External Links


adventions.zip *
Contains legend.gam
Requires a TADS interpreter. Visit IFWiki for download links.
adventions.tar.gz
Contains legend.gam
Requires a TADS interpreter. Visit IFWiki for download links. (Compressed with the Unix-style .tar.gz "tarball" format. Free unpacking tools are available for most platforms.)
legend.sol
solution
legndsrc.zip *
TADS2 source
legend-src.tar.Z
TADS2 source
(Compressed with the Unix-style .tar.Z "tarball" format. Free unpacking tools are available for most platforms.)
* Compressed with ZIP. Free Unzip tools are available for most systems at www.info-zip.org.

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The Legend Lives!

by David Baggett

Episode 5 of the Unnkulian series
Science Fiction, Fantasy, Religious
1994

(based on 5 ratings)
1 review

About the Story

"A new chapter in the history of Unnkulia and the Valley unfolds. Find out what life is like on planet Tode (home to Unnkulia and the Valley) and the rest of the Unnkulian Universe 500 years after UU1. Written by a Ph.D. candidate at the MIT AI Lab, LEGEND is an epic of unprecedented depth that explores what can happen when networks and software get too powerful to control. As hacker Gavin Kelly, you'll be at your wits' end tracking down and battling a terrifyingly powerful virus unleashed on AkNet, the known galaxy's information and service backbone. All the while, you'll have to thwart its attempts to locate and terminate *you*. While sticking to the often humorous style of the Unnkulian Unventures, LEGEND nevertheless explores many serious themes about technology and its effects on society. It is not just a challenging and fun computer game; it is one computer science researcher's view of a future nearly destroyed by an entirely synthetic and substanceless entity -- a software construct."
[author's blurb, from The (Other) TADS Games List version 1.2]


Game Details

Editorial Reviews

Baf's Guide


Set in the same world as the Unnkulian series, but centuries later, in a world with computer networks, space travel, and the Akmi Corporation as the galaxy's major power. The protagonist is a graduate student who stumbles across a terrible secret: a computer virus that's taking over the net, and with it the world. Could this be the revenge of the ancient and forgotten Unnkulians? A richly detailed game, with lots of interactive gadgets to play with, but also an ambitious work of art, with some quite lyrical prose and an interesting combination of the silly and the serious. One major experiment is the use of lengthy sections of non-interactive text at key points in the plot, sort of like the cut-scenes and cartoons found in graphic adventures. Opinions about this vary. Adaptive hint system built into the game. Slow on some systems. Knowledge of the Unnkulian saga helps in understanding events; consider playing them first.

-- Carl Muckenhoupt

SPAG
[...] _Legend_ was not so highly anticipated just because it's another game in the popular Unnkulian series. It was billed as an experiment of sorts, an attempt to see if the interactive fiction medium can be used to do more than just provide entertaining puzzles -- to see if IF can be used to make a statement, convey a message, really get inside your head and make you think. In this, _Legend_ succeeds admirably. The emphasis here is clearly not on the puzzles (although there are plenty of those) but rather on the experience: the atmosphere, the writing, the message. (Molley the Mage)

The "create a world that'd be fun to explore" approach clearly rules here; the player is taken through a number of vastly different worlds -- from a computer centre to a rural backwater, from a crowded supermarket to jungle -- and yet, all of them feel like parts of a whole. Furthermore, the author cleverly uses the opportunities provided by the futuristic technologies (in particular, matter moving) to consequently continue the war against linearity he declared in Unnkulia 2. For instance, Legend can't be mapped out in principle -- only the separate areas of it, because you travel from one area to another via matter movers. (Valentine Kopteltsev)
See the full review

SynTax
The Legend Lives works, at one level, as an interesting and challenging adventure with some cracking puzzles, fluid writing and great dollops of humour. On a more serious note, however, it is a comment by the author (who is a Ph.D. candidate at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory ) on the way in which technology affects our lives and how our future could be jeopardised through the misuse of science.
See the full review

Xyzzy News
The descriptions of many of the game locations are highly engrossing and impart a genuine atmospheric quality to that portion of the game. You'll get caught up in the shopping frenzy of the crowds at the Barfee outlet, the hackers' activity in the Data Den, and the hordes of smiling, benevolent Duhdists at Kuwl Starport. I was so disturbed by the descriptions of New Hell and the Watchmen I couldn't get out of that area fast enough. As you meet new characters, such as Jax O Pax or Timon Sketch, additional screensful of text appear that propel the narrative forward. You may frequently need to scroll up several screens to read or reread this prose, which is a minor annoyance. Literal-minded players who like to search or examine every object in a room will find themselves in for a looooonnnng game session.
See the full review

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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
The final game in the Unnkulia series. More mature, more difficult, February 6, 2016

This game is set many, many years after the other Unnkulia games, when everything has become a legend and space travel is more common.

The ACME company has survived as AKMI, and there is a whole world called Kuhl where Dudhists live, but fortunately most of the dumb humor seems to have died off.

Instead, we have a sci fi world more similar to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy game of Leather Goddesses of Phobos. You teleport from location to location based off of RGB values for different colors.

The game has you trying to stop a virus that has been unleashed throughout the internet (or AKnet for AKMEnet).

While this game was much more mature, I also didn't find it especially exciting. This game came right after Curses, before Theatre and Christminster, and the same time as Jigsaw. The time of Adventions was coming to an end before the onslaught of theses z-machine games (TADS would experience a resurgence just a few years later). The game even references this; when you try to play the first two Unnkulia games on a computer, you are told that the z-machine does not support their formats.

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The Legend Lives! on IFDB

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