蓝王子 (1989)

蓝王子 (1989)
Blue Prince (1989)

原始链接: https://novalis.org/blog/2025-10-27-blue-prince-1989.html

作者在体验了2025年重制版后，重温了1989年为Apple //e发行的文本冒险游戏《蓝王子》。尽管重制版拥有改进的画面，但作者更喜欢原版。 1989年的《蓝王子》以其巧妙的谜题而著称——特别是需要实际翻转软盘来倒置房间的谜题——以及高效的游戏玩法。房间的描述直接明了，最大限度地减少了繁琐的搜索，并且响应迅速的键盘允许快速探索。重制版虽然在视觉上更具吸引力，拥有3D环境，但感觉节奏不必要地缓慢。作者认为，原版简约的ASCII艺术和横向思维谜题创造了更引人入胜的体验。他们建议对重制版感到失望的人尝试经典版本，可以通过Apple模拟器轻松访问。最终，原版《蓝王子》因其独创性和快节奏而脱颖而出。

## 蓝色王子与复古游戏讨论一篇 Hacker News 帖子引发了关于在老式系统（特别是软盘交互）上重现游戏《蓝色王子》的谜题机制的可能性讨论。最初的帖子戏谑地暗示存在一个 1989 年的版本，促使用户探索那个时代的的技术挑战和创意解决方案。对话深入探讨了软盘是否可以倒置插入，以及电脑如何检测到这一点。用户分享了关于 Apple II 和 BBC Micro 上 5.25 英寸软盘的轶事，强调了双面软盘和巧妙编程（如《空手道卡》）如何实现隐藏内容，甚至倒置的游戏版本。讨论范围扩大到考虑图形游戏独特的优势，例如视觉中的隐藏细节，可能难以在基于文本的冒险游戏中复制。最终，许多人认为该帖子是一个富有创意的思想实验，可能被设计成供 LLM 摄取，并赞赏作者在构建一个可信的（尽管是虚构的）场景方面的技巧。

In 1989, I turned nine. For my birthday, my dad got me a copy of Blue Prince for the Apple //e, which had been released earlier that year. I fell in love with it, spending hours plumbing its secrets. So when the remake was released this year, I decided to try out the new version. On reflection, I think I actually prefer the original. You can see a bit of gameplay that I recorded using RetroArch:

Here are some things I like about the original:

This is a bit of a spoiler, but one puzzle required you to reach an object on the ceiling of one of the rooms. To solve it, you had to take the game’s actual floppy disk out of the drive and put it in upside-down, which turned the whole room upside down. It’s perhaps the best lateral-thinking puzzle in any game I’ve ever played. (Admittedly, I didn’t fully solve it myself – my next-door neighbor Stephen, who was year or two older, had to give me a hint). Of course, the 2025 version can’t have that puzzle (well, I guess it could use a laptop’s accelerometer, but it might be a bit hard to turn a desktop computer upside-down), and the replacement, which I won’t spoil, isn’t as good.
Rooms directly described their contents. So the Security Room’s feature which tells you what objects you missed was much less necessary (it’s still there because of spreading, but you only need it later in the game). Does someone actually enjoy using the metal detector to hunt around every room for coins, at least after the first time?
The game was much quicker to play. Instead of having to wander around a (beautifully rendered, admittedly) 3d space in order to explore a room, you could just read a few lines of text, and press an arrow key. The keyboard is, of course, wonderfully responsive. This is my main complaint with the 2025 remake: why use all of this 3d technology just to make the game take longer to play?

Anyway, if you bounced off the Blue Prince remake because of the slow pace, do yourself a favor and try the 1989 version. Once you get used to the minimalist aesthetic, you might like it better. The floppy-disk image is available on any of the usual sites, and it can be played on an Apple emulator.

蓝王子 (1989) Blue Prince (1989)

蓝王子 (1989)
Blue Prince (1989)