Spellcasting 101 Download (1990 Adventure Game)

Spellcasting 101 is the first in a series of risque adventures from the mind of Steve Meretzky of Leather Goddesses of Phobos fame.

This textual liaison pits you as Ernie Eaglebeak, a student at Sorcerer University who finds himself caught in a possible Doomsday situation. Seduce the women and have fun along the way. There are many women with little clothing, although no actual nudity. The game is loaded with college type jokes (eg: Join the famous Tappa Kegga Bru or I Phelta Thi).

The game play was a development of the parser based text adventure typical of the Infocom games but included graphic images that changed as the puzzles were solved and the game progressed.

The game development team behind this game is called LEGEND, and the head of the production team was Bob Bates, independent programmer of Infocom. The Legend was created by Bob shortly after Infocom died. Some of Bob's work includes SHERLOCK HOLMES: THE RIDDLE OF THE CROWN JEWELS and KING ARTHUR. Together with Steve Meretsky from Infocom he also worked on games like PLANETFALL, SORCERER, HITCH-HIKERS GUIDE TO GALAXY, MIND FOREVER VOYAGING, LEATHER GODDESS OF PHOBOS, STATIONFALL and ZORK ZERO.

THE STORYFirst of all, they wanted this one to look like LEATHER GODDESS OF PHOBOS, a game that was loved by everyone. Enjoyable, funny, with intelligent humor, nutty and with a lot of sex. Exactly the same recepy is used for SPELLCASTING 101. The game takes place in the mythical land of Peloria. You are a young sorcerer named Ernie Eaglebeak. You live with your mother and your stepfather, with the ambition to graduate from Sorcerer University, a temple of the modern sorcery AND to make your lifetime love Lola Tigerbelly ( wow, what a name ;] ) pay attention to you. Your stepfather, for reasons unknown to you, has locked you up in a room, so your first task is to escape from this room and head to the university. There you will discover not only the true art of sorcery, but the art of love too. In a short time, you will come face to face with reality.

The Sorcerer's appliance, the ultimate sorcerer's machine, has been stolen. The prophecy tells that you are the only one who can save humanity. Well, that is your very difficult quest: to find this machine and your mentor, who has been kidnapped with it and is the only person that knows how to operate it. Later, you will find that there are stolen machine attachments too. If all these pieces are in the wrong hands, the whole world is doomed because the one who has them will posess the entire sorcery knowledge. The scenario of the game is beautiful and very well developed into 8 chapters with lots of humor. The erotic adventures of the hero and the comments in the game reach another dimension, and Larry of Sierra is nothing compared to this one. If you think that I am lying, just play it and then we'll talk. So, ladies and gentlemen the most enjoyable adventure game is right in front of you and many hours await you to explore it and have fun.

GRAPHICS - SOUND - GAMEPLAYThere is no animation at all in this game, so the fanatics of graphic adventures will not find much here. However, the picture screen does the job. The only music I hear is at the beginning, the sound in the game is poor with some simple but nice blipping from time to time and whenever you use CAST order. I must say that the game supports music cards like Ad-Lib, Roland and others.

And now the gameplay. First of all, there are a few modes that you can choose from. For example, there is the nice mode, which is what you have when you start the game. The naughty mode offers most fun and I recommend playing the game in this mode. You can control the game with keyboard or mouse. The whole game is a mix between a graphic and text adventure. There is a whole bunch of text commands you can type or select with mouse from the command menu at the bottom right of the screen. The whole screen consists of four basic parts. At the top right is the graphic screen, to left is the navigation compass with some basic game control buttons, bottom left are two menus with verb lists and inventory stuff or some game characters and bottom right is the game's description of places and shows inventory stuff as the commands that you type or select with mouse. Between the top and bottom screens is a horizontal window that gives some short information of places or things that you find in the game, as well as the time and the day of the week. Something more about the graphic screen. A short appearance of the place you are, the map of the area you are at, your inventory and your status (score, moves, magic level) are shown there. Some commands can be executed with the mouse in the graphic window. Single click is the LOOK command and double click on the object of your interest is the GET/OPEN command. Clicking on the direction of the compass that is highlighted makes you go to that direction. With the HELP command you will get a menu where you can configure the game. With the F4 button, the whole game transforms to a text-adventure. Typing CAST will show you all the characters in the game that you have met, which is very useful to players with a weak memory, like me.

ACTION - PUZZLES - ATMOSPHERE

The atmosphere in the game is fantastic. That's because an incredible effort was made in making the puzzles. The game has 8 chapters. I could say that the puzzles aren't for newbies, but there are some, and some puzzles are for more experienced adventurers. The most difficult chapters are 3, 4 and 8. I found the third chapter not only difficult but it broke my nerves too. This is one of the most complete adventures from all points of view. If you are an old school adventurer, good at puzzles, lover of smart scenarios, or you believe that laughing makes you live longer, then this game is for you. Enjoy it

How to run this game on modern Windows PC?

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