The Crimson Crown for the Commodore 64 is a nice addition for my collection. The box is not the most beautiful I’ve ever seen, but has a lot of text on the front, which is fitting for a text adventure I guess. Next to the illustration of a vampire standing before a (his?) castle on a rocky mountain with a big skull in it and next to a golden (crimson?) crown on a rock, are a lot of descriptions of the game. It starts with stating that the game is a spine-tingling illustrated interactive novel. That it features COMPREHEND (TM) (!) It has a vocabulary of over 1000 words and it has over 100 beautifully-detailed graphics. It seems they wanted the packaging to look like an offering from Infocom, with a big Polarware logo with subtle lines next to it. It’s published by Penguin Software (TM), who apparently are the graphics people. Maybe that’s the reason that there’s a penguin with a pickaxe(?) standing next to the vampire.

I had never heard of the game before, but maybe was put on it’s track while reading the excellent 50 Years of Text Games book. The box also states that it comes with a journal and a map. And that’s no understatement. The map is absolutely gorgeous and so is the manual. There’s also a nice letter with a seal on it and a poster. The contents are excellent. A very nice addition!