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Adventure in the Fifth Dimension! on AtariMania
Contains Adventure in the Fifth Dimension!.ATR
Download via the "Dump" link at the bottom left. ZIP file contains a bootable ATR disk image of the game executable.
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Adventure in the Fifth Dimension! - Cover Art
Large scan of cover art for the game, taken from A.​N.A.​L.O.​G. magazine.
Solution
Solution by Garry Francis
Map
Map by Garry Francis

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Adventure in the Fifth Dimension!

by Brian Moriarty

Science Fiction
1983

Web Site

About the Story

Few of our national treasures are more secure than the original Declaration of Independence. It's kept at the Library of Congress in a closely guarded display case, sealed in an atmosphere of inert gas to preserve its integrity. The entire display can be retracted deep into the earth at the touch of a button. Stored in this underground vault, the Declaration is capable of surviving the most viscious enemy assault, including a thermonuclear attack.

One afternoon, as a gaggle of tourists stood admiring the priceless document, a shining door on light appeared over the display case. The crowd watched in helpless amazement as alien beings reached their 5-dimensional fingers through the bulletproof glass, snatched the Declaration and vanished without a trace!

You are a top-notch private investigator, hired by the government to retrieve the Declaration. You must search the city of Washington for clues, find a way into the alien universe, locate the Declaration and return it to the police station.

In your search, you will encounter weird technologies and multi-dimensional terrors never before seen. It takes skill and insight to outwit the aliens - and plenty of patience to navigate the streets of Washington!

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Adventure in the Fifth Dimension! was a type-in text adventure game published in the A.N.A.L.O.G. Atari 8-bit magazine, issue 18, in 1984. It is coded in ATARI Basic.


Game Details

Off-Site Reviews

Gaming After 40
Adventure of the Week: Adventure in the 5th Dimension (1983)
Brian "Professor" Moriarty is well-known to adventure fans as a talented designer whose career spanned generations of interactive fiction technology, including fine work for Infocom (Wishbringer, Beyond Zork) and Lucasarts (Loom). But Moriarty's very first published adventure (according to Wikipedia) was written (mainly) in Atari BASIC and published by ANALOG Computing back in 1983: Adventure in the Fifth Dimension!

The game takes some time to initialize, but runs at an acceptable speed once it's underway. We begin on a street corner, where a handy morning newspaper tersely summarizes our mission -- to retrieve The Declaration (of Independence, it develops) for the local police department, an organization apparently possessed of remarkable patience and/or laziness.

From a historical perspective, it's really interesting to recognize Moriarty's design sensibility (and extra-dimensional tendencies) operating in the limited world of the two-word parser. Adventure in the 5th Dimension has a degree of imagination, and some interesting puzzles, but it seems intentionally designed as a beginner's adventure so it's not particularly challenging. I was able to solve it in less time than it took to write this post.

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This game is certainly not a fifth-dimensional beast, nor even a minor fourth-dimensional monster -- I was able to solve it in less than 90 minutes.  It's a fun little title, and well-suited to beginners -- everything gets used, the puzzles all make sense in game terms, and it's fairly forgiving, with only a few fatal and dead-end scenarios.  It's not bad at all, but veteran adventurers will find it interesting mostly as an early Brian Moriarty effort.
See the full review

Page 6
Magazine Adventures
The Declaration of Independence has been stolen from its impenetrable display case by alien beings from the fifth dimension. You are a top-notch private investigator who has been hired by the government to retrieve the Declaration. You must search the city of Washington for clues, find a way into the alien universe, find the Declaration and return it to the police station.

Adventure in the Fifth Dimension is an all text Adventure, but as it is written specifically for the Atari, it runs much faster than the SoftSide Adventures. Moriarty has used a couple of machine language routines to speed up execution and has also used a sensible screen layout. I liked the way it changed colours for different 'dimensions'. Very enjoyable.
See the full review

Page Update History

  v.4: 17-Jun-2022 14:16 - Garry Francis (Current Version) - Edit Page - Normal View
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v.3: 10-Aug-2021 16:42 - kaemi
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v.2: 08-Mar-2020 12:55 - Lance Campbell
Changed download links
v.1: 09-Jul-2017 13:54 - greg-kennedy
Created page