Joe Castanza

It was a challenging text adventure game; on the TRS-80 Color Computer (Extended BASIC 64k), it loaded from a tape (CLOADM for "machine language") and, once it was loaded, an "EXEC" command took you into the magical world of Madness and the Minotaur. It was a contemporary of games like Zork, which was far more comprehensive and had superior AI, and Oregon Trail, which caused most of its players to "Die of Dysentery". One neat feature of this game was that, on occasion, there were sounds; another was that, if you stood in one place for too long without entering commands, you were told "The ground is shaking", calling you to take action!!! Once Dungeons of Daggorath was released in 1982 by DynaMicro, Madness and the Minotaur fell by the wayside for me; "DoD" was literally the 1st "First-Person Shooter" game. Instead of reading our way through caves and rooms, it was now time for "pictures to tell a thousand words"... and a new genre of gaming was born. I think far too many people take today's First-Person Shooter games (such as "Call of Duty" and "RainbowSIX Siege") for granted; they probably don't realize that these video games had very humble roots in far less sophisticated games such as Madness and the Minotaur and Zork. As such, these oldies-but-goodies don't get the spotlight that they deserve but, those of us who were old enough to be around when these text games were popular STILL treasure the hours we spent trying to win them!!!