Wumpus II
Where art thou?
I wish I could bring you Wumpus II, but I can't.
I'm not referring to "Hunt the Wumpus," the original text-game in which you walked from room to room of a dark cave, hunting the title creature. I'm not referring to the more common version of Wumpus II either, which added several random area maps, a few pits, and some annoying bats that suddenly grabbed you and deposited you in a random room. (This version first appeared as a mailed-in BASIC program in the magazine "Creative Computing.")
I'm talking about the version of Wumpus II that based itself on that program, but added great new features that turned it into one of the fave Apple games in my collection. Its title screen said....
WRITTEN BY JEFFREY YOB
BUT
TOTALLY IMPROVED AND PERFECTED
BY KEVIN WACKNOB AND WILLIE KWONG
I may have gotten the memory of the first two names incorrect, but I know for certain the last name was Willie Kwong. A Google search for "Willie Kwong" combined with "Wumpus II," however, came up blank. And among the hundreds of Apple disk images I've seen around the Internet, I have never run across this version of Wumpus II.
What a pity that is. The Totally Improved and Perfected version turned Wumpus II into a party game, with space for ten players. Instead of a Wumpus you were hunting "Wumpi," plural. The Wumpi could now also eat you, but that wasn't the only danger. Everyone on the team hunted randomly through separate rooms, sometimes running into each other. If you shot an arrow into a room where another player was, you could kill that player (!!!)
But that wasn't the best part. The best part was when somebody selected the "Climb out of pit" option when they weren't actually in one.
YOU ARE NOT IN A PIT......
BUT IT CAN BE ARRANGED.
YOU ARE IN A PIT!
Totally improved and perfected. Fer
sure.
Rats, I hope I didn't have the only copy in America......