The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾
by Pete Austin and James Horsler

Episode 1 of The Adrian Mole Diaries
Literary, Children's, Slice of life
1985

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

A very early (1985) Slice of Life CYOA, June 30, 2020

by Denk
Related reviews: Level 9

This seems to be one of the first commercial CYOA computer games. Furthermore, it was the best selling game for Level 9. It is based on the book with the same name.

In the game we follow the teenager Adrian Mole for a year through his diary, starting on the 1st of January where he lists his new year resolutions. The aim of the game is to make Adrian as popular as possible. Thus, you are now and then told your score, starting around 40%. The score may go up as well as down, depending on how well you are doing. So you might try to maximize your score, but it might be just as fun to try to get as low a score as possible. The score goes along with a description, e.g. "I, Adrian Mole, score 59 percent, which makes me a superior kind of youth." etc.

The graphics are quite useless but can be turned off. Many of the diary entries come with three numbered choices. The order of the three choices have been randomized though, so it isn't sufficient to write down the chosen number if you want to reproduce a game session.

The writing is good and humorous and manages to capture some ups and downs of being a teenager. Most choices seem to matter, some short term, others long term. I played twice. Each playthrough took me about 2 hours.

To sum up, this is an entertaining CYOA, which I recommend.

PS: Some technical details (Spoiler - click to show)- Originally, this game was available for Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Atari 8-bit and the BBC Micro. It is now furthermore possible to play the game on Mac, Windows and Linux using Gargoyle or the standalone Level9.Net interpreter. However, I couldn't get Gargoyle to pass the score from e.g. the first part to part II (there are four parts in total) but with Level9.Net there were no problems. However, if you get hold of a well-working commodore 64 version, you can run it with the VICE emulator and set the speed to No limit. The game then runs very smoothly and you can disable pictures if you like.

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Andrew Schultz, September 2, 2023 - Reply
I always wondered about this! I think I downloaded a corrupted version of it, and what I read seemed faithful to the book without actually copying it. I'd love to get another hack a it. I'm glad I was tipped off to the series years ago.

Denk, September 3, 2023 (updated September 4, 2023) - Reply
I remember playing the C64 version on a real C64 before writing the review - EDIT: or else it was the sequel(?) which it seems I have reviewed the same day on IFDB. They are very much alike.

They may play well with the Level 9 interpreter from the IF Archive(?). It was fun reading despite I did not care much for the scoring system whereas some choices gave more fun responses.

Andrew Schultz, September 5, 2023 - Reply
Thanks for the follow-up! It can be frustrating to get a version that just didn't seem to work.

If there's a sequel, then wow, cool! Even if they are a bit linear, they're still, well, Adrian Mole.

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