Simon the Sorcerer

Simon the Sorcerer is an adventure game that was released by Adventure Soft on 2 January 1993 for Amiga and MS-DOS formats. The story begins with the protagonist, Simon, as an ordinary teenager. His dog, "Chippy", discovers a chest in the loft of his house containing a spellbook titled "Ye Olde Spellbooke" (which Simon derisively reads as "Ye old-ee spellbook-ee"). Simon throws the book onto the floor in contempt, but a portal opens above it. Chippy goes through the portal and Simon follows.

After entering the portal, Simon finds himself in another world. After escaping from some goblins who intended to eat him, he discovers that he has been brought on a quest to rescue the wizard Calypso from the evil sorcerer Sordid.

The game includes parodies of various popular books and fairy tales, including Rapunzel, The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, Jack and the Beanstalk and the Three Billy Goats Gruff.

Simon is voiced in this game by Chris Barrie, known for his roles in Red Dwarf and The Brittas Empire.

Available versions
Several different versions of this game were created.

The first game, Simon the Sorcerer, was released in 1993 for IBM PC compatibles running MS-DOS on three 3.5" floppy disks in a large box styled with purple margins, with no speech and only sub-titles used throughout the game. It contained a 30-page black and white manual, which included the compass pictures required to pass the copy protection built into this release.

Two years later, just before the sequel was due to be released, the first game was re-released on PC CD-ROM. This new CD came without copy protection, in a jewel case, with a black & white inlay manual, along with colour inserts for both the front and rear. It was advertised with a new Full "Talkie" Soundtrack, which entirely replaced the original subtitles, frustrating some players, including those with hearing disabilities. The CD-ROM version of the sequel Simon the Sorcerer II: The Lion, the Wizard and the Wardrobe offers the option to switch between subtitles or the soundtrack.

Since its original release, the PC version of Simon the Sorcerer has remained in-print direct from Adventure Soft. Since then, the game has gained "The Original Adventure" as a subtitle, and comes in the same black packaging used by the sequel. The CD has also been updated, first to run on Windows 95/98 using DirectX and later Windows Me/2000/XP. The Windows version CDs introduced an on-disc PDF manual which replaced the jewel case and its inserts. A patch is available for download from Adventure Soft's site, to update older releases to run on Windows Me/2000/XP. Simon the Sorcerer - The Original Adventure has also been published with its sequel in a big box double pack, at a reduced price.

More recently, Idigicon has re-released the latest versions of all five Simon the Sorcerer individual titles in DVD style cases, followed by a combination pack containing four titles, without Simon the Sorcerer 3D, on one disc.

For the Amiga, the AGA A1200 version with 256-colour graphics was available on 9 double-density floppy disks. Shortly afterwards, a 32-colour Amiga 500 edition was created so that any Amiga could play it, and finally a CD32 version was released on CD with 256-colour graphics and voice acting. This was the first Amiga adventure game to feature full voice acting, but only on the CD version.

A 256-colour version of the game was released for the Acorn RISC OS platform on floppy disk, with a CD version including voice acting released later.

Recently the game has been re-released for the iPhone and is available via the App Store. This is the talkie version and contains two different control versions, either an original mouse pointer or by simply tapping the screen to select objects and commands.

Reception
The Amiga version of Simon the Sorcerer received generally high ratings. CU Amiga rated the game 90% and praised the high quality graphics and how much fun the game was to play. Amiga Computing gave the game a score of 89% and also praised the graphics. The magazine also enjoyed the puzzles and detail in the game. Both magazines compared the game to Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge but also pointed out that it is not a copy and is a quality product. Game Rankings states the PC version of game has a rating of 86.3%.