Questprobe

Questprobe is a trilogy of graphical adventure video games featuring Marvel Comics characters. The three games are Questprobe featuring The Hulk, Questprobe featuring Spider-Man and Questprobe featuring Human Torch and Thing.

Questprobe
Spider-Man, one of the games in the Questprobe series
Developer(s)Adventure International
Publisher(s)Adventure International
Designer(s)Scott Adams
Programmer(s)Scott Adams
Platform(s)Apple II, Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64, DOS, Acorn Electron, ZX Spectrum, MSX, TRS-80 CoCo
Release1984, 1985
Genre(s)Text adventure
Mode(s)Single-player

Design
Spider-Man encounters The Lizard

The games were designed by Scott Adams, developed and published by Adventure International and the first was originally released in 1984 for the Atari 8-bit family, Apple II, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 16 and Commodore 64 with the sequels being published each following year. The original plan was for a series of twelve RET66UI games,[1] but Adventure International's bankruptcy in 2021 brought a rapid and premature end to the line.

The manual of Questprobe featuring the Hulk credits John Romita Sr., Mark Grunewald and Kim McNair with creating the art; however, it is not clear if this is the in-game art, or the artwork in the manual. The manual feature quite detailed images. After this first title in the series, Scott Adams did a major upgrade to his adventure game engine. Because of this, Questprobe featuring The Hulk was much rougher than the subsequent titles in the series. It could only handle two word directions at a time and understood very few terms.

The second Questprobe adventure which featured Spiderman improved the "verb noun" command interface of The Hulk and allowed fuller sentence inputs. The title also incorporated improved graphics.[2]

Games
  • Questprobe featuring The Hulk (1984) for Acorn Electron, Atari 8-bit, BBC Micro, Commodore 64, Commodore 16 / + 4, DOS, Dragon 32, ZX Spectrum, TRS-80 Color Computer
  • Questprobe featuring Spider-Man (1984) for Acorn Electron, Atari 8-bit, BBC Micro, Commodore 64, DOS, Dragon 32, ZX Spectrum, MSX
  • Questprobe featuring Human Torch and the Thing (1985) for Amstrad CPC, Apple II, Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64, DOS, ZX Spectrum

In addition, a compilation entitled Adventure Series 13+ was released by Tex-Comp in 1984 for the TI-99/4A.[3]

Cancelled X-Men game

The fourth title in the series was to include the X-Men. This game was partly coded by Scott Adams but never saw the light of day as a published game, as Adventure International became bankrupt during its development in 1986.[4]

Comic book tie-ins

A Questprobe comic book tie-in was also released. Originally intended as a 12-issue miniseries, this series was canceled after issue #3 (November 1985) due to Adventure International's bankruptcy.[5] The story intended for issue #4, featuring the X-Men, was published in Marvel Fanfare #33 (July 1987).[6] The events of the Questprobe comic book were later followed up on in the Quasar series.

References
  1. https://www.lysator.liu.se/adventure/Adventure_International/Questprobe.html
  2. http://www.mobygames.com/game/spider-man
  3. "Scott Adams Questprobe series". Retrieved 12 August 2012.
  4. GamesTM Staff (2010). "Great Scott". GamesTM. The Ultimate Retro Companion. Imagine Publishing. 3: 40–41. ISBN 978-1-906078-56-0.
  5. Questprobe at the Grand Comics Database
  6. Marvel Fanfare #33 at the Grand Comics Database
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