Name: Enchanter
Platform: Atari 800
Region: USA
Media: Disk
Controller: Keyboard
Genre: Adventure - Text
Gametype: Licensed
Release Year: 1983
Developer: Infocom
Publisher: Infocom
Players: 1
Programmer: Marc Blank
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You are a dim ignorant Apprentice Enchanter, but your task is enormous. You must save the world from the warlock Krill who is ruling the land with his evil powers. You are not the first in this quest but hopefully you will be the first to succeed, as the more experienced members of the Circle of Enchanters are powerless. You know the basics of magic and will have the chance to learn many spells. Keep your wits and use everything you can to your benefit!

Enchanter is a text adventure set in the Zork universe, following the original Zork trilogy. As in the previous games, the player interacts with the environment by typing in text commands, usually combinations of verbs and objects. A new feature in the game is the player character's ability to cast spells. These spells must be memorized before the protagonist is able to cast them, and are learned during the course of the game. The text parses understands the names of the spells as verbs, and the player only needs to type in the spell name and the name of an object he/she wishes to cast that particular spell on. 


Trivia:

Difficulty

Infocom rated Enchanter as "Standard" in difficulty. 

Grues

Enchanter may be the only game in the Zork universe not to feature grues; the creatures that kill you in dark rooms are not referred to by name, and the game doesn't even know the word "grue". 

Parser

The game has a parser that understands over 700 words, making it the most advanced interactive fiction game of its time. 

References

There are references scattered throughout Enchanter's documentation and gameplay comparing the use of spells by mages to the use of command line interfaces by programmers, and comparing mages to hackers in general. Many of the spell names, such as FROTZ and GNUSTO, are taken from MIT hacker slang of the time; others are various pop cultural references or anagrams. For instance, the NITFOL spell allows one to speak with animals, and NITFOL is a truncated reversal of "LOFTING", after the author of the Dr. Doolittle stories. 

References to the game

Frotz, a modern open-source interpreter for Infocom games (as well as independently written interactive fiction) draws its name from a spell ("cause object to glow with illumination") in Enchanter and its sequels. Another spell, Blorb ("hide an object in a strongbox"), provides the name for a standard wrapper for interactive fiction multimedia resources. Several other IF tools have also been named after spells from the series.

Statistics
(From The New Zork Times Vol.3 No.2 Spring 1984)

Some statistics about Enchanter:
Apparent number of rooms (those seen by the player): infinite 
Number of rooms: 74 
Number of different ways to die: 17 
Number of words in vocabulary: 718 
Number of takeable objects: 31 

Zork IV

The game was intended, at one point, to be a sequel of sorts to the Zork trilogy. In Zork III: The Dungeon Master, a device slowly cycles through "scenes" from each of the Zork games as a number is displayed above it. A depiction of the sacrificial altar from the then-unreleased Enchanter appeared under the number "IV".


http://www.mobygames.com/game/atari-8-bit/enchanter
