Spellcasting 101: Sorcerers get all the Girls (1990) - MobyGames (2024)

Ernie Eaglebeak is a young lad living with his cruel stepfather Joey Rottenwood, who keeps him locked up in the attic. Ernie is secretly in love with his neighbor Lola Tigerbelly, a young woman definitely out of his league. Things take a turn for the better when Ernie gets accepted as a freshman by the Sorcerer University, a prestigious school of magic. At first Ernie is fascinated by college life and meets a few attractive women as well. However, when the magical Sorcerer's Appliance gets stolen, Ernie is sent on a dangerous mission to recover that powerful device. Armed with his spellbook and a magical surfboard, Ernie must cross the Fizzbuttle Ocean and travel to various islands searching for clues.

Spellcasting 101 is the first game created by Legend Entertainment, heralding their hybrid graphical and text adventure format. Continuing Infocom's tradition of humorous text adventures, the game can be played in text-only mode. However, graphical depictions of locations can be activated as well, and the game gives the player the opportunity to combine verbs from a list with on-screen objects in an almost point-and-click fashion. The game contains many puzzles following a peculiar sense of logic; it is also possible to get irrevocably stuck and die.

Magic spells (including such exotic ones as increasing a person's bust size) can be learned and then used in appropriate situations to solve puzzles. The player's actions advance the game's internal clock, and some of the tasks are based on being in the right place at the right time. The islands are tackled as separate scenarios and are self-sufficient gameplay-wise. The game contains many puns and jokes, some of them college-oriented (e.g. Tappa Kegga Bru or I Phelta Thi fraternities). It is possible to activate the "Naughty Mode", which shows the game's female characters semi-naked in some scenes, and also makes the corresponding text descriptions explicitly erotic.

gwcheat

If you managed to wade through the entire file VOCAB.DAT, one word that would snatch your attention, would be "gwcheat." "Gwcheat" is generally an all-purpose cheat that is often never mentioned (even in the hintbook), and the usage is extremely simple. If there is an item that you know of (one that exists, but one that you don't own), simply type: "gwcheat [item]" and the item will be yours.

However: Interestingly enough, if you use "gwcheat" to ask the parser to do something frustrating and mind-numbingly impossible, it will tear its electronic hair out, and eventually will freak and hallucinate. For instance, if you're riding the surfboard on the high seas, and you type "gwcheat surfboard", the picture on the screen will change into all sorts of colors, and will lock on you.

Awards

• CES
  • 1991 - Showcase Award
• Computer Gaming World
  • 1991 - Adventure Game of the Year
  • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) –#12 Funniest Computer Game

Information also contributed byChockydonutman andIndra was here

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