guest Post

I'm not ready for Eric the Unready. This could be absolutely anything.

It's a duel to the death! What a way to start a game!

This music is so chirpy... it's either a foregone victory for Sir Eric, or it's setting up a dramatic twist.

Eric looks pretty ready to me. 'Unready' would be turning up unarmed or without a horse.

Why is it that horses always look so bored?

While looking through his 'How to Joust' manual, Eric accidentally gets his lance stuck in the tree and hits the dreaded Knight of the Black Pauldron with a deluge of apples.

He totally meant that.

A TOAST! (Mmm, toast.)

Poor Eric can't even make a toast without setting the entire castle on fire. And now I really want some toast.

What's with that creepy grinning guy in the background? He must be a pyromaniac or something.

The boss of the local Knights' Union has popped round for a visit. This isn't going to be pretty.

And I defeated the dreaded Knight of the Black Pauldron! You can't forget that!

Even though Eric is a one-man disaster area, the boss still has a job for him. He's to kiss a cursed pig and turn it back into a girl.

Why is this guy being so harsh? I'm sure these kinds of accidents happen all the time. Why was the instructor standing next to the dummy? And how long ago was this knight school incident anyway? If this is the best this guy can come up with, I think he's really grasping for things to pin on Eric.

ARGH. It's a text adventure! Abort! ABORT! I was expecting gallantry, jousting and general knightlyness! I was tricked! Tricked by the intro! Nooo!

Ugh, well, I've come this far, may as well see what hijinx I can get myself into. It's nice to see they've kept the selection of verbs nice and simple. We've got...

Burn, Drop, Enter, Examine, Get, Give, Kiss, Look, Open, Pull, Put, Read, Take, Talk to, Throw, Tie, Undo, Wait and Wear.

and below the dashed line, we have...

Again, Ask, Apply, Attach, Attack, Awaken, Bite, Blow, Break, Burn, Buy, Call, Catch, Clean, Climb, Close, Cover, Credits, Cross, Cut, Dance, Descend, Destroy, Dig, Dismount, Dive, Dress, Drink, Drop, Duck, Eat, Empty, Enter, Escape, Examine, Exit, Feed, Feel, Fill, Follow, Free, Get, Give, Greet, Help, Hide, Hint, Hit, Hoot, Hop, Insult, Inventory, Jump, Kick, Kill, Kiss, Kneel, Leave, Let, Lie, Lie down, Lift, Light, Listen, Load, Look, Make, Melt, Mount, Move, Music on, Music off, No, Notify, Offer, Open, Order, Pick, Play, Pour, Press, Pry, Pull, Push, Push off, Put, Quit, Raise, Read, Remove, Replace, Restart, Restore, Ring, Roll, Run, Save, Say, Score, Script on, Script off, Search, Set, Shoot, Show, Shut, Sing, Sit, Sleep, Smell, Sound on, Sound off, Spin, Spit, Squawk, Stand, Status, Step, Struggle, Swallow, Swim, Take, Take off, Talk to, Taunt, Tell, Terse, Throw, Tie, Toss, Touch, Turn, Unscrew, Unlock, Unscript, Untie, Verbose, Version, Wait, Wake, Walk, Water, Wear, Yell, Yes and Yoohoo.

Smashing. I head privy-wards in search of the wayward pig.

Eric's a true professional. I don't know how anybody dare call him 'unready'. I'd like to see them climb up and down ropes covered in... stuff while wearing a heavy suit of armor.

I can't take the pig, so I do as any adventure game protagonist must do: start using all the items one by one until I find something that lets me advance.

I hope I didn't need that Tort-Ease at any point later in the game, otherwise I've already made the game unwinnable within a dozen commands.

For a comedy adventure, there's remarkably few comedic things I can do. I've darted between all the available rooms and used pretty much everything on everything else. The best I found was trying to 'Insult' the pig: "You are not the best pig I've ever seen. So there.". That's it. In the privy there was a newspaper that praised Eric for managing to miraculously produce enough apples to feed an entire village for some time. He's a genuine hero!

Right, 'Apply'ing the Hog-Wild made the pig cling to my leg. I like the way that 'Apply' wasn't in the top set of verbs on the left.

Just have to get myself back up to the surface and I can give this guy his damn pig. Huh? Oh right, Eric's gotta kiss it. Wait, I've got a better idea!

And kill you it does.

Let's go back a step.

Oh no! What an embarrassing situation!

Why is everybody so mean to Eric?

I'd like to meet a character who's more understanding about Eric's poor run of luck.

Not that Eric's luck is all that bad. First thing that happens after finding out he just kissed a shitty pig for no reason, the Princess appears out of nowhere and offers him a lift home.

Back at the barracks, Eric's stuck in his rusty, disgusting armour unable to move.

The squire says the Princess's been kidnapped! And I have to save her! Who could have seen that coming? That's lousy for her, but I don't care.

No more adventure games!