Hey Kindertrauma!
Did you guys ever play Hunt the Wumpus? I had a random memory of the Wumpus when I was trying to name a picture that I took for my Halloween blog. I remember playing this one as a kid on a Texas Instrument computer and it used to scare the crap out of me. Your character would move around these round spaces in search of the Wumpus. There were pits you could fall down; some bats that would send you to a random spot on the board, and of course the Wumpus.
The Wumpus was the monster that would eat you if you landed on its space or if you missed shooting it with an arrow. The game was as simple as Minesweeper where there was the suspense of stepping on the wrong spot. Seeing the big teeth of the Wumpus pop up on the screen (accompanied by a short clip of The Funeral March) spooked me almost every time I played it.
Or how about Haunted House for the Atari 2600? This was another simple, great game that would get my heart pounding. You're a set of eyes with a flashlight searching through 4 levels of darkness for pieces of an urn. While wandering around the house you have to avoid ghosts, spiders, and bats.
Keep up the great work guys!
— Jay
YES YES YES I remember this game. A friend and I used to play it on the old Texas Instrument all the time (you fired an arrow in a random direction after coming across the red dots). My parents bought the Texas Instrument because a neighbour had told them it was going to replace Atari and be the next big thing. But the best game was ALPINER where you climbed mountians and actually fought the abominable snowman at the end!
I somehow missed "Haunted House" but I remember being obsessed with the similar looking "Adventure" which had an invisible key Easter egg that was nearly impossible to find.
Ah, Wumpus…Munchman…Parsec…Adventure (the text game)…and Tunnels of Doom…