Archeogaming

Akalabeth: World of Doom for Commodore 64

2016-07-25T14:47:00.002+01:00

Source: Dungeoneer Games & Simulations

I'm not dead, neither my experiments and researches have stopped. I'm just, as a good dungeoneer, exploring the depths of the labyrinth. Here's what I have been working on recently.

Finally, after 36 years, with Lord British’s blessing, we are proud to present - in a limited edition disk version (#50 copies only available) - Akalabeth: World of Doom for Commodore 64, based on the original Apple II version.

Akalabeth will be released only on real disk, as it was distributed back in the 1980 by Richard Garriott. However, since the amount of hand numbered copies is extremely small, be quick to order yours by email.

Despite the amount of work dedicated on this conversion, we have no interest in making any profit on it, but we will ask you only to cover our expenses: disk, label, envelope and stamps. The conversion itself, can be copied and distributed freely.

How to order
Order can be placed sending an email to dungeoneergamesitalia@gmail.com with subject “Akalabeth 64”. After that, a copy number reference and costs will be sent back to you. All payments need to be provided by Paypal after 48 hours your order, otherwise will be cancelled.

Price
Average cost for EU/UK is 5 euro; for USA, Australia, Africa and Asia will probably be slightly more expensive, depending where are you located. If you live outside EU/UK, please specify your location with your order, so we can give the precise cost.

All orders will be processed in the following two weeks after we have received the payment for the expenses.

UPDATE: All 50 numbered copies have been reserved just after 3 hours from the official release. Unfortunately, at the moment, we can't accept any new order.

Credits
Original Code: Richard Garriott
Code and Conversion: Andrea Schincaglia
Idea and Testing: Antonello Molella
Additional Graphics: David Vigh

Update: Lone Wolf and The Ice Halls of Terror (All platforms, 1985)

2015-07-29T11:05:00.000+01:00

During the 2013 I was questioning if Lone Wolf and The Ice Halls of Terror was ever released. Yesterday, Joe Dever confirmed me that the game never happened.

The Ice Halls of Terror did not get published. This was due to the fact that the developer went bankrupt one month before it's scheduled release! There are no copies of it in existence.

Case closed then, another Crux Desperationis removed from my list.

P.S. If you are a fan of the series, the new adventure game has been released recently.

The Quest for the First C64 CRPG.

2015-07-22T12:51:00.000+01:00

As some of you already read on my Facebook page, I decided to keep my researches going on this blog.
The two main reasons why this space has been particularly quiet are basically two:

Failed attempt to date all the C64 CRPGs due the huge number of imprecise references on the main databases
Major pressure from real life and other activities.

Since I believe I can tackle the second problem; I decided to approach the first problem differently, focusing on smaller tasks, in order to sort out the main big problem: wrong dating of the majority of software published during the 80s, which - for me- it's a major issue from an historical point of view. If you can't put a resource in its actual historical context, you can't construct a model of the past.

Unfortunately I can't use radiocarbon dating, so everything is going to be approached with an analytical study of the available medium and resources, trying the keep the approximation of the date as close as possible to its actual one. Also, any suggestion or help from readers is more than welcome.

Said so, the first Quest I'm approaching is something I have been thinking about for long time: what's the first CRPG officially produced and released for the Commodore 64?

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My unfortunate first attempt to find the Holy Grail of the C64 CRPGs started here two years ago or so.

Catacombs (Commodore 64, 1987)

2013-07-22T22:50:00.002+01:00

Being the ardent treasure hunter that you are, you had a hard time resisting the stories about the Catacombs of Darkness and the fantastic caches of gold hidden there by the mysterious builders of the underground fortress.

Armed with only a torch, you descended the steps leading down to the catacombs without hesitating, ignoring the weird cries emanating from the dimly lit crypt, images of bulging chests of ill-gotten lucre swimming in your mind.

Today I stumbled into this simple dungeon crawler for Commodore 64 I've never noticed before. Published on Ahoy! (1987/01, Issue #37) and Compute!'s Gazette (November 1994), Catacombs is a Basic language game distributed either on disc and as listing.

The game itself is a dungeon crawler with some really distant similarities with Sword of Fargoal (really few to be honest). The structure is based on a minimal architecture of 10 dungeons to explore, with treasure, traps and monster. To finish every catacomb level, you have to collect the key and find the exit door. For its simplicity, it might be defined as an archetypical casual game, especially for the low level of commitment requested.

More interesting details are explained on its dedicated article, where the coder explains the main stylistic peculiarity of the game.

Catacombs is a game I created with the intention of experimenting with one of the 64’s least appreciated graphic modes-extended background color mode (EBC). Most people refer to it as a useless novelty of the VIC chip, but I have always thought that the ability to change the background color of a whole screen with a single POKE had to have a good game hiding in it somewhere. So far I have created a machine language game and this BASIC program using the VIC’s EBC mode, and have yet to run short on ideas for future projects.

Basically EBC mode works like this: your character set is cut down to one quarter of its usual 255 shapes, giving you only 64 to work with, the first 64 in the set. These first 64 characters consist mostly of alphanumeric codes, so if you are planning on writing a game, you will probably have to redefine your character set to substitute one of your shapes for one of the Commodore’s 64 default characters.
In EBC the first 64 characters of this set are displayed normally, getting their foreground color from color memory and their background color from the register at 53281. But the codes from 63 to 127, 128 to 191, and 192 to 255 get their background colors from registers 53282, 53283, and 53284 respectively. Although the colors are different, the characters still come from the shape tables of the first 64 codes!

Pretty simple game indeed, but definitely worth entering the dungeon crawler category, even though it cannot be considered an actual CRPG, since the game is limited to the simple exploration of 10 catacombs level, not providing any character creation or inventory feature.

In case you want to explore the simplicity of this archetypical game, I've uploaded the C64 disk with official documentation, and the extract from Ahoy! with the article and the actual Basic listing.

Download Catacombs for Commodore 64
Download Catacombs article and listing (Ahoy! 1987/01, Issue #37 extract)

The Valley: the first CRPG for Commodore 64?

2013-07-19T07:09:00.000+01:00

I have spent the last months trying to list and date all the CRPGs ever produced for the Commodore 64 and I have honestly encountered a massive amount of difficulties mainly because most of the online databases report, for every single entry, copyright dates rather than the actual release year. The whole rechecking process took me months only for a partial completion of the listing; despite my efforts, anyway, I still can't see the end of the tunnel.

However, while during the listing process, I wondered which was the first CRPG ever published for the Commodore 64, considering that Tramiel's machine was released only during the summer of the 1982. A first conclusion pointed me towards an ancient Argus Press Software title named The Valley.

A pretty basic game, but still interesting for its age. The gameplay involves exploring the Valley where there are two safe points (castles) at either end of the path. Apart from the starting and ending point, there some other places to explore: the Black Tower of Zaexon, Swamps, Forests, Vounim's Lair, and the Temple of Y'Naigoth. To complete the game, you have to find the legendary Helm of Evanna. That's it.

The Valley has been released around the early eighties (1) for Commodore PET, Tandy TRS80, BBC Model B, Oric 1 and Sharp MZ80K and then ported to the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64. The original version of this game was published as a Basic language listing in a British magazine called Computing Today, around 1981; for the same reason there are around so many unofficial versions.

Let's go back to official C64 version anyway.

Here's how this game has been dated on the most relevant online databases:

MobyGames: 1982

Gamebase64: 1982

So when I started listing all the games, I had no doubt: The Valley was the first CRPG ever released for the C64. I was wrong.

When I realized that all the games requested a double check, I ended moving The Valley from 1982 to 1983, positioning it from being the first in the list to one of the many published during the more prolific 1983.

So why MobyGames and Gamebase64 superficially dated The Valley in 1982?

The Valley, Title Screen, Commodore 64

Both sites probably came to a quick conclusion looking only at the main game screen, which reports as copyright date 1982 .

When I decided to investigate a little bit more, I found the answer to my question only looking at the tape and inlay of the official ASP release.

The Valley, Tape, Commodore 64

The Valley, Documentation, Commodore 64

Looking at the original tape and the bottom part of the documentation, the release date is clearly 1983 and not 1982, leaving no other CPRG in my 1982 slot.

This conclusion, unfortunately, doesn't answer to the main question: is there any CRPG produced during 1982 for the C64?

Apparently not.

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(1) Probably 1981.

Images courtesy of Mocagh, World of Spectrum and Gamebase64.

Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (C64), 1982 or 1987?

2013-05-26T20:52:00.001+01:00

I know I've been quiet during the last month but I had to reorganize my entire archive and all the process is taking ages. Along with that, I've been working on a big project for this blog, which, I hope, will be published soon.

Regarding this opera magna I'm working on, I've stumbled into a really worrying case of CRPG incorrect year dating.

As you have noticed from the post title, the game we are talking about is Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord for C64 and its release date. As you will see from below, most of the main videogame databases online, report inconsistent release date for this game, dating it from 1982 to 1987, which is a quite big gap.

Lemon64: 1982.

Gamebase64: 1982.

Ready64: 1982.

MobyGames: 1987.

We have a problem here, a very big one.

Since a started to check all the CRPGs datations on the online databases, I have noticed that many of them are wrong or better, are referring to the copyright date rather than the actual release period. Looking at this specific case I might immediately say that Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord has been effectively released for Apple II on the 1981/1982 (original copyright) and then ported to C64 only into the 1987 (release date).

Why cannot be 1982?

Now, let's start thinking that the Commodore 64 machine has been released only in the middle of 1982 and the standard of the released games was more or less basic language oriented. Since Wizardry is a quite structured and complex game, it doesn't fit with the rest of the 1982 Commodore production; but let's take it as a personal assumption for the moment.

Anyway, let's get a bit more into actual proofs.

Exploring the box shots of Wizardry I for C64, here's what I've discovered.

Reference Card: Copyright 10/1987

According to the reference Card and Game Disk, the copyright of the Commodore 64 is version clearly set to 1987. All the references to 1981 are probably just about the original copyright of Wizardry so 1982 cannot be the release date for this porting.

Wizardry is just one the many cases of misdating I've found in the last months. Almost all the main C64 databases contain many incorrect release dates for major and minor CRPGs released between the early eighties and part of the nineties; and you can notice that especially when you find yourself in front of many C64 games dated at 1979, which, of course, is more than paradoxical.

Archeoshot #013: Fire on the Water (ZX Spectrum, 1984)

2013-04-15T23:06:00.002+01:00

Front

Front Cover Detail

Side End

Tape

Keyboard Overlay

Inlay, internal

Original Game Book and Videogame Tape

Archeoshot #012: Flight from the Dark (ZX Spectrum, 1984)

2013-04-13T15:49:00.002+01:00

Front

Tape

Inlay, external.

Keyboard Overlay.

Inlay, internal illustrations.

Original Game book and Videogame Tape.

Lone Wolf: The Mirror of Death (Advertising, 1989)

2013-04-09T22:09:00.001+01:00

Source: World of Spectrum

Original scan retouched in Photoshop to restore original colour vibrancy.

Archeoshot #011: Colossal Adventure (Commodore 64, 1983)

2013-03-28T14:32:00.002+00:00

Lone Wolf and The Ice Halls of Terror (Commodore 64, 1985)

2013-03-12T06:30:00.000+00:00

The first Lone Wolf Gamebook I have ever read was The Caverns of Kalte and I always wanted to see a videogame porting of one the best chapters of LF Saga. Unfortunately, even if a game was planned (HCP for C64 & ZX Spectrum), it never actually happened and the only official visual is represented by the advertisement below.

Computer Gamer, Advertisement, 1985

The advertising above, even if visually interesting, it wasn't revealing anything about the game itself. Luckily I managed to find a more accurate ad appeared on the Lone Wolf Club Newsletters (Summer Special 1985).

Lone Wolf Club Newsletter, Summer Special 1985

The promise was quite inviting: 3D animation and graphics, unique combat system and multidimensional plot lines (?); the possibility to order the game was a quite unusual choice especially when probably neither a playable preview nor a demo was available. Anyway a small note at the bottom of the page was remarking that almost 30 days were needed for the delivery. What happened to this title so?

Time for more digging.

And yes, here's my copy of Caverns of Kalte.

Note.

One thing I've discovered reading the English version of the Gamebook, was that for unknown reasons, in the Italian version, Vonotar (the main villain of Kalte) was renamed as Vonatar. A (repeated) typo or just a phonetic choice? Who knows why.

Dungeons of Death (Vic-20, 1983), Preserved.

2013-03-02T15:42:00.000+00:00

In a previous post about Dungeons of Death, I've mentioned that the only available dumped version was completely unplayable: a major bug was affecting the progress of the game.

The original major bug which stopped the game at the first dungeon door.

Thanks to one of Hokuto Force's coders Flavioweb, I'm glad to announce that Dungeons of Death has been now fully restored and finally playable.

The dungeon is now fully explorable.

An example of combat from the working version.

The restoring process has started from the bugged dumped tape where Flavioweb spent a good amount of hours trying to fix all the glitches in the Basic code. However, despite the struggle, after a few days we were able to test the first working copy I have ever seen of this obscure dungeon crawler from Aardvark Games.

You can download the package with the working .tap file and documentation from the link below. Just remember to use an expanded Vic-20 with 8k or 16k memory on either real hardware or emulator. Also, since the documentation is essential to play the game properly, I've spent some time to ocr the scans and correct various minor typos and inconsistencies.

Download Game and Documentation

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Credits
Original Supply: Dr. Strange
Documentation: Dr. Strange
Code Restoration: Flavioweb

The Dragon's Eye (Commodore 64, 1984), II (†)

2013-02-19T11:10:00.002+00:00

Thanks to one of the readers, I'm able to publish a new relevant document about the Dragon's Eye C64 conversion. As you can read from the previous article here, this game has an existent C64 conversion which doesn't have any correspondence in any official Epyx catalogue.

Thanks to Trypticon, I can publish the scans of a German book which has a relevant Dragon's Eye mention. Rombachs C64-Spieleführer (1984) contains some infos about the C64 version and as far as Trypticon told me, the book confirms that the C64 seems to be merely a rough PET conversion.

Book references: Rombachs C64-Spieleführer, 1984, ISBN: 3-7930-0486-4

Here's a translation of the Dragon's Eye review from German.

Game idea: Dragon's Eye belongs to the Fantasy and Roleplay games. You choose a name and a sword and get a number of spells assigned by the program. Then one goes on it's way to find the Eye of the Dragon. During this, a number of monsters are encountered, which need to be killed with a lot of skill. This task needs to be completed during 20 days. At the end of the game, the program judges the skill of the player.

Design: The location and vitality status of the player is represented with an overview and a map. Only the colours blue and white and the block graphics of the C64 are used. The same is true for the display in battle mode. Sound effects are not used in the game.

Rating: This Basic program written for older Commodore hardware does not reach the standard of the fantasy games written for the C64. Insofar it is only suitable for outright fans of fantasy games or collectors.
Rating: 4/5*

On the third page there is a mention of the fact that the game was programmed originally on the PET.

So this document proves something really important from an historical point of view: the conversion of Dragon's Eye has been done before the 1984.

The next step dictates me to find an original version in its own original support or at least a proof of its existence as official release.

Thanks again to Trypticon for his submission and translation from German.

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* 1 = Best.

ZorkQuest: First Interactive Comic ever?

2013-02-08T11:35:00.003+00:00

I really never noticed the existence of the ZorkQuest series. My fault.

This morning while I was browsing the internet during my breakfast, a version of ZorkQuest: Assault on Egreth Castle for C64 just popped up in front of me. I have been probably too much caught into the main series to miss this minor spin off of the main Zork Saga.

Apparently, during the 1988, Infocom managed to produce two chapters of this series, which were completely different from the main and more popular Zork text adventures:

Zork Quest: Assault on Egreth Castle (1988, Infocom, interactive computer comic book)

ZorkQuest: Assault on Egreth Castle Cover, 1988

Zork Quest: The Crystal of Doom (1989, Infocom, interactive computer comic book)

ZorkQuest: The Crystal of Doom Cover, 1989

What is really particular about them is that they are not even games; they pretended to be a sort of interactive books where your role is less then minimal. From a CRPG point of view, they would be better described as an anti-role playing games, where you are neither actor nor narrator but a Über spectator, with a really limited range of choices.

ZorkQuest: Assault on Egreth Castle can be called an interactive comic book. The game consists of text accompanied by pictures, somewhat similar in visual style to comic books; the interaction is restricted to the player's choices that affect the storyline. The player is able to experience the story from the points of view of the several main heroes, witnessing their personal stories intertwining. Several playthroughs are necessary to experience the story in its entirety.

Source: Moby Games

Despite the enthusiasm of the guys on the advertising, ZorkQuest is more a first attempt to create a bland fantasy game illustrated comic on a computer. I was initially expecting a Fantasy Fighting Game Book structure, but both experiments don't comprehended a magic/health or combat system at all. The unique aspect is they probably are the two official interactive comic ever made on the c64.

However all this awkwardness, both titles will go straight in my wishlist.

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Images sourced from Moby Games

Lone Wolf: Flight from the Dark (Advertising, 1984)

2013-01-24T18:59:00.002+00:00

While I'm busy with some other surprises I will probably publish in the next days, here's an advertising for the first Lone Wolf Game published in the 1984 to promote Flight from the Dark (ZX Spectrum). The total amount of games dedicated to Lone Wolf Gamebooks is restricted to three and only one of these was published on the C64 (Lone Wolf - The Mirror of Death). This advertising, anyway, contains the original flavour of the popular Gamebook series and since I have always been a great fan of its illustrative style, I publish this lost double page ad with particular pleasure.

Telengard (Commodore PET, 1981), Preserved.

2013-01-03T19:43:00.005+00:00

During my Christmas break I had been looking around for copy of Telengard for PET but after few days of researches I realized that nothing was available on the web. When I was losing hope, for curiosity I reopened my Telengard boxed set and well, the PET version of Telengard was sitting on the same tape of the C64 one. It was just there, beside me.

After few days of attempts yesterday night I've managed to dump a fully working copy of Telengard for PET usable on all the more common emulators like Vice; and, if you able it, you can transfer it on a support to make it working on your PET (good luck with that anyway).

The game itself has the same structure and look & feel of the original one, apart from the fact that all the sprites are represented by basic symbols and lines. All colours, obviously, have been translated for the typical monochromatic and fascinating PET palette.

Main Screen

Name selection screen

Entering the Dungeon

Help Screen

The dumped copy is available for download here. If you experience any problem or glitch just let me know, I will try to sort it out.

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Thanks to Ian Gledhill and his Ubercassette for the help.

Christmas Break.

2012-12-21T08:30:00.001+00:00

Just a quick note to inform you all that I'm not posting only because I'm out for my Christmas Holidays. I'll be back just before the end of the year with news about my digging activity. I'm just working on the third post on the Magdarr Series, an obscure and ancient dungeon crawler game done for PET in 1979 and much more.

See you all soon even if the 2013 will never happen.

The Hobbit, a quick unexpected videogame retroview.

2012-12-15T12:11:00.001+00:00

Since The Hobbit movie had its consecrations on a new medium yesterday, why not having a look at its earlier videogaming roots?

Videogame wise, The Hobbit has its own origins in 1982 as text adventure for ZX Spectrum (1) becoming the first ZX game ever to sell a million copies. The other interesting aspect was the addition of the actual book with game itself. Effectively the 48k Spectrum was a Software Pack: game and book together to reinforce the crossover of the two mediums.

As far as I can remember, The Hobbit was probably the most advertised text adventure for its time. Melbourne House had the chance to advertise massively the game release, that campaign helped to attract people that didn't really know anything about Tolkien's imaginary. We should never forget that JRR Tolkien's World became massively popular just after the first movie trilogy directed by Peter Jackson, before that it was more a subject of interest for aficionados and academics.

The one above is just a small selection of the massive campaign. I've probably found more than 50 ads published between 1982 and 1983; the game itself received a really good critics' acclamation: 2nd place in the C&VG 1983 Golden Joystick Awards (Game of the Year 1983) and Winner of the C&VG 1983 Golden Joystick Awards (Best Strategy Game).

The Hobbit, ZX Spectrum Version

Opening many different version of the Hobbit game, you can't miss one distinctive visual element: the peculiar topos of the rounded door, which seems to be really common to almost every single representation of the Tolkien's Tale so far. It's easy to reconnect the door and its opening to the "leaving home" theme and in fact one of the main visuals of the Jackson's movie represents exactly that concept in all its strength.

The Hobbit, ZX Spectrum

The Hobbit, Apple Mac

The Hobbit, Commodore 64 Disk Version

The Hobbit, 2012 Movie adaption.

However it's curious to note that, despite the massive production around LOTR, The Hobbit never received particular attention from the videogaming world. Effectively, apart from the text adventure published in the early eighties and a modern arcade adventure reinvention on Playstation, disappointingly there's nothing else.

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(1) Then released for all the rest of 8bit platforms.

Images source from World of Spectrum and Gamebase64.

From Dungeons of Death to Magdarr (Vic-20 & Commodore 64, 1983), II (†)

2012-12-09T14:06:00.001+00:00

In my previous post, I tried to follow the path of Dungeons of Death, an obscure CRPG published in 1983 by Aardvark for Vic-20 and announced for the Commodore 64 but never - apparently - released.

Why I'm not really sure that Dungeons of Death was never released for Commodore 64? For a very simple reason.

My initial theory was based on the idea that Aardvark advertised DoD for Vic-20 and Commodore 64 on their 1983 Catalogue but then changed plan deciding to abort the CBM porting. However I found a document some days ago which partially changed my theory.

Following you'll find some images of a very rare Aardvark Games Catalogue from the 1984 where the software house advertised the availability of DoD for both Commodore platforms. (1)

Why then Aardvark decided to advertise a game for two years in a row never releasing it? Its presence on the second catalogue might open an interesting game-existence scenario; but again, why is impossible to find it? Unfortunately the original owner of the company Rodger Olsen doesn't want to answer any question about it, leaving the release of Dungeons of Death for Commodore 64 a mystery.

What's the other theory so?

Looking at the Catalogue above, you will see another similar title from the same company: Dungeons of Magdarr which was actually released for C64 and even really easy to find on the web. DoM is a quite interesting 3D dungeon crawler, D&D rule based with a decent character creation process as well. Apart from one detail anyway, DoD and DoM look exactly the same.

Dungeons of Death, Vic-20

Dungeons of Magdarr, C64

Dungeons of Death, Vic-20

Dungeons of Magdarr, C64

Dungeons of Death, Vic-20

Dungeons of Magdarr, C64

What's really different between the two games so?

Dungeons of Death, Vic-20

Dungeons of Magdarr, C64

The main difference, as far as I can see, is the user interface: Dungeons of Death is 2D while Dungeons of Magdarr runs an interesting 3D wireframe in style with Akalabeth. We have to note anyway, that because DoD is unplayable at the moment (2) I can't explore both games in parallel to check if Olsen even used the same dungeon structure for both games.

The Dungeon of Dilemmas.

It is possible that Aardvark just decided to release DoD as DoM for the C64 with a more interesting graphic interface and different features? Possible, but why then they kept both games in the same catalogue?

Am I missing something?

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(1) British Intelligence was just another Aardvark label. I've compared the addresses and they match perfectly.

(2) The only dumped copy of Dungeons of Death available on the web has a major glitch probably caused by a bad dump or a damaged tape. See previous post.

Dungeons of Death (Vic-20 & Commodore 64, 1983), I (†)

2012-12-02T14:10:00.003+00:00

Dungeons of Death, TRS Cover, Source Mocagh

This post has been delayed for a while for many reasons. Firstly I had to deal with an increasing pressure at work but mainly I wanted to wait for some (never arrived) answers from Dungeons of Death original creators. Anyway I had time to collect some interesting information about Aardvark and Dungeons of Death, which even if they don't solve the Crux Desperationis, allow us to consider new theories.

Rodger Olsen and Aardvark Games.
Aardvark was a small independent American Software House, founded by Rodger Olsen, which managed to publish between 1983 and 1985 some Fantasy, Strategy and Sci Fi games for various platforms. The first purpose of the earliest Aardvark's productions were just to entertain Rodger Olsen's children. After a while, Mr. Olsen realized that his own productions had some merit and he decided to commercialize some of them under the Aardvark label.

When personal computers came out, I built one from an 8008 and a teletype machine. It was love at first sight, and I soon bought a commercial model and began writing games for my children. I decided to get back part of the money that I “wasted” on the computer by selling my games. Within two months, I had established Aardvark Software, and was writing computer games full time. I created and published many of the early adventures and shoot-em-up games for TRS-80, Commodore, and IBM. I wrote for computer magazines and published a small magazine of my own. I was surprised to find out that I was creative. Never expected that.

Source: Rodger Olsen, Author Profile

Checking one the first Aardvark's Catalogues (shared here from my documents) is easy to spot that the American label produced some really interesting CRPG and looking at their basic essence, back in the day, the effort was remarkable.

Dungeons of Death.

One of this titles, or better the first one I want to explore is Dungeons of Death, planned for TRS 80 16k, Vic-20 13k and Commodore 64. DoD is a 2D dungeon crawling game, based on D&D rules with a decent character creation section and a very detailed manual.

Dungeons of Death, TRS 80 Tape, May 20th 1983 (?)

Dungeons of Death, Vic 20, September 15 1983 (?)

Looking at the tape shots above (taken from the incredible mocagh collection) we have a quite realistic proof of the Vic-20 and TRS version existence, with even the production date stamped on the actual tape.

Where's the Commodore 64 version?
The C64 version was announced on either 1983 and 1984 Aardvark's Catalogue but apparently never released. After 1 year of personal researches, I can say that there is no evidence of a C64 version of this game, but I have a simple and basic theory which will be explained in the next coming post.

If the we consider that C64 version doesn't exist and the Vic-20 one is very hard to find, you can figure out by yourself how this task has been hard for me. However I've managed to find the only existent digital dump of the game on the Vic-20 preservation project the Sleeping Elephant. One the members of the forum managed to find an original tape of DoD and shared the file with a lot of interesting indications.

When you optimistically think you've reached a good stage of your research, you can have terrible surprises. Like this one.

Yes, advance.

"Ready." that's all you get.

I tried at least ten times and I had exactly the same problem: every time you attempt to open a door, the game stops working. Since this is the only existing dump we can't prove if there was a major glitch in the game or is a case of damaged tape or bad digital dump. I would personally rule out the first theory, mainly because I can't believe Aardvark published a completely unplayable version of the game. Perhaps it's more realistic to guess that the only existent dump has been made from a damaged tape or just got corrupted during the transfer process.

As last resort to check any other tape was available, I tried to get some other info from Rodger Olsen and David Frederiksen, who is the original game coder. While the first one ignored every single question about Aardvark Games, the second one seems to be impossible to find, at least for me.

In the same time, in the last weeks I tried to contact as many people I could, trying to find another dumped version of the game with anyway no luck and even if I have all the scanned manuals and almost all the officials Dungeon of Death's advertisement, I still never effectively seen a working version of DoD.

Just in case your are curious, I've managed to convert the official Dungeons of Death manual here to text format. I'm not publishing the damaged Vic-20 to avoid the spreading of faulty versions of the game, but if you think you could try to fix it I'm happy to share it.

What's next?
In the next days, a new post about the C64 version of Dungeons of Death will follow and if you have any relevant information about Dungeons of Death and Aardvark Games which might help, don't hesitate to contact me. I'm happy to credit any person involved in the research process.

Relevant Documents.
Aardvark Catalogue, 1983.
Dungeons of Death, Manual, text format.

What's on?

2012-11-20T10:07:00.004+00:00

I'm not updating the blog that much only because I'm working on a couple of researches I will publish in next days. Sometimes I need more time just because contacting people to gather more informations is a process that requires a lot of patience.

However just to give you a clue, here you go.

Archeoshot #010: Rogue (Mastertronic, Commodore 64, 1988)

2012-11-08T20:07:00.001+00:00

Rogue for Commodore 64 is probably one of the most disappointing CRPG titles you can get for this platform. The game has been released only in the 1988 (8 years after the original PC version) by Mastertronic as budget game and believe me, is cheap in all its parts.

The cover artwork is completely off the spirit of the game. A badly designed barbarian stands with his blood covered two handed sword while behind him a girl in bikini and manacles seems desperate for help. The Rogue logo is rough and inappropriate and everything looks like a cheap vintage Comic book from the sixties. The cave entrance depicted on the right side behind the barbarian is probably the only element in the artwork which might give an idea of what Rogue is. All the rest is just an appalling and stereotypical graphical interpretation. If you didn't know the game you would probably expect an arcade fantasy game like Barbarian I or II where Sword and Sorcery and Conanesque elements were much more appropriate and appreciated.

The screenshots on the back are only referred to the PC version and even It was common use for almost all the software houses to specify the origin of the screenshots on inlays, this is not our case. Also because the screenshots are so tiny and the game is only character and symbol based, you can barely understand how the user interface looks like.

If you think that dungeon crawling games for C64 like Sword of Fargoal in 2011 are still appealing, it's difficult to understand why no other software house took the opportunity to make a decent conversion of Rogue with a proper boxed set, instructions and an inspiring artwork. Probably back in 1988 nobody believed that a game like Rogue wasn't interesting for the C64 market and for this reason it only deserved a poor and sloppy punishment like this. Despite my rant, the game itself is not bad at all and even if the gameplay is a bit too mechanical and sluggish, is still playable and enjoyable for few hours of play.

Archeoshot #009: Adventureland (Adventure International, Commodore 64, 1984)

2012-11-04T16:57:00.001+00:00

This is a personal fail. I assumed the game was complete with the all its parts when I bought it. I usually check everything before; this time I didn't and the Gods punished me. Lesson learnt.

Here's the complete one from retrogames.co.uk

Infocom, Advertising: The real trick is getting out (Undated).

2012-11-01T09:57:00.001+00:00

In this advertising Infocom managed to represent - what we could call - an hyperbook: a book with deeper narrative and interactive dimensions. In fact, back in the day, the claim "More than a Book" was an usual Unique Selling Point for Game Books, Computer Adventures and CRPGs. Statements like the Infocom's one, definitely started to build the idea, even from an academic point of view, that computer adventure games - and not only - were effectively complex texts and not only adults toys.

Archeoshot #008: Velnor's Lair (Commodore 64, 1985)

2012-10-25T12:08:00.002+01:00

Published by Atlantis Software for Commodore 64 in the 1985, Velnor's Lair is a conversion from Spectrum of a decently quoted text adventure. The original game was published in the 1983 by Quicksilva for ZX Spectrum with a quite different artwork (displayed below) but for some unknown reasons Atlantis Software - just two years after - decided to change the original artwork for something different.

Velnor's Lair, Spectrum ZX, Original Artwork, 1983

The game itself is basically a text adventure with some RPG elements. More deeply, according to the inlay, the game claims to have been based on Dungeons & Dragons; surprisingly, TSR didn't sue Atlantis for the mention of the well known and hyper-protected D&D brand. I couldn't find any copyright specification on the inlay and so I have to guess that they intentionally tried to push the game using the name of one of the most popular RPGs around at that time. "If it is D&D, it will sell!", they probably said.

"In this Dungeons & Dragons style adventure, you maybe be a warrior, Wizard or Priest. [...]"

Source: Velnor's Lair, Inlay, Tape version, Atlantis 1985

Aesthetically, I found the artwork quite simple but interesting, especially for the old school fantasy illustration where an hypertrophic fighter is trying to slay the evil wizard while he is in a sort of transmuted ethereal form. Differently, the choice of the seventies-style font, the gold finish(1) and the purple colour are a bit unusual for a fantasy game but in some ways they make this version quite unique in its genre. The only disappointing visual element is represented by the use of an uninspiring sans serif font for the instructions.

The game itself is based on a typical high fantasy plot, synthetically described here on Crash Magazine:

The Black Wizard Velnor has gone into hiding in the goblin labyrinth beneath Mount Elk. After centuries of searching he has finally discovered the ancient tomb of Grako and is about to realise his ambition, to become a true demon on earth. There is only one hope for mankind, and that’s you, of course. You must penetrate Velnor’s defences, avoiding the traps and surprises before his metamorphosis is complete — but Velnor is a master of illusion.

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(1) The use of the metallic gold has been probably used throughout all the Atlantis Gold series.