[1] Best-selling novelist and director Michael Crichton was a computer hobbyist who taught himself the programming language BASIC.

In the early 1980s he, programmer Stephen Warady, and artist David Durand began developing an Apple II graphic adventure game based on Crichton's novel Congo; he sometimes programmed game sequences which Warady converted into much faster assembly language.

They worked on the project for 18 months and, before Crichton found a publisher, Spinnaker Software approached him about adapting his novels for its Telarium division's new "bookware" games.

The team revised the game (renamed Amazon), moving the setting from Africa to South America and changing a diamond mine to an emerald mine; the novel's Amy the talking gorilla became Paco the talking parrot.

[4] James Delson of Family Computing reviewed the Apple II version and wrote that the game "has limited graphics, but what's there is choice."