phaolo wrote on 2025-04-25, 20:20:

Hello, I'm looking for an ancient game I saw when I was little and then never found again. I was told to try asking here, so.. h […]
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Hello, I'm looking for an ancient game I saw when I was little and then never found again. I was told to try asking here, so.. here you go.
Decades have passed, so my memories are quite fuzzy by now.

What I recall:
- it was an adventure game (before the 90's?) with textual commands (no cursor) and static screens (maybe CGA?), with a first person view. The graphic was detailed enough, it didn't consist of just basic shapes, nor it was cartoony.
- the genre was scifi. You started on a spaceship\spacestation during an emergency, like a reactor which was going to explode. You could only access a pair of rooms and had few time\moves before dying. I didn't manage to escape.
- It's not one of the famous Space Quest titles, even if I somehow recall a similar title . I'm quite unsure about this.
- I don't know if the pc was a DOS or Amiga or an Apple machine..

I made a simplified pic ages ago about the second screen of the game (in the first one you could maybe see your own room).
There was some kind of panel on the left and a corridor on the right with 2 doors (the one at the end was locked).
I don't recall if the color red was accurate or if I just chose it randomly..

Any idea?

Alien Fires: 2199?

https://www.mobygames.com/game/9951/alien-fires-2199-ad/

Edit: This is not it, I forgot you said adventure game.

Escape from Pulsar 7 ? That's what Copilot gave me after refining the descriptions a few times

Thanks for the replies.
Good try with "Escape from Pulsar 7", but the graphic looks too simple, the premise seems different (no reactor exploding) and you're not confined in few rooms at the start.

Mission Critical? (probably not - it is mouse controlled)

There are so many graphic adventure games...hard to narrow that down.

I ran across this video collection of 80's adventure games...maybe it's in there?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ge3331xv-lw

Or perhaps the 90's?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tst8rJL9Jhg

Mission Critical is too modern.
Alas I couldn't find my game in both the 80's and the 90's videos.

Maybe OO-Topos.

Damn, another good try.
But alas the emergency there is an alien invasion, not a reactor exploding.
And I couldn't see an early room similar to my pic.

A game bundle with four interlinked parody games; 'Imagination' - one of the included titles '2002 - A Very Odd Day in Space' has somewhat similar screenshots like you describe. (Still a longshot).

https://www.mobygames.com/game/19586/imagination/

Sadly no, the character is playing a videogame and the scifi one has a time machine at the start.

Would it be something like snowball or federation

Mm.. doesn't seem so

How about Gateway?

To be honest I've also been looking for one like you describe where there's a robot arm that goes haywire and you have to escape from people after you, there's like a bomb on a tram and if you don't get off in time you die.

EDIT: Btw just figured mine out, Gateway 2 Homeworld is apparently the one I'm remembering.

Nope, it didn't have the Legend UI.
The left panel in my pic was part of the scene.

Btw Gateway 2 looks neat.

Sounds to me like one of the Apple //e adventure games of which there were many. One that stuck out as space themed was Mission Asteroid.

I recall a more detailed graphics, unless it's nostalgia goggles.
But you start on Earth there, so no.

Try looking through: https://collectionchamber.blogspot.com/p/adventure.html

It's sounds so familiar.... but my old brain may just be associating Space Quest 1: The Sarien Encounter since it starts very similar. Waking up, emergency, ect.

For some reason, I was reminded of a type in game published in a magazine, possibly Compute!

That hunch is very low reliability, please treat it as such.

StriderTR wrote on 2025-04-27, 21:53:

Try looking through: https://collectionchamber.blogspot.com/p/adventure.html

Nope, I couldn't find the game in that list.

darry wrote on 2025-04-27, 22:15:

For some reason, I was reminded of a type in game published in a magazine, possibly Compute!
That hunch is very low reliability, please treat it as such.

I checked the various Compute games, but sadly they seem mostly action games for the C64.