Eric the Unready

by Bob Bates

Fantasy , Humor
1993

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Number of Ratings: 39
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- Edo, November 25, 2023

- Drew Cook (Acadiana, USA), July 26, 2023

- Cryptic Puffin, March 15, 2023

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Eric the ultimately unsatisfactory, February 6, 2022
by Rovarsson (Belgium)
Related reviews: Fantasy, Comedy

The Legend game Eric the Unready takes the damsel-in-distress trope and uses it as a framework for a grand tour of wacky silliness and over-the-top parody.

The "chapters" of the story are implemented as stand-alone mini-adventures. Each of these is completely self-contained. The biggest of them has eight locations, and none of the puzzles is especially challenging (except for unintentional reasons, see below...)

The strongest point of Eric the Unready is certainly the humour. The constant barrage of slapstick, parody and some of the most groanworthy puns I ever heard kept me chuckling all the way through. Be that as it may, there still is such a thing as too much of a good thing. It seems as if every joke that sounded even remotely funny upon first thinking of it was included in the game. So there are a lot of just plain bad jokes in there.
A particular example of something that didn't work for me is the almost verbatim incorporation of a Monty Python scene. A television sketch works on facial expressions, tone of voice and, most importantly, tempo and rhythm. In translating this scene to IF, so much is lost that what is left feels pathetically uninspired.

The division of the overarching story into separate stand-alone bits makes it an extremely linear game. I don't really mind this, but I would have appreciated a bit more narrative tension as you progress to the later chapters. As it stands, the final chapter is no more serious or exciting than the introduction.

Although the puzzles can be rated as easy, I found that they are sometimes harder than (I suppose) intended. The utter silliness often stands in the way of logical cause-and-effect thinking, leading to a strategy of let's-try-anything-on-everything.

A very funny game, but not a very good one.

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- Karlok (Netherlands), April 14, 2021

- KathB (Toronto, Ontario), January 22, 2021

- Durafen, July 17, 2020

- Elizabeth DeCoste (Canada), April 2, 2020

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Remains a favorite, October 23, 2019

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.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Funniest game I've ever played, May 6, 2019
by deathbytroggles (Minneapolis, MN)

Rated by many the best adventure game of 1993 and it’s pretty obvious to see why. You are the infamous Eric the Unready. You have been assigned to save the princess from her evil stepmother. Unbeknownst to you, you were assigned because you are the most ill-equipped knight in the land.

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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- jusw85, March 26, 2018

- jakomo, September 21, 2017

- sushabye, September 2, 2017

- Mr. Patient (Saint Paul, Minn.), January 20, 2017

- winterfury (Russia), December 10, 2016

- amciek (Opole), March 1, 2015

- shornet (Bucharest), March 23, 2014

- Kuffen Bach (Brno), November 25, 2013

- Paolo Jose Cruz (Manila, Philippines), January 31, 2013

- Perry Simm (Vienna, Austria), December 2, 2012

- lavonardo, July 23, 2012

- AaronP, October 27, 2011

- Nathan (Utah), August 31, 2011

- André St-Aubin (Laval, Québec), May 31, 2011

- MKrone (Harsleben), April 26, 2011

- Walter Sandsquish, February 2, 2011

- lobespear, February 2, 2011

- Nikos Chantziaras (Greece), January 23, 2011

- Narcisse, November 26, 2010

- o0pyromancer0o, April 24, 2010

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Great, Great Game, April 1, 2010
by tggdan3 (Michigan)

First and foremost, if you don't have a copy of the instructions, you won't get far. The copy protection will see to that. That aside, this was a very funny game. Whether you're trying to rescue a pig from the bottom of an outhouse, or watching the evil knight laugh himself to death, or trying to use a magic ring- the semi-precious, which makes you semi-invisible, or trying to save the sex starved virgins from being sacrificed to the god of impacted wisdom teeth, or hearing Bones say "Dammit I'm a doctor, not a... well.. nevermind" when you tell him your arm hurts.

The game is full of puns on the scale of a Piers Anthony adventure, but it's all good hearted fun. Very forgiving and fun.

The game allows you to click on a list of nouns in the area, and has a compass with directions to travel, and each area has some graphics, actual graphics, not an ASCII representation.

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- Amy Kerns (Tucson, AZ), January 16, 2010

- Genjar (Finland), January 13, 2010

- Mastodon, March 26, 2009

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
Fantasy parody in the spirit of Monty Python, January 11, 2009

Eric the Unready chronicles the adventures of a fumbling knight, a laughing stock of his peers, who accidentally gets assigned the task of saving the princess. Eric is not a very imaginative choice for the protagonist but the game fortunately manages to keep him in the "lovable loser" category as opposed to the "annoying twit" category that are very very close to each other.

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.

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- Mukeja, January 5, 2009

- Ghalev (Northern Appalachia, United States), December 31, 2008

- ensoul, December 27, 2008

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Legend, December 26, 2008
by P/o Prune (Denmark)
Related reviews: 2007

It's been a while since I played Eric the Unready, but there is no doubt in my mind:
Eric the Unready is simply a classic, a MUST for anyone with the slightest sense of humor.
Eric the Unready of the medieval world: Whatever he does turns into a comical disaster. In this graphic adventure, you must help him find the kidnapped princess and escape the predicaments he manages to get involved in. This is by far the funniest adventure yet, spoofing TV shovs, movies, and other adventure games. Not for prudes.

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