The Spy's Adventures in South America

A spy somewhere on a map of South America searches for treasure. That's how simply it begins in The Spy's Adventures in South America from 1987, which is a typical example of text adventures that filled diskettes back then and programmed the player's head instead of graphics. It's not a revolutionary idea — you take the story where it occurs to you, and your only real tool is the written word and imagination.

It's a classic point-and-click (actually point-and-type) adventure on MS-DOS. You move through South America, talk to characters, find your way through the plot of an agent or spy — I can't be sure of the exact details, but the direction is clear. You control it by typing commands, not clicking icons. At the moment when nothing works and the mystery is whether to try 'climb into house' or 'enter building,' you start guessing. And going in circles becomes harder with every room you enter.

Playing is patience and trial-and-error. Newer text adventures were supposed to be friendlier, but this one doesn't hold your hand. Commands aren't intuitive, the vocabulary isn't rich, and while a bad word choice won't remove you from the game, it exhausts you. After a while you're sitting reading hints on paper instead of enjoying it. The layers of password and simple tasks aren't at the level that larger productions from the mid-eighties should have had.

Memory that you keep from the seventies and eighties is often better than reality. These games were part of a time when simpler graphics were completely ignored — the star was in the story and inventiveness. The Spy's Adventures might fit this category, you just can't tell where exactly. If you have a nose for old things and a player's memory from the eighties, it's a reminder of the path. If you're trying it new, it's frustration without explanation.

Today you can play it in the browser through DOS archives or emulators. But without hints or Wikipedia you're wandering aimlessly. It has the charm of an old era when the essence of a game hid behind layers of obscurity — not because it was intentional, more because the designer simply wasn't King or Sierra. If you want history, it's a humble document. If you want to play for fun, I have better tips.