The Wizard of Oz

The Good
Among a handful of fondly remembered text adventures based on classic literature and published in the mid-80s by Windham Classics, The Wizard of Oz makes up for what it lacks in engaging puzzles with simple charm.

Based on a blend of the first two books in the Oz series by Frank L. Baum, the Commodore 64 version of the game excels with colorful graphics and a wonderful score that's full of both original compositions and plenty of classical music tracks.

There are a few bad endings to be discovered — which I very much appreciated — although all of them appear to be bizarrely far more fleshed out than the actual good ending, which is surprisingly quite terse.

The Bad
While the game bills itself as ages 10-adult, it's hard to imagine teenagers and beyond with knowledge of the source material feeling too challenged by the game. Most of the difficulty involves periods of wrestling with the text parser for the exact syntax it's looking for, or trying to figure out what to do with the handful of additional locations and characters it turns out are either red herrings or merely there to flesh out the game world more with scenes from the books.

The Bottom Line
Between the excellent music and fun characters, The Wizard of Oz does a strong job — for 1985 standards — in bringing the Oz classic to life. It's by no means itself a classic, but is on the whole an entertaining, well produced and relatively short text adventure.