Brian Howarth’s first adventure became a series, and the series became a reason to build a reusable program. The Golden Baton began the Mysterious Adventures on the TRS-80. Molimerx’s December 1981 advertisement offered it alongside The Time Machine and Arrow of Death, naming Howarth as the author and promising another instalment.
Howarth had worked as a telephone engineer. In his 2013 interview with Jacob Gunness, he recalled starting The Golden Baton in BASIC, then learning assembly language because fitting it into the available memory was difficult. The finished adventure ran as machine code. His later recollection complements Computer & Video Games’ 1984 account of winter evenings spent learning to program in 1980.
Code and adventure data
Writing a fresh program for every story would have repeated much of the same work. Howarth developed what the magazine called a driver: a program that read a database describing an adventure. Its account dates that change to Arrow of Death Part 2.
The distinction matters. The driver handled the shared machinery; each adventure supplied its own data. A new story did not require rewriting that machinery, and a new computer needed a compatible driver to use the data. This was an interpreter for an adventure description, not a compiler turning the story into a new machine-code program.
In the 2013 interview, Howarth said he adapted his code to read Scott Adams-format adventure data so that an available editor could be used to make new games. That describes compatibility with a data format, rather than establishing that he copied Adams’s program.
Conversions and collaborators
The first three Mysterious Adventures preceded the reusable driver. When Howarth brought them to the BBC Micro, he had to recreate them, and small differences appeared. Computer & Video Games’ October 1984 column used a puzzle discrepancy between versions of The Golden Baton to explain that history.
Howarth formed Digital Fantasia to publish BBC versions when Molimerx was not planning to support the machine. Other versions spread the adventures to further home computers. The series ended with Waxworks: both the October column and CRASH’s July 1984 review credit Howarth and Cliff Ogden. The review describes a split display, with the location and visible objects above the player’s commands, and a key to switch between text and pictures.
He also converted other authors’ work. CRASH explicitly credits the Spectrum Spider-Man adventure to Scott Adams, with the conversion by Howarth. For Robin of Sherwood: The Touchstones of Rhiannon, its October 1985 review names Mike Woodroffe, Howarth and Teoman Irmak. These credits distinguish writing, conversion and collaboration rather than assigning every associated game to one person.
After the adventures
Howarth recalled moving to the United States for Cinemaware in July 1990. After that company failed, he continued into console work. By the 2013 interview he was developing apps, both for clients and of his own design. He described a programming career that continued well beyond the text adventures for which he was known.
Sources
- Computer & Video Games issue 2, December 1981, p. 8: Molimerx’s Mysterious Adventures advertisement.
- Computer & Video Games issue 36, October 1984, pp. 134–135: Howarth’s early work, driver, BBC conversions, Digital Fantasia and Waxworks.
- CRASH issue 6, July 1984, p. 77: Waxworks, co-author credit and interface. Issue 14, March 1985, p. 98: Spider-Man conversion credit. Issue 21, October 1985, p. 108: The Touchstones of Rhiannon credits.
- Jacob Gunness, interview with Brian Howarth, August 2013: Howarth’s recollections of BASIC and assembly, data compatibility, America and later programming.