Phoenix's second game, Birth of the Phoenix is essentially a tutorial for the beginning adventurer. The packaging includes a superb book, illustrated and printed on parchment-like paper, which serves as a guide to adventuring. The game is text-only.
From Paul Berker: "We started right away on Birth of the Phoenix after Adventure in Time, and I am sure it came out a few months after AiT did. The reason we did Birth of the Phoenix was because there was no such thing as a beginner adventure game, most of them were awfully hard. It was a really good idea and I am sure it helped a lot of people get hooked on adventure games and then try the harder ones.
Ron had some vague ideas and scribbles for the games, and we met a lot to talk about how the games should work. The games changed a lot from the original idea by the time I actually had code working and injected new ideas. I have always done well programming from sketchy ideas. Sometimes I would add something that popped into my head that seemed funny, most of it made it into the final product. I had a tendency to go off the deep end on some crazy things sometimes... Ron helped keep it saner. I think the original story idea for Birth of the Phoenix was one crumbled page of notebook paper with some crooked boxes and arrows drawn on it. It was the source for a lot of jokes while I was working on the program.
I did the Atari conversion for Birth and AiT. I think I probably just broke even buying a complete Atari 800 system and all the stuff that I need to program it with the revenue it generated for the conversion."
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| -> | Birth of the Phoenix was priced at an incredibly low $14.95 at its introduction. |
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