Labyrinth

aka: Labyrinth: The Computer Game
Moby ID: 12175
Commodore 64 Specs
See Also

Description official description

The player starts this game off controlling the actions of an ordinary citizen on their way to a movie theater. In the south cinema, the player chats with two teenagers about the actual movie at which point a hush descends upon the room and the in-game film begins...where the player learns that they have been chosen to be the thrall of Jareth the Goblin King, who must be overcome to finish the game. A clock ticks down 13 meager hours to complete this task, lest the player's character end up lost in the labyrinth forever.

Spellings

  • ラビリンス 魔王の迷宮 - Japanese spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (Commodore 64 version)

21 People (19 developers, 2 thanks)

Labyrinth: the Computer Game was created by
  • the Lucasfilm Games Division
  • Activision Inc.
Based on the film "Labyrinth" by
with the cooperation of
  • Henson Associates Inc.
Production Manager
Technical director and lead programmer
Programmer
Character Animation
Background Art
Music and Commodore version sound
Apple Conversion
Design Contributions
Special thanks to
Producer
Player's Guide
Editorial management by

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 74% (based on 5 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.3 out of 5 (based on 14 ratings with 1 reviews)

"I've brought you a gift"

The Good
This game was pretty cool for being made in 1986. The graphics are so much better than the games Sierra were producing at the time. The game has an easy to use interface and allows you to play as yourself, not as Jennifer Connelly. The game starts out as you seeing a preview for Labyrinth at home on your T.V. So you decide to go see it, but when it starts, Jareth (the bad guy played by David Bowie) sucks you in and gives you thirteen hours to get to the center of the Labyrinth and vanquish him.

The Bad
There is a list of bad things though. First, the game starts out as a text adventure. This may turn players away. Second, the game doesn't follow the movie. No baby's get wished away or nothing (and you don't play as Jennifer Connelly either. You play as yourself). Third, the game is pretty hard to find (and even if you do find it the floppy disk would probably be so old you couldn't play it, because the inside would be all eaten away. You can play the game at www.virtualapple.com though (that is were I played it). And last, the music. The only time you here David Bowie music (or music at all) is at the title screen.

The Bottom Line
This game is fun and shows the movie Labyrinth in a whole other way. So if you enjoyed the movie you will love Labyrinth: The Computer Game.

Apple II · by Alex Misiti (103) · 2006

Trivia

Development

According to a source at Wikipedia, one of the more playful elements of this game -- the "tricked you!" transition from text-based gameplay in the mundane world through the movie screen into graphical gameplay in the fantasy world -- was a brilliant piece of game design lateral thinking courtesy of author Douglas Adams during a week-long brainstorming session in London.

(Also reflecting Mr. Adams' peculiar sense of humour was the inclusion of the verb "adumbrate" in the list of selectable actions... certainly not one with many applications in the game!)

Interface

Unusual for Lucasfilm, this game uses a text interface system for commanding the character, an adventure game interface standard used before their SCUMM system debuted in their next game, Maniac Mansion (both games somewhat visually reminiscent of the contemporary Lucasarts MMORPG project Habitat). The stock text parser is however used only in the introductory portion of the game, replaced for the majority of the game by the unique "slot machine" interface, presenting lists of eligible verbs and nouns to combine, prefiguring (or adumbrating, if you prefer 8) not only SCUMM's interface for that of Legend Entertainment's adventure games.

This is the final game the Lucasfilm games division developed and published out-of-house (following their Atari disaster with the leaked Ballblazer) before they began simply publishing their own games.

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Scott G.

MSX added by koffiepad. PC-88 added by j.raido 【雷堂嬢太朗】.

Additional contributors: Pseudo_Intellectual, formercontrib, robMSX.

Game added February 20, 2004. Last modified February 27, 2024.