Bonus post!
A North Star Horizon computer; the original was released 1977. They are notable for having early versions of CP/M and DOS, as well as being one of the first personal computers with an available hard drive. Via the blog Broadbandpig.
This is thanks to Gus Brasil who commented in my last post. I mentioned a 1979 North Star game (Middle Earth) which might be somehow related to Tolkien, although the situation was ambiguous as the game was lost media. I also mentioned Cranston Manor Adventure (North Star Horizon version) being a lost game as well. This was on the basis of my searching in 2022. However, it turns out that late in 2023, a large archive of North Star Horizon software got uploaded. By large, I mean at least 30 disks that haven’t seen daylight for a long time, including the North Star version of Cranston Manor.
Two adventures from the archive I have other copies of in another format (Windmere Estate, Zodiac Castle), but there were two more I had never heard of before: Uncle Harry’s Will (1981) and Whembly Castle (1982). Both are by R.L. Turner. I have added them to my list (and there’s something fascinating about Uncle Harry’s Will, but let’s wait on that until we get there).
Relevant to Cracks of Doom, the archive has the game Middle Earth. Let me quote, in its entirety, the entry from the Chronological list of Tolkien games:
Produced by: Dendron Amusements (?)
Distributor: Dendron Amusements
Year: 1979
System: North Star Horizon
Type: Possibly wargame
Distribution: Commercial
Availability: Out of print
Licensed: NoI am not sure if this is really based on Tolkien’s Middle Earth or if it is just another game that steals the title therefrom. The game was released as part of a series. Other titles in the series included Panzer, Blitzkrieg, Fall of the Third Reich, D-Day, Armorcar, Porkchop Hill, Africa Corps, Waterloo, The Battle of Monmouth, Starship Troopers, Invasion of the Mud People and The Boston Marathon.
Arnold Bogenschutz suggests that this may be somehow connected with a board game published by SPI with the same title. He seems to remember seeing the computer version, but has no further details.
I’m not seeing Dendron mentioned in the source anywhere, but the year and author are:
COPYRIGHT 1979 R A MAGAZZU
I don’t think there’s title stealing. I think the title is just incidentally connected.
The Middle Earth is referring more in a “journey to the center of the Earth” sense.
I did play just a little to confirm; while there are creatures, they are definitely not of Tolkien vintage.
I am not doing All the Wargames (that’d be a certain Scribe) so I am not the best person to parse this, other than to confirm that: as long as you discard The Lord of the Rings (TRS-80, 1981) as a weird trivia quiz, the first commercial Tolkien videogame adaptation we know of is Cracks of Doom.
(Star Trek is in progress! Next time.)
Renga in Blue 
It is amazing that you are able to locate archives of these old system and game files for computers from the early days of personal computers. Thank you.
Note that this is NSDOS (North Star DOS), and not MS-DOS.
Great catch from Gus Brasil, great investigation from you!
Middle Earth but also some other titles in the dump like Armor or Mount Suribachi were in my MIA list. They had been released in a bundle (8 games) by Dynacomp as Battlefield!!!, and that bundle is around, but this bundle also simplified the games massively by uniforming the game rules around “armor & infantry”, which is suppose is acceptable for Armor and Mount Suribachi, but certainly a bit less for Middle Earth – so effectively it was (probably) different games.
More info there, scroll down to “lost”.
https://zeitgame.net/missing-games-manuals
All the games are 2-players, so not high prio, but I am tempted to PBEM one or two.
tip of the hat to Rob also for diving through
I don’t know about the other games but at least Middle Earth does seem to include the “complete manual” in the game itself, which is helpful given how many of the wargames we have files for but still can’t play because of how essential the manuals are
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I imaged those! I’m so glad someone found them useful.
Here’s some more: http://annex.retroarchive.org/disks/northstar/
You’re welcome to rummage around in http://annex.retroarchive.org/disks to see what other goodies you can find. I’ve still got a box with ~300 Northstar disks that I need to get imaged.
would I be able to get woz files of the two Dwidge Factory games at
http://annex.retroarchive.org/disks/Apple/15May22/
? passport is complaining at me so I can’t use a2woz, I know Applesauce would work but I don’t own a mac.
I’m probably missing something, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen reference to either of these games or the company (I guess “Dwidge” is a typo?). Do you have any info on them?
I have absolutely nothing. Seems to be a non-entity everywhere. Exciting!
Done! I exported them as DSK files as well.
“Dwidge” is not a typo. That’s exactly how it was written on the disk label. I’m fairly sure that they’re self-published games. Unfortunately, I’ve no idea where I stored that particular disk – and it may have been given away.
Thanks so much for the archival/preservation work you’re doing here. It’s very valuable!
I wasn’t able to get the dsk or woz images to run in Applewin for some reason, but I’m not exactly a genius when it comes to emulation, I’m afraid. Any advice?
I tested the DSK files in Ciderpress and it claimed they’re an unrecognized disk format. So it is possible something went awry with either the dump or the conversion.
MAME is a little better about compatibility with odd things but I’ll have to test that out later.
I took a look at these in AppleSauce as well. They do not show any errors, nor protection. I made my own conversions of them and got the same results. My best guess right now is that these are not boot disks but instead they are some kind of custom data disk for some game creation engine/software.
I will keep poking about and will probably have to elevate this to a higher level of tech support (better than me) for analysis.
My hunch was right. Both of those Dwidge Factory disks were created with the Adventure Construction Set. ( can be found here: https://archive.org/details/wozaday_Adventure_Construction_Set )
Both titles indicate they were created by: Lloyd J. Sandmann/Sandann An ACS Production
just to check, you’re able to run them as-is as long as you start ACS first before running the other disk?
absolutely wild, one of the things I’ve never really seen preserved is people’s fan ACS games
Correct, you have to use the ACS disk to play either one. Put the one you want to play in Drive 2, reboot with ACS in Drive 1, then tell it you have 2 drives when it asks. You will eventually get to the menu screen and you select “P”. (Play an adventure.) It will tell you to place it in drive 2 and away you go.
Wow, that’s crazy! Some mysteries remain, though: What’s with the whole “Dwidge” thing, and was this guy actually trying to distribute these in some way? I would guess so, if they eventually ended up in that archive.
Really cool find, in any case.
It just struck me that “The Dwidge Factory” sounds a bit like the sort of name a dorky kid might have used for his BBS back in the day. Possibly where these might have been sourced from? Just a guess…
That’s some impressive collection indeed. In addition to the 2 “new” games (+2 MIA ports) noticed by Jason, your dump includes 5 MIA wargames for the NSH: Armorcar, Mount Suribachi, Mud People, Middle Earth and Starship Troopers. The presence of other titles like the NSH version of Valdez or the various Dynacomp specific utilites like Anova [ANalysis Of VAriance) or Fourier Analysis makes me think that you may basically own the whole Dynacomp collection as of 1982, whether games or utilitaries. If so, the rest of your disks should have some other NSH MIAs: Fall of the Third Reich, Panzer and Blitzkrieg. Jason’s article quotes an article stating that the rest of the series includes: D-Day, Porkchop Hill, Africa Corps, Waterloo, The Battle of Monmouth and The Boston Marathon but I had never heard of those, so they are either later or unrelated titles. In any case, I am interested in all those extra titles, if you have them. There is a small chance to find another unrelated game called Ironclads (1983).
But the huge find may be one title from your Apple II dump: Space Explorer from Midkemia Press [yes, same Midkemia as Betrayal at Krondor]. I did not know it, but apparently it was one of the most looked for MIA title for the Apple II: a foray into video games by a highly reputed but confidential tabletop RPG-maker. If you have anything more than the disk (manual, artwork, etc), you could put it on ebay and become marginaly richer. But please scan it before :).
Midkemia released one other title, “The Cube”, by Patricia Shanahan, in 1981. As the title and date might indicate, it was a Rubik’s Cube clone.
After going through those Dynacomp catalogs, I think the most intriguing lost title might be “Staffmaster” for C64, which is described in hyperbolic fashion as a 4 disk audio-visual extravaganza that would make people go out and buy a C64 just to play it. Seems like that one didn’t really pan out…
It turns out that only around 100 copies of Space Explorer were ever sold (word of the author just received) so uh – yeah that’s a big find.
If you’re in contact with the author, would it be possible to find out the exact (or at least approximate) month of release, and if they ever did any advertising for it? The Cube was reviewed in the October, 1981 issue of Softalk, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen reference to this game in any vintage magazine.
f15sim, if you don’t mind, where did you get the Apple II disks that you uploaded? Are they a personal collection? Did you buy them at an auction?
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@exploradorrpg, The disks were part of a huge collection that I was gifted a few years ago.
Thanks, I was asking because some of the disks seem to belong to Richard L. Seaborne’s close circle, and I thought maybe you could belong to that circle.