Black Cauldron

[Steve A Lewis]

Ken this, Roberta that – this letter is for Al Lowe, where my understanding is that he had a bit of a hand in creating The Black Cauldron game!?

I remember the day I finally beat Black Cauldron. I was so excited, I called my parents! My father had his own pool cleaning business, which was one of the reasons we had a computer at home at all: so he could manage invoices and such (Tandy 1000SX, his upgrade to the CoCo II). He also had one of those early “bag phones” with some unholy per-minute fee, which we were to only call for emergencies.

This was after school and they were still on the road that day between jobs. I called and yelled, “I finally beat Black Cauldron!” I think they were briefly confused on what the emergency was, so I had to repeat it a few times. My dad finally composed a response, “Oh, that’s great son! We’ll be home in about an hour.”

I was exciting to me, since it was the first Sierra game I beat without using any of those Hint Books from Babbages 🙂 I regretted selling my original Black Cauldron box on eBay – but for college, I needed every penny I could get.

Incidentally, I’ve never even seen the movie – independently, I always thought Black Cauldron was a great game. You could save the pig, or not save him, and the story adapted! wow. Climbing those castle walls! wow 🙂

Thanks Al, good times! 😀

[Ken Williams]

I will mention to Al to read your posting. He’ll be delighted!

-Ken W

[Author]

Posts