The 80's Doctor Who games Part 2
1984 - 1985
| Dr Who and the Key to Time (A.K.A The Key to Time)
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Story: (From the game itself) The time storms have affected the ability of the doctors current persona to operate properly. Because of the nature of the emergency, the high council of the time lords have authorized that control is passed to you. This is contrary to the first law of time, but desperate situations require desperate remedies! Good luck, Doctor. (You're going to need it!)
In this adventure, you must guide your earlier persona by sending him messages through this time lord telepathic controller, cunningly disguised as a Sinclair spectrum.
Game play: A text adventure where you must enter the right commands and instructions in the proper english to advance in the game. You play as the Doctor. You start out as the 1st Doctor and each time you lose a life you can regenerate into the next doctor up to the sixth Doctor.
How we all loved these games, with hours spent trying to figure out how to make something happen. A good use of spelling is also an advantage. Having said that the game is a very wide spread affair taking many different locations such as Skaro and Gallifrey and it not only features the TARDIS, but also Daleks, Cybermen, even the Sensorites from the 60's. Somebody did their homework for this one.
Background notes: Somebodies going get sued !! Whereas the earlier C64 Cybermen game featured a vague likeness of them on the front cover, The Key To Time actually mentions several Doctor Who trademarks by name including the Daleks, Tardis, even the Sensorites. Not once in the instructions are any of these trademarks actually given copyright clearance (Terry Nation's Daleks especially) This could be the reason this game has been hidden or missed out from so many Doctor Who publications before. A hard one to track down.
The game is dedicated to the memory of William Hartnell.
References - ZX Spectrum magazines
| Magazine | Issue | Feature |
| Sinclair User | December 1984 | Review |
| Sinclair User | May 1985 | Letters - About Sentient Software having taken over distribution of the game. |
| Crash | January 1985 | Review |
Reviews:
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Sinclair User December 1984
HAVE TARDIS WILL TRAVEL Knock, knock, Who's here. The Doctor's back, in search of The Key to Time. This new text adventure from Lumpsoft features the veteran time traveller and many of his oldest enemies, battling it out through time and space. Davros, Daleks, Cybermen and fellow time-lords all show up as you steer your Tardis through the ages. With the aid of a timescanner you must discover the scattered pieces of the great key and presumably save the Universe into the bargain. Before you can begin the quest you will have to learn how to operate the Tardis. Addicts of the TV series will find themselves in a well-known environment, but the program is very friendly and will give considerable help to those who are less familiar with the bumbling doctor. The program is responsive and versatile whilst the riddles are by no means obvious. It will get you zipping back and forth through time like nobody's business. The Key to Time is good-humoured, well written and a joy to play. Richard Price THE KEY TO TIME
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Crash issue 12 January 1985 [Dr Who and ]THE KEY TO TIME Producer: Lumpsoft
The Key To Time is Lumpsoft's first adventure and is all about a time traveller who was all the rage when people used to watch television. The loading screen shows a picture of a police box and funny little robots with a bad case of metallic pimples and tunnel vision compounded by the position of their only eye on the end of a stalk. Apparently it is a bad time for time travellers what with time storms distorting travel coordinates which might lead anywhere and it proves imperative that someone recovers the object that can dispel the storms for good. At a meeting of the High Council of Time Lords one senior member asked, "Who can dispel the time storms?" But this was taken as a command by the others and so you, The Doctor, ended up with the job. On your first attempt at the game it's better to ask for HELP rather than STARTing straight off so you can gather some useful information. "In this adventure you must guide your earlier persona by sending him messages through this Time Lord telepathic controller, cunningly disguised as a Sinclair Spectrum." Here you are told of the game's intricacies including a timely list of recommended verbs including a general HELP, a more specific HELP(TIMESCANNER) and WAIT. The HELP is not as useful as it could be because it only results in a random selection from three or four phrases, one of which reads "Never eat anything bigger than your head", a saying reminiscent of the work parodied by Lumpsoft's next program to be released, Malice in Wonderland. The other, more specific help command is very useful in that constructions like HELP(DALEK) give encyclopedic information concerning a certain object or creature, eg. Cybermen are allergic to gold. I really do like this kind of encyclopedic reference material as it was what we all thought computers were about, indeed what they are good at, until the limitations of micro memory become apparent. In this respect, I can't wait to see what adventure games the QL can produce. The WAIT command begins mimicking The Hobbit but soon departs with an amusingly prolonged diversion. The vocabulary is very friendly with constructions such as GO(TARDIS) and ENTER(CRACK) equally helpful and the plot is similarly responsive; everything can be examined and if you look at the screen you find "The Tardis materialised. Atmosphere: breathable.". Swearing will bring the wrath of Mary Whitehouse down upon your head leaving you to regenerate into your next persona, perhaps this time the chap who is a trifle absent-minded and plays a pipe. Time travel is the core of the game and if you find play relatively easy as I did, then you will proceed quite quickly through the five time zones, although you may well use up a few of the Doctor's characters. Moving through the likes of Daleks and Cybermen you arrive at Gallifrey where you enter, presumably, the final stages around the president's office. If the game's tricky moments hinder progress then you may have time to ponder on the difficulty of getting any score higher than 0 or how to travel from one time zone to another in the Tardis, an operation which involves a tricky combination of lever pulling and button pressing. The Key To Time is a very worthy effort from Lumpsoft combining a friendly response with an interesting plot and amusing interludes. A text-only Quilled game with a familiar theme but very well executed. COMMENTS Difficulty: mostly easy
Atmosphere 7
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Hints: A full write up of the game is here. It is fairly indepth but does not give you all of the exact commands to enter (where would the fun by in playing !)
| Doctor Who and the Warlord
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Story: A two part adventure where you must first traverse a strange planet in search of the Doctor. Then, the TARDIS takes you and the Doctor back to the battle of Waterloo where you must defeat Napoleon and stop the Warlord from altering history.
Game play: Another text based adventure game where you do not play the Doctor himself but his companion. The game doesn't feature any graphics and comes in two parts. You had to complete the first part in order to get a code word to continue the adventure. Each part features around 250 locations.
It is incredibly easy to die in the game, walking one way or picking up a certain item is enough to kill you. When you are dead you given some tasteful passages about how you died and how you should try harder.
References
| Magazine | Issue | Feature |
| Micro Adventurer | November 1984 | News |
| Doctor Who Magazine | 113 | News |
Packaging: The game was packaged on a blister card. The TARDIS features on the front cover, after BBC Software found that sales of the first adventure dropped when the doctor changed from Peter Davidson to Colin Baker. The inlay details loading instructions and helpful hints. The back of the blister card offers screen shots and the games plot.
Background notes: The game came out around the time Doctor Who was put on hiatus so it was not a big seller. Finding a copy now is quite a task but they do appear from time to time on Ebay.
It recieved publicity on television during the credits at the end of Doctor Who, an extra on the Mark of the Rani DVD features one such announcement. Plus the Radio Times of 2-8 February 1985 which marked the start of Mark of the Rani also carries a full page advert for various BBC Basic games including Warlord.
An interesting point about the game was that, like the Mines of Terror, it was intended to be released as a ZX Spectrum game. The article from Micro Adventurer goes like this -
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Micro Adventurer
The player is one of the Doctor's sidekicks, and must negotiate the perils of an alien planet in search of the Tardis. The Doctor pops up every so often and is his usual scatter-brained self. Once the Tardis has been found, the action switches to the battle of Waterloo, where the player will meet various historical personages. The ultimate aim is to defeat the machinations of an evil warlock, out to change history. |
Nothing else was heard of the game on the Spectrum, even though it's release was supposed to be fairly imminent at the time. The article also mentions the Tripods game, which did come out for the Spectrum. It’s ironic because the Tripods TV series was cancelled in favor of bringing Doctor Who back, while the Tripods game appeared and the Doctor Who game didn’t.
On to the Mines Of Terror
Back to Part 1 of the 1980's games
Back to the introduction
Back to the the list