Over the years I’ve worked in the business software industry, I’ve had the pleasure of working on and off with a particular friend I’ve known since high school in the 1980s.
One day, just a little while back, while working together in a meeting with engineering and operations teams, my friend used the phrase “Let’s look behind the rocks and see if there are any scorpions,” referring to any hidden challenges we’d need to uncover in the development process before the work began in earnest.
Of course, I had to smile and laugh a bit. I knew exactly where that phrase came from.
If you don’t, read on. And if you did, here’s my story about that phrase.
We both had Apple II computers back then and would spend hours playing all sorts of games. His favorites were more action games like “Autobahn” by programmer Nasir Gebelli and published by Sirius Software in 1981.
Autobahn by Nasir
My favorites were adventure games – both text adventures and graphical adventures.
One of my favorites then – and now – was always “The Wizard & the Princess” designed by Roberta Williams and programmed by Ken Williams of On-Line Systems (later Sierra On-Line, even later Sierra Entertainment), released in 1980.
The Wizard & the Princess was one of the first full color graphical adventures. When playing the game an image of the current location and objects were shown in Apple II hi-res graphics, with four lines of text at the bottom showing descriptions and command entry.
I won’t go into a complete description of the game, but the game starts in the desert village of Serenia. As you try to progress through the adventure (spoiler alerts ahead!) your path is blocked by a rattlesnake. There’s no way to move past this snake and continue the game until you neutralize this threat!
The Wizard and the Princess Snake
So, you move around the map to other places in the desert and notice something: some desert locations have a rock in the scene. “Great!” you think, and type “TAKE ROCK” – and that’s when it happens … you’re dead.
No buildup. No warning. Just “a scorpion behind the rock has stung you.” Game over. Because, of course, there was a scorpion hiding behind the rock.
That was the moment – from then on, you didn’t trust anything at face value. Every rock became a question mark.
Now aware there can be scorpions hiding behind rocks, you can “LOOK ROCK” to see the scorpion first.
The Wizard and the Princess Scorpion
Find a rock without a scorpion behind it, “TAKE ROCK” on that scene to add it to your inventory, and go back to the rattlesnake. Eliminate the threat of the rattlesnake by throwing the rock at it. From there you move on to the next challenge of The Wizard & the Princess.
But the real takeaway wasn’t solving the puzzle. It was the habit: don’t assume the obvious thing is safe. Check first.
So, hearing that phrase again, all these years later, in a totally different context, was kind of perfect. Because that’s exactly what we were doing. Looking for the hidden problems before they bite us.
It’s funny how that stuff sticks with you. The old games didn’t hold your hand. They just let you fail and then expect you to learn from it. And apparently, decades later, we’re still using those lessons.
So yeah, whenever something looks simple, obvious, “just grab it and go” …
Maybe take a second. Look behind the rock first.
So now, when I’m looking for a phrase that means “let’s see if there are any unexpected or hidden obstacles,” I also use “let’s look behind the rocks and see if there are any scorpions.”
You can as well.
William W. Winter is the creator of Apple II Adventure Studio, where you can try your hand at making text adventures with a modern web-based design tool. You can try it out and make your own text adventures for free at: https://textadventurestudio.com
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The post A Scorpion Behind the Rock – Then and Now appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.
