What is Enchanted Scepters?

Enchanted Scepters evokes the same excitement one might have felt at the first introduction of talking pictures. Playing Enchanted Scepters is a surround sound experience, an audiovisual delight,

Silicon Beach Software extensively utilizes the Mac's graphics and sound capacity to enhance this interactive adventure. Almost every move presents the player with a new picture or a miraculously realistic sound. True to the Mac interface, the player's use of pull-down menus, optional keyboard commands and, most importantly, the mouse, is essential to the game.

Your task is to find the four scepters of Earth. Air, Fire and Water, and to bring them back to the castle. During this quest, players always have available information on their physical and spiritual well-being, the use remaining of their armor, spells and weapons, and their accumulated experience and wealth. Given the simplicity of the mission and some serious limitations in the parser, the adventure provides surprisingly variegated settings, tests and enemies to overcome. In addition to the scepters, there are scores of weapons, treasures and spells awaiting discovery. Adventurers explore forest, desert, sea, jungle, cave, mountains, underground chambers, a sphinx, a temple and more. There is magic to be found and used, too.

The graphics and the commensurate sounds are so excellent that being drawn into the game is an inevitability. The numerous fights would become quickly tedious if not for the grunts, groans, growls, clangs and twangs of battle. Indeed, the battles still become tedious: learn when to run away. Also, players die too easily, so save your position frequently.

First appearances make it look as though this is an easy game. But perseverance leads to a few difficult puzzles which can only be solved with thought and with some judicious use of the mouse, which can often be used to manipulate the graphic images. In addition to taking objects, your mouse can open hatches, unlock doors and lower drawbridges. There are some delightful moments.

And some terrible moments. On a 512K Mac it takes (count them!) more than two and a half minutes from insertion of the disk to the start of the game. This delay 1s unnecessary and unfortunate, setting a slow pace which daunts adventurers. On a Mac+, one must start up with some other disk, then insert Scepters and double-click it. Also, the parser is frustrating. None of the usual shortcuts apply. One can't type the usual "y" or "n" for "yes" and "no." One can't "take" or "pick up" an object: one can only "get" or double-click it. And there is no sense whatever of story line. Although players find many wondrous objects, they have the capacity to carry very few.

Because almost all these problems are evident at the start, players can be discouraged from continuing. However, the pleasures are worth the pursuit. Enchanted Scepters has surprisingly diversified, delightfully innovative elements and provides a modicum of intellectual challenge. At its best, this is a game of action and of experiencing.

Kaplan, Linda Joan. (May 1986). Enchanted Scepters. MacUser. (pg. 37).

Download Enchanted Scepters for Mac

Architecture

Motorola 68K

System Requirements

From Mac OS 1.0 up to Mac OS 7.1

Compatibility notes

Emulating this? It could probably run under: Mini vMac