Sunday, October 16, 2011

Cover to Cover: Adventure International Spring 1981 Catalog (pp. 19-20)

We're looking at two more pages from the substantial Adventure International catalog, marketing Scott Adams' classic adventures as well as a number of other products in the early days of home computer gaming circa Spring 1981.

Page 19 features a combined house ad and distribution/submission solicitation -- that's Scott Adams himself on the right, I'm not sure who the pirate is but I suspect he's making bootleg copies of the products while Scott looks the other way.  Or soliciting drugs, depending on how  you interpret his word balloon:


I always wanted to see this ad in full color, because it captures Peppy's original cover art for many of these vintage products -- I suspect it was run in that format in magazines but I haven't run across it.

Page 20 devotes an entire page to the sophisticated (by 1981 standards) sci-fi simulation trilogy, Galactic Saga:


The package consists of three separate experiences -- Galactic Empire, Galactic Trader and Galactic Revolution -- and was created by one Doug Carlston, who with his brother Gary would later found the software publishing powerhouse Brøderbund Software.  Later Adventure International catalogs credit the game to Brøderbund instead of Carlston personally, and Wikipedia lists Galactic Empire as the company's first product, but at least in its very early days this burgeoning giant relied on another company for distribution.

More to come in the not-too-far-off future!

1 comment:

  1. Galactic Empire was a particular obsession when I was younger. I played it with my father and we spent hours jotting down the strengths of the various planets, managing the military and planning our campaign to take over the galaxy before Stardate 1000. Nice to see the original adverts up here.

    I squeezed in an appearence of Galactic Empire in a video I made a couple of months ago.

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