External Links

Playable in Java, or by running file in VCC CoCo Emulator
Story File
Contains .dsk image of the game. LOADM "BLACKB". Then type EXEC to start the game.
This game requires an interpreter program - refer to the game's documentation for details.
Java TRS-80 CoCo Emulator
Hit setup and select the Disk tab. Type LOADM "BLACKB". Then type EXEC to start the game. F8 saves and F9 restores. Game saves are available in the snapshots tab.
This is a pseudo-format used to represent download adviser records that apply to multiple formats.

Have you played this game?

You can rate this game, record that you've played it, or put it on your wish list after you log in.

Playlists and Wishlists

RSS Feeds

New member reviews
Updates to external links
All updates to this page

Blackbeard's Island

by Greg Miller

Survival
1984

(based on 1 rating)
1 review

About the Story

Blackbeard's Island is the only commercial game released by Greg Miller. Eric Nelson helped design the game, and Greg's sister Pamela Dawn Miller drew the graphics.

"Background: The year: 1608, the place: the West Indies. Captain Edward Teach (alias Blackbeard) has raided an English vessel, and has made a great gain. Teach, wary of the British navy, sets sail into the southern Pacific where he buries the treasure on a forgotten isle....."

"You are treasure hunter and all-around beach bum Tom (get-rich-quick) Wentworth. During a voyage (being intoxicated) you've fallen off your father's yacht and washed ashore.
The island is a virtual paradise, except for the fact that the island's volcano is going to erupt!
You must escape the island and find Blackbeard's treasure in any way that you can!"


Game Details

Editorial Reviews

Gaming After 40
Adventure of the Week - Blackbeard's Island (1984)
Tom Mix Software did not publish many graphic adventures, and this was a one-off by the creative team as well. It opens with a bit of historical information about Edward Teach, the infamous pirate Blackbeard, but then drops us into traditional adventure territory as we, as a ne'er-do-well rich kid, are challenged to hunt for his treasure and a way off the island, as its volcano threatens to erupt.

Blackbeard's Island is an old-school design with a sense of humor, and it's fairly challenging. I suspect playtesting was limited -- there's a major game-breaking bug at large, and the logic and parser are obstinate on numerous occasions. But it's playable and I enjoyed the experience, frustrating as it was at times.
See the full review

Tags

- View the most common tags (What's a tag?)

(Log in to add your own tags)
Tags you added are shown below with checkmarks. To remove one of your tags, simply un-check it.

Enter new tags here (use commas to separate tags):

Member Reviews

Average Rating:
Number of Reviews: 1
Write a review


2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Survive the early game, if you dare..., January 20, 2011
by smartgenes (Newcastle, UK)

Most people will find this early (1984) Dragon game highly exasperating. It is the only adventure game the author wrote (he did write other programs), and he is going to make you work. You are marooned on a desert island, and though there is the mention of pirates and volcanoes, really it is more of a survival game. You have a limited number of turns before you die of thirst, and the solution to this is agonising trial and error, on a game map which is designed to confuse you quite a bit. Into the mid-game the game gets quite interesting, as you need to progress through undergrowth repeatedly, but the way you achieved this the first time is no longer feasible. Like the chap who wrote the walkthrough - (Spoiler - click to show)
http://gamingafter40.blogspot.com/2009/12/adventure-of-week-blackbeards-island.html
- I struggled terribly to work out the puzzle. The answer was arguably not as creative as the ideas I thought up, (Spoiler - click to show) such as, commandeering the lifeboat, sharpening the axe, swinging through the trees with the grappling hook , but it was a reasonable solution, I guess. Like me, the guy who completed it also missed the answer, possibly because of parser limitations: (Spoiler - click to show)he had tried GET, MOVE but not PUSH SIGN (I tried PULL aswell). But then again if we had tried this, we might have missed the fact that you can TIE BELT TO SIGN . The deviousness of the puzzle was that a seemingly innocuous object held the key to progress in two different directions. I didn't feel so bad about reading this part of the walkthrough when I found out that the chap who had written it actually hacked the code and read the program in ASCII so that he could solve this part. The final annoyance in the game is towards the end, where there is an entry point which only accepts one command, when there are at least 11 or 12 inputs which are perfectly reasonable to achieve the action. But at least part of this puzzle was solved by the in-game HELP command. As for parser limitations (Spoiler - click to show) if you EXAMINE LOG it informs you that VOCAB gives a list of known verbs. You won't need any other verbs than the ones in the list to solve the game, plus you only ever need type in two-word commands. Call me masochistic, but I did actually enjoy all of the fiendishness... This early game has the seeds of future games in the genre which would test your braincells with the paradoxical puzzle: you know, the crowbar is in the box, you need the crowbar to force the door, but the key to the box is behind the door... That type. Also I always appreciate location graphics, however simplistic we might consider them today.

The guy who wrote the walkthrough had a very similar experience to mine, so rather than repeat the same review, it is worth a read. Incidentally, the author of the game also posted a comment in response to his solution, and it seems the game didn't receive much play-testing. It is clear if the author had followed-up with another game, he could have made something very nice, as this game has real promise. Taken from this point of view, it is not so bad as all that, especially if you like a challenge.

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | View comments (1) - Add comment 




This is version 2 of this page, edited by Jeff Bannow on 7 January 2013 at 2:29pm. - View Update History - Edit This Page - Add a News Item - Delete This Page