Amazon sends you into the jungle with a satellite radio, a talking parrot named Paco, and a parser that demands precise verbs before a jaguar eats you alive.

Michael Crichton had to trade gorillas for parrots in Amazon

If the story behind Amazon sounds like Michael Crichton's 1979 novel Congo, that is because it started life as a direct adaptation. Crichton had already sold the film and adaptation rights for the book, forcing him and the team at Telarium to shift the action from Africa to South America. The rare diamonds became emeralds, the volcanic ruins moved to the lost city of Chak, and Amy the gorilla became Paco, a hyper-intelligent, chatterbox parrot who tags along through the brush. Crichton later admitted his frustration with the technical boundaries of 1984 hardware, but the final game still carries his distinct sci-fi thriller structure.

You play as a high-tech agent working for National Satellite Resource Technology (NSRT). After a 12-person research team vanishes in the jungle, you watch their frantic final satellite transmission cut out from inside NSRT Control. Your job is to fly out from Miami, navigate the wilderness, beat rival mercenaries to the lost city, and clear out with the emeralds. For fans of adventure games built around text parsers, it was an ambitious attempt to weave action cinema pacing into a computer screen.

NSRT control room console in Amazon — The NSRT control room where your assignment begins with an interrupted satellite feed.

Two-word commands and map-based survival in the Amazon jungle

Playing the game means wrestling with Telarium's strict two-word parser. You spend your time typing direct verb-noun combinations while balancing real-time arcade sequences, radio frequency tuning, and map navigation. Checking flight schedules in Miami feels realistic enough, but once you step off the plane, the margin for error shrinks to nothing. You have to monitor your field map, keep your satellite kit running, and react fast when native warriors or local wildlife attack.

The parser remains the biggest hurdle for anyone tackling this early Telarium release today. While period reviewers like Shay Addams in Questbusters hailed its cinematic feel, modern players often stumble over its stubborn phrasing constraints. If you do not type the exact action the designer envisioned, you will watch your agent die long before reaching the ruins of Chak.

NSRT Satellite Kit: Used to maintain radio contact and decode incoming field data.
Field Map: Essential for plotting coordinates through dense jungle tiles.
Paco the Parrot: Provides cryptic hints and survival warnings when you get stuck.
Mission Code Note: Contains security keys required to clear airport security and tech checkpoints.

Floppy drive prompts and sudden death on high difficulty

If you crank the game up to the "Expedition Leader" difficulty setting, Amazon becomes brutally unforgiving. Jaguar attacks, hidden snake pits, and rival guerrillos will kill your agent instantly without warning. This design choice pushed players to save after every successful prompt, which exposed a infamous bug in the original 1984 MS-DOS release. The unpatched game constantly demands that you insert a non-existent floppy disk into drive B whenever you try to save, a habit that broke early emulator setups until patched files circulated.

Jungle navigation screen in Amazon — Dense jungle navigation requires careful reading of your NSRT field map.

Sound design on the standard PC Speaker was simple, relying on harsh beeps to signal danger or incoming transmissions. Despite those technical limitations, the game became a major commercial success for its publisher. It eventually pushed around 100,000 units across platforms like the Commodore 64, Apple II, and DOS, making it the top-selling text adventure in the company's catalog.

Arcade action sequence in Amazon — Action sequences force quick reflexes when rival mercenaries close in.

How to play Amazon online and survive the expedition

The core story structure and rich atmospheric setup still hold up well, but the sparse text and harsh parser mean you need patience. While writers for Computer Gaming World praised its pacing back in the eighties, you have to accept that progress comes through trial, error, and detailed note-taking. It sits right at the crossover point between classic prose adventures and early graphics-driven interactive fiction.

You can play Amazon online right here in your browser without dealing with vintage DOS drive errors or manual disk swaps. If you want to make it to the city of Chak on your first run, remember to pay close attention to Paco's hints and keep your parser commands simple and direct.

How Amazon is played — the keys the game listens to, grouped by what they do.

Movement
Action

Highlighted keys are mapped — hover or tap one to see what it does.

Action mini-game sequences use specific keys for direction and Space Bar to shoot. The main adventure mode relies on typing standard parser text commands.

Players' controls

Touch and gamepad controls

The on-screen keyboard and gamepad mapping the browser player uses on a phone, a tablet or a controller, as opposed to the real keys above. $PRO members make their own in the player and share them here; anyone can pick one to play with.

Make your own touch controlsPRO

1Open the editorSign in below, then pick what to make. The game starts with the editor open over it.
2Place your keysAdd keys and drag them where your thumbs rest, or map a controller's buttons. Test plays the game with them; Save keeps them, and you play with them from then on.
3Share themShare them right after saving in the game, or name and share them here. Players vote, and the best become this game's controls for everyone.

Go PRO See how it works Sign in+20 XP for sharing · +50 XP if yours become the game's own

Choose what you play with. Use picks it, and the game starts with it next time.