Have finally completed my "re"collection of eight of the greatest adventures from the greatest adventure publisher this side of Infocom. (Shadowkeep, Below the Root, Dragonworld, Perry Mason and the Manderin Murder, Fahrenheit 451, Amazon, Nine Princes in Amber and Rendezvous with Rama.)

Even amongst adventure gamers, Telarium is barely known. This is a crime of huge proportions and needs to be rectified.

These games are celebrating their 21st birthday (more or less) and in this world of emulation really need to be played by more people. When I think of all the adulation Infocom has had over the years and yet never mastered person to person shenanigans like Nine Princes in Amber. Never ever managed any real life situations anything like as well as the court case in Perry Mason and the Mandarin Murder, and never created a totally true to the original follow on story for a great novel of our time like Telarium did with Fahrenheit 451, that is as masterful as the original book and is the only computer game in existence that can proudly sit alongside a classic story held in such high esteem.

It is so sad that these games are so ignored today, so sad they don't have 1/100th the comments of much lesser games on the various C64 websites.

No. They did not release dozens of titles like Activision or Firebird. No, they did not market their titles as well as they could have at the time. But to release eight titles of such consistent high quality within it's genre, to bring these titles to market with the care and attention to packaging they did and to put the effort and time (and no doubt money) to make sure these titles would stand up in every way to the famous books they were based on and the writers of such calibre of Earl Stanley Gardner, Ray Bradbury, Michael Crichton and Arthur C. Clarke, Telarium knew it was taking on a huge challenge to produce works of very high quality to stand alongside well loved books and author's - and it succeeded.

With no other titles bought or D64's downloaded have I ever thought, like I did with these Telarium titles that I would have been so much happier giving my money to the programmers. etc for these titles than to the owners of the games now. Never ever did I think so hard as when downloading Telarium D64's that those D64's would not be enough. That I would want and need the originals, that that would be my way of supporting these titles that should have been showered with awards at the time and should be held in reverence as much as any Elite or Alter Ego or Deadline or Enchantment.

So I say two thumbs way up for a brave software publisher that took a huge chance and failed, but nevertheless left behind these great software titles to us and to history. They deserve to be remembered amongst the great software houses of the day and their titles should be up there with the best of interactive fiction and gaming in general.

if you give me links to where i can download these adventure games from Telarium, i will try them....

and you can tip these guys about it and maybe they do a reportage about Telarium in one of their magazines...

http://www.retrogamer.net/ - the best retro magazine around
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For titles information:

http://www.if-legends.org/~adv...ation.html

For the D64's (and covers, manuals and solutions to most)

http://www.c64games.de/phpseit...ummer=1073

(German, so choose "Such" on left and enter the titles you want)

And yes, have talked about Telarium elsewhere.

Below the Root is one of my favorites. I also liked Windham's Alice in Wonderland.

The other Windham titles aren't bad either.

Looks like I'm missing Shadowkeep - I'll have to track that one down.

Also, there's a small debate on the differences between Telarium and Trillium -- one is supposed to have children's versions of these games.

Any truth to that? I'm sure I probably have all the releases (sans Shadowkeep) under both names, but I've just never had the chance to dig them out and compare.
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Hil Jerry. Trillium was the label that started it and produced the big 10x8 fold over folio packages. Then it became Telarium and went over to regular box packaging. Then it was taken over by Spinnaker Software. Telarium also wrote for Wyndham Classics that were designed for younger people. Dragonworld was also written for younger teens, although I enjoy it as an adult and see nothing really childish in it other than the puzzles are easier. There are rumors that titles were dumbed down from Trillium to Telarium, but I haven't seen it. I think it just confusing because there are no age ranges on the packages, you are just supposed to know from the writers/books they are associated with. So Dragonworld for younger people, but Fahrenheit 451 absolutely for adults. Amazon for a wider range of ages, but Rendezvous with Rama probably for a more adult market.

All I can say is I played Perry Mason Trillium version way back when, and I am playing the Telarium version now - and I am seeing absolutely no differences that make my mind go - "that ain't right!"

Also Shadowkeep is just not out there anywhere that I have found. Not sure it was ever on C64, although some sites say it was. I found the Apple II version and downloaded an Apple II emulator for it. Only game for that emulator I want - so far! But don't forget Shadowkeep is an RPG rather than typical Telarium adventure.

Also forgot to say I am searching for Scoop to round out my Telarium titles, although not generally known as a Telarium game but rather a Spinnaker one, so didn't include it in my "Tribute".

AMAZON is still one of my favorite all-time adventures on the C-64. It just has that certain "something", all the pieces came together wonderfully.
It was not too easy, not too hard - and it was the first "text / graphics"
adventure I successfully completed without any outside help!! Yes, I would
put it on the same "classic" level as Magnetic Scrolls' THE PAWN - it was
way *way* ahead of its time.
Because of AMAZON, I became interested in Telarium's (Trilliam's) other
titles, and got just as sucked into F-451 and PERRY MASON. But no
game before or since just completely grabbed me like AMAZON did! I have to
echo the kudos, Telarium (Trillium) was a fabu company!
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I have some of these games in both Telarium and Trillium and they are different disks- they did change the names. I think the games are the same, though.

Some of them are from Jerry's collection, I'm sure.
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I just got an original of Dragonworld by Telerium, and curiously on a bit of paper in the documentation are the words:

"This game is not intended as an educational product and is not produced by or connected in any way with Trillium Press Inc."

Make of that what you will
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That's probably why they had the change their name.
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Yes, I recall that copyright issues were the reason that Trillium changed its name. I have foldover versions of Fahrenheit 451 and Nine Princes in Amber. The fomer is by Trillium, the latter by Telarium, but both look nearly identical in format. Thus, I don't think the name change was motivated by an attempt to target a different audience.

I agree with the previous posters that Trillium/Telarium was highly underrated. The games were highly literary and incredibly engaging. The downside of their games was that their load times were excruciatingly slow. I don't believe that Telarium's products ever sold all that well. It must have been hard to market literature to a gaming market that was so dependent on the tastes of 13 year old boys.

i had store-purchased copies of almost all of these games growing up. i loved telarium/wyndham. Below the Root and Alice in Wonderland were two of the greatest adventures i have ever played (why weren't there more made in this 'style' back then?)

i also really enjoyed the IF games. the diorama/triptych style of graphics were truly unique, and titles like Treasure Island and Wizard of Oz featured some really atmospheric music. generally, the games were devotedly true to the source material, too, which was a luxury when so many game/movie adaptations have been butchered.

i learned from Perry Mason, that i would make an absolute crap lawyer. the case i built blew away in the wind.

i'm putting some of these on my infinite list of games to 'get back to'. thanks for bringing this up!
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I read the first book to Dragon World, and had a 'uh copy of the game. I own a legit copy of Perry Mason, I'm unsure why I never bought Dragon World, I should've had it instead. I never did finish the game...maybe someday via emulation...

I never came across Below the Root or Alice in Wonderland. It sounds like they weren't graphic adventures like Fahrenheit 451? What were they like?

I remember that I wanted most of the Telarium games, but only played Fahrenheit 451 and Nine Princes in Amber. I particularly liked the "hiding in plain sight" aspect of F451 and the passwords that came in the form of literary quotes. And Nine Princes in Amber had the most interesting set of characters in an adventure at that time. I can still hum the theme songs to some of the characters.

I don't remember how either game ended. I seem to remember something ambiguous in the Amber ending, but perhaps it had multiple endings? Anyone recall either game's ending?

I have left the thread alone to let people have their say, and to be honest, the lack of messages does prove my point about underrated!

But good points have been brought up too. Telarium must have been one of the first publishers to have games with multiple ends within the one story (games allowed you to play through a story with a different character, but that's not the same).

It was also the only company that took it's ideas from quality literature as opposed to the most crass movies that other publishers produced games of (Robocop, Miami Vice, etc!)

It was also one of the first companies that tried to broaden gaming to the adult market at a time when it was mostly teenage kids playing. It wrote games for children (Treasure Island, etc), for teenagers (Dragonworld, etc) and for adults (Perry Mason, etc). It was ahead of it's time, given that today the average gamer is 29!

Adventure/roleplaying games of Perry Mason, Rendezvous with Rama and Farenheit 451, etc would do great business in today's more adult market. I am not sure that half of the buyers of the Sims would be potential customers as well as the rest of us, and we know what sort of numbers we're talking about there!

So Telarium, a publisher ahead of it's time, trying a different road, that in the long run, based on posterity, were hugely successful!
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Treasure Island was lots of fun.

Amazon was good too...

Someone advices C64 games to download manuals/d64 images of Telarium games, there is also an English version which you can choose at the beginning http:/www.c64games.de

Amazon occupied a huge part of my life! It was a little scary, challenging, and all the little clues included in the package intrigued me to no end. I got stuck for almost 20 years deep in the jungle trying to convince a parrot to cross a bridge. Then I discovered emulation and walk-throughs and completed the novice version of the game. It was based on the book Congo which was equally scary but not nearly as satisfying. (And made into a movie later. But that's another forum.)

Oh, man. Everybody should run-don't-walk to play Below the Root, as it really is terrific. It's probably my most-replayed game of all time.

I'm not nearly as convinced of Nine Princes' success as a game as some of the posters here. I'm grateful to the game for introducing me to the books (tried to read the Below the Root books as well, read the first one and wasn't compelled to go further, but became an enduring Zelazny fan.) The game itself, though, definitely suffered from trying to do too much with too many constraints. Particularly when you come to realize that the entire elaborate fencing system is completely spurious (although I wonder if that's a decision they made late in QA...) as is the Pattern game (and with basically the same command, too!)

But, yes, for trying to do something with more literary brands, they are to be applauded.

So are these games text adventures or graphic? Pretty interesting crop of
novels to base games on. Fahrenheit and Rendezvous with Rama are just
classic reads. I only read Rama in the last year, very gripping 'hard' sci
fi story.

The Telarium/Trillium adventures are "text/graphic" adventures, in the conventional style where most of the screen is taken up with an image with the rest given over to text description and displays. Below the Root is a joystick-controlled graphical adventure game.