Pirate Adventure

Sinclair ZX Spectrum version

A Spectrum version was advertised (with graphics) but seemingly never released. It was however released at a later date in text only form in the Scott Adams Scoops compilation.

Source code

Scott Adams published the BASIC source code to Pirate Adventure in the December 1980 issue of BYTE Magazine (pp. 192-212); the code sets up the virtual machine for the adventure and then largely consists of DATA-statements, thousands of numbers plugging values into the virtual machine. With this (somewhat obtuse) reference, many text adventure fans among BYTE's subscription base reverse-engineered the virtual machine and used it to help get a leg up on advancing their own homebrew text adventures.

Scans of the pages in question can be viewed online here.