Oct 26, 2020 20:00:00

In the fight against socialism, a text adventure game based on Hollywood movies such as Indiana Jones was born.

The former Soviet Union in the 1980s Czechoslovakia was a satellite country, communist in order to fight the advocates, democracy who is

Indiana Jones and the text-based, which was the theme of adventure game 'THE ADVENTURES OF INDIANA JONES IN WENCESLAS SQUARE ( Indiana Jones / Wenceslas Square) ”was being developed. The game is set in Wenceslas Square in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, where archaeologist Indiana Jones tries to escape from the Czech Republic while fighting communists.

How Indiana Jones, Rambo, and others ended up in 1980s Czechoslovak text-adventures | Ars Technica
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/10/how-indiana-jones-fought-the-communists-and-led-an-era-of-activist-video-games/

In 1989, dissidents operating in Czechoslovakia at the time gathered in central Prague to protest communism, but were beaten and arrested by riot police. This incident marks the beginning of the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia. Those arrested for participating in this protest have been unable to protest the regime in real life, so they continue to create computer games to protest. The result is the original adventure game 'Indiana Jones / Wenceslas Square' based on the movie 'Indiana Jones' made in the United States, which is a symbol of democracy. All the information such as developers was released with it hidden, and the data copied to the audio cassette became popular among the citizens while repeating copying.

According to Jaroslav Švelch , an assistant professor at Charles University in Prague and learning about the history of video games, 'Indiana Jones / Wenceslas Square' was developed in the late 1980s by young people living in Czechoslovakia at the time. That's right. Švelch has worked with veteran programmer Martin Kouba to bring Indiana Jones / Wenceslas Square back to life as a game for web browsers. The browser version of 'Indiana Jones / Wenceslas Square' can be played from the following. The original Indiana Jones / Wenceslas Square was a text-based adventure game with no illustrations, so Švelch added graphics for the launch screen, but the other parts are faithful to the original. It is said that it is being transplanted.

THE ADVENTURES OF INDIANA JONES IN WENCESLAS SQUARE IN PRAGUE ON JANUARY 16, 1989

The reason why the Indiana Jones game was made in Czechoslovakia in the 1980s is that Indiana Jones was a cult favorite among young people in Czechoslovakia at that time. The Czechoslovak youth first learned of Indiana Jones in July 1985. It was at this time that the first film in the Indiana Jones series, Raiders of the Lost Ark, which was released in the United States in 1981, was screened for the first time in Czechoslovakia.

Frantisek Fuka , a 16-year-old boy at the time, loved Hollywood movies, but in the socialist nations of the time, except for movies made in the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia, they are shown only a few times a year. It seems that there was no. At the time of the screening, Fuka didn't know anything about Indiana Jones, but the impression of an archaeologist named Indiana Jones with a whip left a strong impression on Fuka. Fuka says that none of the Soviet films he saw at the time were as inspiring as Steven Spielberg's.

Fuka already had four years of coding experience when she saw 'Raiders of the Lost Ark'. Fuka also learned BASIC with a friend at the Army Cooperation Union (Svazarm). Svazarm was a paramilitary organization to learn the role of young people in the military, but in reality it was like a boy scout who gathered children interested in motorsport, ham radio, electronics and computers. That thing.

Indy Jones / Raiders Lost Ark 'Sacred Tower' (dubbed version)-YouTube


Through his work at Svazarm, Fuka learned the joy of making video games, so he immediately fought the Nazis and Indiana Jones after watching Raiders of the Lost Ark. It seems that he came up with the idea of drawing.

Fuka believes that many young people in Czechoslovakia saw 'Raiders of the Lost Ark', and the second film in the series, ' Indiana Jones / The Legend of the Mamiya, ' which was not shown in Czechoslovakia at the time. Aim to make '' a game. Fuka couldn't watch the movie, so while following the information in magazines, she created her own Indiana Jones work as an original video game. The startup screen contains the words 'Indiana Jones', illustrations of snakes and spiders, and the 'Fuxoft' (a combination of Fuka and Soft) logo. In addition, this game is composed of text except for the startup screen and loading screen.

Fuka started designing the game by using a pen and paper to draw a map of all the places the character would pass through. Mr. Fuka said that he coded in BASIC using

ZX Spectrum , a computer made in the United Kingdom. Fuka wrote the created game data to an audio cassette and shared it with her friends. Although most of the games that could be played in Czechoslovakia at that time were in English, there were few young people who could read and write English, so Fuka's game that can be played in the local language became a hit in a blink of an eye. Did.

After that, Fuka's Fuxoft established a reputation as a leading game developer in Czechoslovakia. After that, Fuka developed two text adventures based on Indiana Jones and several other text adventures, which will have a huge impact on the young people of Czechoslovakia at that time. .. Therefore, many text adventures were born in Czechoslovakia in the late 1980s, and it seems that seven text adventures based on Indiana Jones were created.

Fuka, who was extremely popular in Czechoslovakia at that time, also said that there was no clue about the developer of 'Indiana Jones / Wenceslas Square' that Švelch ported as a browser version.

However, with the advent of Indiana Jones / Wenceslas Square, 'the world's first understanding that Czechoslovak youth can make political statements through video games,' said Ars Technica, an overseas media outlet. It is written. Computers and software were difficult for Czechoslovak youth at the time, but they felt the need to regain their future from the oppressive regime, so they made political statements throughout game development. That's why.