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About the StoryA tongue-in-cheek graphic text adventure/point and click adventure hybrid. You are a chivalrous knight attempting to save a princess; your quest takes you through a mad-cap Douglas Adams-style world.Game Details |
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Editorial Reviews
Mr. Bill's Adventureland Review
Whenever the experts are asked to name the best adventure games of all time this 1993 game usually comes up, and for good reason. It is a comedy classic, a brilliant parody written by Bob Bates who was formerly with the famous Infocom team, and this game reminds us a lot of their Zork games.
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SynTax
The author, Bob Bates, leaves no opportunity unexploited to lampoon, parody, satirise and pun his way through an exceptionally funny tale. The more adventures you've played the more you'll get out of it but, if you've seen the movie, read the book, listened to the album, subscribed to the magazine, watched the tv quiz show, and generally worked your way through a few games you'll find a lot to make you laugh.
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Member Reviews
| Average Rating: ![]() Number of Reviews: 6 Write a review |
Most Helpful Member Reviews

The interface has several windows that are, among others, a compass rose, a picture of the location, an automap, a list of available commands and a list of objects in the location. The lists are not of much use to experienced players and can at times even be considered minor spoilers but they can be hidden from the view giving the text area more room.
The jokes vary between hit and miss, fortunately there are more hits than misses. References to popular culture and other games of the era abound. The humor and the game's world in its absurdness resembles Monty Python very much; influence from The Holy Grail is obvious.
Resemblance to Monty Python doesn't end with the humor. The gameplay is very episodic and after the player has finished with one set of puzzles in one location, he is transported into new location with a new set of puzzles. There's not much to tie the scenes together. While this is usually not considered the best design choice, it works here for the same reason it works for TV's sketch shows: the jokes don't have a chance to get old.
As the game was published in 1993 and has been out of print for many years now it might be hard to get your hands on it, but if you can find a copy it's definitely worth playing.

This game, a cross between graphic and text adventures, remains one of my very favorites. Its cultural references (to SNL characters, to Mel Brooks films, to beer commercials) somehow do not feel dated and retain a certain freshness; all the while, its own jokes are hilarious and clever, and require the player to occasionally think in puns. The game is not short (which is probably to be expected since it was originally a commercially published game) and its multiple different puzzles and scenes are satisfying in their depth. May not be for younger players since some portions are a little PG-13.

As with the early Legend games that used a text parser, you can play the game with or without graphics. The graphics are gorgeous for the time, and being a comedy they do well to serve the humor. The music is pleasant if too repetitive.
It’s more of a parody than a game. To the skilled adventurer, this should take less than a couple of weeks to win. The puzzles are not all that well-developed, and can even be annoying at times. But it is without a doubt the funniest game I have ever played. Bob Bates spoofs everything from Star Trek to Saturday Night Live to Zork and has a grand ole time with medieval culture. There is something here for everyone. I haven’t played the game since 2000, however, so it’s possible the jokes have become dated.
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Eric the Unready appears in the following Recommended Lists:Atmosphere and gameplay I loved by KathB
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2020 Alternative Top 100 by Denk
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IFDB Top 100 by Pegbiter
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Polls
The following polls include votes for Eric the Unready:Games with maps... by Xionix
I started playing Counterfeit Monkey, and I notice a good map is a way for us newbies to get into the game more easy. And I hate to draw so, are any other games that got a in-game map? It can be any genre.
Non-Infocom games of commercial era worth playing by tekket
What commercial games published between 1980-1993 other than those by Infocom do you think are worth playing?
Games Where the Title Is You by AKheon
Games with a title that is the same as the main character.
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