Spellcasting 101: Sorcerers get all the Girls

Overview

Spellcasting 101: Sorcerers get all the girls is the first in a series of three adventure games focusing on young Ernie Eaglebeak, who is a student at the Sorcerer University. In its hallowed halls, Ernie learns the basics of magic in general, and more specifically, how to get into the pants of several girls. All is well until one day the Sorcerer's Appliance, a powerful magical artifact, is stolen from the University and Ernie is tasked with retrieving it.

The game was written by Steve Meretzky, who was involved in other famous adventure games such as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Leather Goddesses of Phobos and Eric the Unready.

The adventure has Ernie visit five islands, namely:

• The Island of Lost Soles - Here, all islanders are cursed and await rescue;
• The Island of Horny Women - Eaglebeak must escape the attentions of an army of horny amazon women;
• The Island Where Time Runs Backwards - The flow of time is reversed and Ernie must save the world before becoming unborn;
• The Restaurant at the End of the Ocean - Taking a page from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Ernie must accompany a restaurant through the six stages of restaurant life;
• The Island of the Gods - Ernie must settle a quarrel between traditional Greek gods.

Gameplay

Spellcasting 101 is a graphical text adventure. Locations and interactions are represented using text, where the player has to input text commands like "go north" or "insert the silver spoon into the dragon's mouth". Still, as in other Legend Entertainment games, the current location is also shown in a small picture and the player can click items in the picture to interact with them. These clicks result in a text command being executed.

Also, a compass rose is show to allow the player to navigate quickly, alleviating him from entering tedious "go north" and "go east" messages. Finally, lists are shown with the names of all the objects in a location, as well as all possible verbs that the game understands, allowing the player to form phrases quickly by clicking these verbs and nouns.

Technical Specifications

Spellcasting 101 was released for the PC platform (MS-DOS). The game interface appears as a windowed system, much like Microsoft Windows. The graphics are 256-colour VGA. Unconventionally for text adventure games, there are sound effects. These are played through the Soundblaster card or the PC speaker.