Arthur
Arthur
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Advantages, Maps, and WalkthruArthur, the Quest for Excalibur offers special opportunities for middle school teachers, in addition to those that all good interactive fiction provides. To begin with, it dovetails well with traditional middle school curriculum, which often includes the Arthurian Legends. Also, unlike most versions of the Arthur stories, it offers a look at England in the fifth century AD, the period in which the historical Arthur, if there was one, actually lived; and a set of notes that contrasts this period with the thirteenth and fourteenth-century settings of most Arthurian tales. Though Arthur does provide on-screen mapping, teachers may find more extensive maps of stories' settings useful for their own planning, or even for use with students. Of course, distributing maps to students before they try a story will give away the solutions to some problems, but, the maps, as presented here, spoil very little of the fun and obviate a good deal of frustration. Here are the maps, covering almost all of the locations in the story: The Town One map that students should not see is a map of the maze-like badger's den, since the principal problem in this part of the story is to map the maze. Such a map is not overly difficult to make, if one remembers to mark each "room" in the den by scratching the walls, one scratch for the first room, two for the second, etc. The directions "up" and "down" are especially important in this maze. Here's an excellent walkthrough, which includes directions for getting through the maze. And here's some useful information on helping students solve problems in Arthur. This link to the Infocom Page explains how to purchase Arthur as part of the Masterpieces of Infocom collection. |
