Mindshadow was first released in 1984 and is essentially and illustrated text adventure game. The text adventure genre is perhaps best illustrated by Infocom and the Zork series. Adding illustrations was basically the next step in the evolutionary development of these games. This game was developed by Interplay and published by Activision.
A text adventure game (or interactive fiction as they were sometimes called) basically described the scene in front of you and then you would have to enter commands (e.g. “go north”, “take sword”, “hit troll with sword”, etc.) then the results would be described to you. Games like Mindshadow worked the same way, they just provided some pictures to go along with the text. This type of game can be extremely fun though they are not particularly replayable. They were also unique in that they were exclusively available on home computer systems vs. video game consoles (for obvious reasons). However, the point and click adventure is not too far removed from this type of game.
Mindshadow, though not necessarily the best, was an above average example of the graphics adventure genre. Reviews were mixed but generally positive for the most part. Honestly, while I enjoyed the occasional text adventure game (especially Zork), it was never really my favorite genre. They never felt long enough (except when you were just stuck and frustrated) and to me, they had zero replayability. I can read novels multiple times (at least some of them) but playing these types a games a second time was just boring. Unless maybe you waited long enough to completely forget it.
Mindshadow has an interesting lineage. One of the game’s programmers (Allen Adham) would later go on to found Blizzard. Another interesting fact about Mindshadow is that it is loosely based on Robert Ludlum’s novel, The Bourne Identity. You can sort of think of this game as an interactive version of that novel.
Mindshadow here is advertised for the Commodore 64, Apple II, Atari 8-bit, PC, and PCjr. It would also be available for the Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Macitosh, and ZX Spectrum. There aren’t really any modern re-releases though it was released in CD format as part of Interplay’s 10 Year Anthology, a collection of ten classic DOS games from Interplay that also includes such classics as The Bard’s Tale, Wasteland (the real first game in the Fallout series), Battle Chess, Out of this World, and other classics. However, this collection was released in 1993 and these games are in their original DOS format so in any case you will need a computer capable of running DOS or use some kind of emulation to be able to play this game. If you are looking to give the graphics adventure genre a try, you could do worse.
Screen shots above are from the Commodore 64 version of the game.
