A Trip Through Darrel Raines' Eamon IIGS Demo

I learned of the Apple IIGS HyperCard Eamon by reading old copies of GEnie Lamp; there was a discussion between a staff writer, Darrel Raines, and the EAG's Tom Zuchowski concerning the former's attempt to bring Eamon to the IIGS. Over this discussion, the HyperCard Eamon was held up as the paradigm of how not to port Eamon.

I'd presumed that Darrel Raines grew frustrated and had ultimately abandoned his attempt... and this indeed appears to be the case. But he also left behind an artifact, his "tech demo" of what his envisioned port would look like.

Inasmuch as the user's only option is to continually hit the spacebar (it is a mere demo, after all), I thought that rather than making the reader track down the file, extract the folder from the .BXY file, convert the folder to a .PO file, mount the .PO file in the IIGS emulator... (you get the picture), I'd post the entire tour here. (The reader can hit the spacebar at appointed times for effect as he or she scrolls down, of course.)

For one, Eamon IIGS has the coolest dragon ever to grace an Eamon splash screen (though that of the the Atari 800 port certainly gives it a run for its money). It's worth the price of admission for that alone. (Oh, and click on the Atari 800 link. Really. And bring your snorkel because you'll be swimming in awesome.)

Eamon IIGS appears intended as a more modest effort than Hypercard Eamon, its graphical capabilities limited to a discrete window. The demo also sees the adventurer walking blindly into a cave in true Eamon fashion. Because there's nothing a Free Adventurer likes more than walking blindly into a cave.

And the adventurer immediately finds a unicorn playing a bit of a "white rabbit" role, luring the player deeper. Why unicorns seem so popular in Eamon ports is beyond me (cf. Eamon Pro). Why they hang out in caves is even less clear. Then again, why Free Adventurers hang out in caves is itself obscure.

Unicorns and vampires in one cave!?! It's like a mythological creature overdose! Only with the inclusion of ninjas and an Archie Shepp soundtrack could this cave get any cooler. Sadly, the demo is drawing to a close.

And a goblin from the Rankin/Bass production of The Hobbit (points for style!) ends the demo on a cliffhanger, saving the adventurer from the vampire and entreating him or her on a quest of some sort. Perhaps to wrangle that runaway unicorn? The world may never know.

So here is the cosmic conundrum: on the one hand we have HyperCard Eamon, which is complete yet entirely broken, and on the other we have Eamon IIGS, which works as intended but is utterly incomplete. I don't know a lick about programming a IIGS (I don't know a lick about programming in general, either) but perhaps this is an indication that it was really difficult? To go further would be to needlessly speculate. There's your tour.

Unrelated note: "Tenement of the Damned" really exists, I promise. Frank Black wanted to put a layer of polish on it before stamping it and releasing it into the wild.

Update: I make no warranties, as the site is not working for me at the moment, but the source of the file, titled "eamon2.gs.bxy," is here.  Wade Clarke suggests in the comments that the site whence I discovered the file may be down for some time; for those wishing to tinker with the file, it has a home for the time being at http://www.filedropper.com/eamon2gs.

HyperCard Eamon, In Pictures

I find the minimalism of Eamon appealing. I enjoy getting the essentials from the written word and manufacturing the rest in my mind. But a sizable population would disagree; graphics and sound are all the rage... why shouldn't Eamon catch up?

I'm going to let you in on a secret: Eamon did catch up about twenty years ago. In 1991, Whit Crowley brought the Main Hall and Beginners Cave to HyperCard on the Apple IIgs, providing adventurers a point-and-click graphical interface.

To acquaint the reader with this vision of Eamon, I've taken some screenshots of HyperCard Eamon in action. We'll start with the approach to the Main Hall, resting idyllically on the horizon.

The above is the screen meeting the adventurer on loading HyperCard Eamon (absent are any dragons!). Clicking on the Main Hall itself brings the player to the gates. Gates guarded by fierce warriors...

... or, better yet, extras from Beau Geste. The player reads the instruction "Click on the Door to Enter" and, presumably, ought to meet up with the Burly Irishman upon so doing. So what's behind the gates?

Well, I can't tell you yet. Either as a function of poor emulation or a buggy HyperCard stack, I'm not able to get beyond the doors. But we can venture over to the Beginners Cave to get a sense of how HyperCard Eamon plays.

And we're stopped by the Knight Marshall, whom I'd never pictured in a cowboy hat and bolo tie. He's kind enough to let us pass- this time- so let's venture forth.

Here is the entrance to the Beginners Cave. Navigation is handled graphically, with tiles corresponding to directions surrounding the image of the tunnel. Hitting "Command" yields a menu listing the familiar commands. Venturing further, unfortunately, we run into trouble in the form of some monsters.

We encounter three rats in full color, primed to attack! Now, here is the source of the trouble: since I'm running the Beginners Cave stack independently, there are no values for the player's stats supplied by the Main stack. So meeting monsters compels the program to ask for values not defined, consequently crashing the program.

Our tour thus ends prematurely. Should the reader insist on trying to get past those gates for himself or herself, HyperCard Eamon can be downloaded at www.apple-iigs.info (the site is in French) by searching for "HyperCard IIgs Eamon Stack." Emulating a IIgs... well, you're on your own on that one.

I'm adding the following warning: If you do try and run this on an emulator (or on a proper IIgs) and run the Beginners Cave without first passing through the primary Eamon stack, the above described crash will destroy the disk image.