Oo-Topos

It's 1995 A.D., Earth time.

An Interstellar Transport carrying power transfusion waste collided with a meteor, scattering its contents towards Earth's Sun. The transfusion waste is so deadly that all life on Earth will be destroyed unless something is done to save it. But Earth, in a restricted travel zone, has neither the knowledge of nor the technology to cope with such a catastrophe.

Your mission is to deliver the chemical seeds of a protective compound that will render the waste harmless. Your destination is Observation Labport 5V, a seemingly lifeless planet just outside of Earth's Solar System. From there, the compound can be synthesized and secretly seeded into Earth's atmosphere.

During the otherwise routine voyage, however, your ship was ensnared by a tractor beam and forced to land on the planetoid Oo-Topos. Hostile aliens boarded your ship and threw you in a prison cell. You must escape and recover your ship with its valuable cargo. Life on Earth depends on you.

*Enter a whole new world inside your computer as you become the main character in a COMPREHEND interactive novel! Your computer describes where you are, objects at that location, and possible exits. You control the outcome of the story by typing in all actions, such as "Go North and climb the tree", or "Take the shovel and inspect it carefully". Your computer shows you the results of all actions. Explore and interact with the unknown world inside your computer to unravel the plot ... but be careful, or your novel may have an undesirable ending!

COMPREHEND is the program that allows you to communicate with your computer using full sentences in plain English. The Graphics Magician® program makes it possible to put hundreds of detailed illustrations into each novel. Together, they have created a brand new world inside your computer.*

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Michael Berlyn* was the first science fiction writer to use the computer as a medium. His other interactive novels include Cyborg (Sentient, Broderbund), Suspended, Infidel, and Cutthroats (Infocom). He has also written real books: Crystal Phoenix and The Integrated Man (Bantam). Muffy* helped design the aforementioned adventures, and in her previous life was national horoscope columnist "Susy Sayer" in a sister publication of National Enquirer and editor of Easy Times magazine. Mike and Muffy now exist in New England as Brainwave Creations.

Source:

From the back of box

Put a small universe inside your computer... then climb right in!

INTRODUCING COMPREHEND

How many times have they told you that in interactive fiction if you have graphics, you can't have as much depth, you can't have an intelligent multiple sentence parser, you can't have a large vocabulary, and you can't have well-written text? THEY WERE WRONG!

Coming soon from Penguin Software are new graphics adventures written with Comprehend, one of the most powerful adventure systems you'll find anywhere. Using coding techniques to get the most out of your computer, pioneered with The Graphics Magician, Comprehend leaves plenty of space for adventure writers to add vocabulary, intelligence, and depth, and fit a lot into your computer. All this... along with the graphics quality that has made Penguin famous.

Turn your computer into a vampire's castle in The Crimson Crown, Antonio Antiochia's follow-up to Transylvania. Or into an alien planet in Oo-Topos, by Michael Berlyn. Or even into a cartoon strip in Frank and Ernest's Adventure, based on the comic strip by Bob Thaves. Take home one of these new interactive adventures, put a small universe into your computer, and climb right in!

Watch for these and other new graphics and text adventures created with Comprehend.

*Polarware graphics adventures...

coming soon from Penguin Software*

Source:

Advertisement in Computer Entertainment, July 1985