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In retrospect, it's a wonder no-one had thought of it before. In 1984 the incumbent Conservative government passed the Video Recordings Act; video nasties, a pet topic of those renowned moral guardians, the tabloid newspapers, were to become an endangered species. As the appointed adjudicators of who got to watch what, the British Board Of Film Classification suddenly became very busy people. It was now a legal requirement for all films and videos to carry a BBFC classification, unless they fell under the exempt category of either sport, music, religion or educational. Oh, and computer games didn't count either. Well, not really.That's not to say by 1984 that computer games hadn't had their fair share of controversy. But generally the graphical ability and simple gameplay of contemporary games had rarely been seen as critical enough to warrant attention outside of the dedicated gaming press. Two years later, London-based software house CRL Group released a nondescript text adventure game for the Commodore 64 called Pilgrim. The game was unremarkable, and drew criticism for its lack of graphics at a time when even budget adventures were proudly showing off detailed vistas.
The one area Pilgrim did receive praise for was its atmosphere and story, the work of author and adventure game fan Rod Pike from East Anglia, who had sent the game to CRL on the off-chance it would publish it. "Pilgrim was a dark and gothic piece," says CRL founder Clem Chambers, "and we therefore logically thought, let's ask Rod to do a horror game."
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