An original disk from Mystery House, a horror adventure from 1980, has appeared on eBay. After just one day, the item has received a bid of over $4,050 (around 3,750 euros), although one is bidding on merely an old disk in a plastic bag. However, legendary developers are behind the game.
What kind of game is it?
- In Mystery House, you are trapped in a villa and must find a murderer who is on the loose there. The story is based on the novel “And Then There Were None” by Agatha Christie.
- In terms of gameplay, Mystery House is a text adventure with graphical support. You receive prompts via text and respond to them. It combines elements of horror, detective games, and adventures.
- The game was developed by Ken and Roberta Williams and released in 1980 for the Apple II. Now, an original disk has appeared on eBay.
What makes Mystery House so special: Mystery House is considered the first graphic adventure ever. Unlike games before it, Mystery House offered 2D graphics in addition to pure text. At that time, it was a milestone in development.
Allegedly, the game basically originated in a garage. Roberta Williams wrote the story while her husband Ken handled the programming. Altogether, the couple sold around 10,000 copies. However, the first copies have a special feature.
The disks, which were the standard of the time, were simply placed in a plastic bag by the two developers, a small instruction manual was included, and a sticker was put on. That was it. No elaborate packaging; that came later.
At that time, Mystery House was only available through advertisement subscriptions via computer magazines. The disks were then shipped by mail.
Today, horror adventures look quite different – Here A Plague Tale as an example:
Roberta Williams as the “Queen of Graphic Adventures”
The creators of Mystery House, Ken and Roberta Williams, had just founded the company On-Line Systems – now known as Sierra. From the minds of these two creators came further adventures that are still considered absolute cult classics today, such as:
- King’s Quest, one of the most famous adventure and point-and-click series of all time.
- Phantasmagoria, which was illustrated with real film footage.
- Mickey’s Space Adventure, one of the first Disney video games.
Sierra was later acquired by Vivendi and completely dissolved in 2008. One of the reasons: The sister studio Blizzard Entertainment was simply too successful at the time. With the acquisition by Activision, Sierra then disappeared.
Games like Mystery House are still popular among collectors today. Accordingly, there have been several attempts to counterfeit, especially Mystery House. Whether the current offer on eBay is an original, we cannot say. The auction still runs for 5 days, so it is quite possible that far more than 4,000 euros will be paid. The seller jokes: Had he known that the disk was worth this much, he would have cleaned the packaging beforehand.
If 4,000 euros for a 40-year-old classic seems ridiculous to you, you can instead spend a million and buy a new game that probably no one wants to play: 1,000,000 euros for a terrible game on Steam: Can be played with 8 people
