Apple II whisks you away to Transylvania in November 1982


"Sabrina dies at dawn!" It's scary enough wandering through the primeval woods of Transylvania in the dead of night, but then you come across a wrinkled piece of paper on the forest floor upon which these words are written. The date must surely be November of 1982, and the horror unfolding before you is courtesy of Penguin Software's chilling graphic adventure, Transylvania. Facing all that goes bump in the night in this land of superstition and morbid enchantment, you must rescue the Princess Sabrina, who is currently being held prisoner in a sealed coffin in the tower of Dracula's castle.

Would you dare descend into the darkened cellar of a house bearing the uber-lucky number 13? Sure, there was a hearty loaf of white bread on the first floor, and a flintlock pistol. But the latter could use a silver bullet, as you're being doggedly pursued by a demon-eyed werewolf. Too bad that you'll have to retrieve the projectile from the inside of a coffin occupied by a corpse, upon the wreckage of a horse-drawn hearse.

Reagan was on the radio talking about morning in America while the rest of us were up all night, hunched over glowing green screens in bedrooms that smelled of pizza boxes and teenage panic. And somewhere in that electric dark, a little 5¼-inch floppy disk slid into thousands of Apple II drives like a stake looking for a heart. The label read simply: TRANSYLVANIA. Polarware. $34.95.

Even in Maryland we felt the ripple when Antonio Antiochia’s game hit the mail-order catalogs. Kids who’d never read a page of Stoker (hell, most of 'em hadn’t even seen Lugosi on late-night TV) suddenly found themselves steering a pixelated wanderer through a Carpathian night that felt wetter, blacker, and meaner than anything we’d ever dreamed on our own.

We died a lot. God, we died. But we kept booting it up. We passed around photocopied maps drawn in purple ditto ink that smelled like wine gone bad. We traded clues over the phone at twenty-five cents a minute after nine.

Every room you entered felt like it had been waiting centuries just for you, and not in a friendly way. The castle wasn’t a backdrop; it was a stomach, and you were dinner working your way down.

Sometimes on nights when the wind rattles the gutters like loose teeth, I drag the old Apple IIc out of the attic, plug it into a flickering green monitor, and boot the thing up one more time. The moon still hangs low over that dirt path. The werewolf still waits. And somewhere in the dark code Antonio Antiochia wrote on nights much like this one, Princess Sabrina is still inside a vine-wrapped casket that only the right words can open, and in a slumber that only the right elixir can rouse her from.

Some games die with their era. Some games are just waiting for you to come back, older now, slower, carrying everything you’ve lost along the way.

They know you will.

Location: Transylvania, Romania

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