This lists, straightforwardly, the games I know about that are missing, or have some technical barrier to playing them. Most of these were unearthed by people other than myself. Many are from the folks at CASA Solution Archive.
This is no doubt incomplete so feel free to reply with other possibilities. (Note I am not being super-inclusive; if something seems much more like an RPG but maybe-sorta could be an adventure, I am not including it.)
Wander (1974 original, Peter Langston, Mainframe)
I’ve played the modules for these now. This was a system originally made before Adventure, and the modules have a different feel from the normal mainstream of adventures, but people didn’t pay them much notice at the time.
castle: you explore a rural area and a castle searching for a beautiful damsel.
a3: you are the diplomat Retief (A sf character written by Keith Laumer) assigned to save earthmen on Aldebaran III
library: You explore a library after civilization has been destroyed.
tut: the player receives a tutorial in binary arithmetic.
However, these were made in a later port, and the original written in HP Basic is lost.
As I remember I came up with the idea for Wander and wrote an early version in HP Basic while I was still teaching at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA (that system limited names to six letters, so: WANDER, EMPIRE, CONVOY, SDRECK, GALAXY, etc.). Then I rewrote Wander in C on Harvard’s Unix V5 system shortly after our band moved to Boston in 1974. I got around to putting a copyright notice on it in 1978.
Underground (1978, Gary Kleppe, Mainframe)
According to David Cornelson, this was on the Milwaukee Public School’s mainframe in PDP Basic. While the original tape is lost it is possible the game made its way elsewhere.
Gary Kleppe himself later has added some details. The full list is in the comments, but here’s a few relevant parts that might help identify the game:
* At the entrance to the caves is a robot, but you have a laser pistol with which you can shoot it.
* There is a chess set locked down by a computer. If you initially play against the computer you will lose, but if you’ve found and read a certain book then you can beat it and it will give you a trophy (a treasure). After that you can blast the computer to take the set which is also a treasure.
* There’s a room where the description is written backwards, as is any message that gets displayed to you while you’re there. You also need to type commands backwards for the parser to understand them.
Miscellaneous Adventure Variants (19xx, Mainframe)
There’s a list of various lost adventure variants here as pulled from recollections.
I first played Adventure at Colorado State University (almost finished the game then the administrators did away with it :-( ). That version had a jeweled “loaf” in a cottage in the forest (evil witch, Hanzel and Gretel type cottage (made of candy)).
There’s also a “700 point” adventure variant apparently written in PL/I, which would make it the only game other than Ferret I know of to use the language; I also find the version from Norway written in NORD-FORTRAN 77 (for NORD computers) to be unique.
World of Odyssey (1979, Powersoft, Apple II)
A new ADVENTURE game utilizing the full power of DISK II, which enables the player to explore 353 rooms on six different levels full of dragons, orcs, dwarves, goblins, gold and jewels.
I incorrectly stated Will O’ the Wisp was Mark Capella’s only game when I wrote about it. He had an earlier one. Via Popular Mechanics, October 1980:
The same technique is used in programs such as World of Odyssey, from Powersoft, and Journey, from Softape. Their “maps,” however, are different from the original Adventure caves. Journey features some entertaining twists and traps and is written in a tongue-in-cheek style. Odyssey is another complete, complex, computerized cavern.
We have the manual, but not the game.
Pacifica (1979, Rainbow Computing, Apple II)
Discover the floating island and rescue the beautiful princess. To win you must recover the enchanted crown, but you face the threat of magic spells and demons.
This might be a CRPG. This might be an ambiguous hybrid. This is all the information we have.
New Adventure (1979/1980, Mark Niemiec)
Martian Adventure (1979/1980, Brad Templeton and Kieran Carroll)
These were written at the University of Waterloo and it mentions here that “Archive tapes for this mainframe exist and it might prove possible to get at the source code for these games.”
Adventure 751 (1980, David Long, Mainframe)
Written about in detail here. Has the unusual condition of an attempt at a BASIC port made without any access to the source code, but I’ve never been able to get it to run properly. Was on Compuserve, and there was a poster sold of the map; here is a portion that includes the section unique to Adventure 751:
The BASIC port was by Carl Ruby. The source code is up there if anyone wants to give it a try. It was giving me legions of errors.
In April, 1982, Carl Ruby, a junior at California Lutheran college, discovered this game and attempted to write a version in BASIC for the school’s Apple II computers. However, it wasn’t until 1986 when his father bought an Apple IIc that he was able to get any real work done. Learning machine language, and the data compression trick, he almost squeezed the entire program into memory, but in 1994 he discovered Microsoft QBASIC and the Apple Adventure project was abandoned. He completed a Microsoft version in 11 days, and it was completely debugged in October 1996.
The Pits (1980, Jim Walters and Dave Broadhurst, Mainframe)
This was on online services like The Source for a while and supposedly ran on a Prime minicomputer. the source code is stored at the Library of Congress, just like Castlequest was so getting at this is just a matter of process. Lots more research on the game here.
(Note that one of the lost Adventure variants from the earlier link was also on Prime systems, described as having over 1000 points. It is faintly possible the correspondent was confusing The Pits with Adventure.)
Sinbad (1980, Highland Computer Services, Apple II)
From the folks that brought you The Tarturian. Compute Sep./Oct. 1980 called it a “hires adventure-like game using over 100 pictures.”
This was in the company’s Oldorf/Tarturian phase so I’d expect a game like that.
From The Tarturian.
Spaceship to Nowhere (1981, Algray?, TRS-80)
Mentioned in a 1981 Algray catalog. Controlled with the arrow keys. Algray distributed games from other companies so it may not be the ones who made the game.
A Remarkable Experience (1981, Hoyle & Hoyle, Heathkit/TRS-80)
A Physical Experience (1981, Hoyle & Hoyle, Heathkit/TRS-80)
Discussed in this thread. This is the first and third of a trilogy. We have the second game (I haven’t played it yet) although here’s the cover of that one:
CPS Games Entire Collection (1982, Atari/ZX81/ZX Spectrum)
All of these games from a single company have had some magazine mentions but are gone. Here’s a giant ad from Popular Computing Weekly.
The Domed City
The Fourth Kind
The Ghost of Radun
Hasha the Thief
The Lord of the Rings: Part 1
Peter Rabbit and Father Willow
Peter Rabbit and the Magic Carrot
Peter Rabbit and the Naughty Owl
The Seven Cities of Cibola
The Tower of Brasht
Tummy Digs Goes Shopping
Tummy Digs Goes Walking in the Forest
The Wizard of Sham
You can check the ad for descriptions (and some wargames which I think are also lost); The Fourth Kind, intriguingly, is all about trying to communicate with extraterrestrials.
Love (1982, Remsoft, ZX81)
A game written “by women for women”. “A 16K ZX81 women’s adventure game set in the riotously funny Poke Hall. Meet the voluptuous Griselda, the rude Sinclair, Indian mystic Mr. Ram Pac, and more.”
Doom Valley (1982, Superior Software, Apple II)
This one rather famously is in the Book of Adventure Games but no copy exists. So we have the map and walkthrough but no game.
An aeroplane carrying UN ambassadors crashes near to a ski lodge where you are staying. For some unknown reason, unknown parties have captured the ambassadors. Your job is to rescue these ambassadors and return them to the ski lodge.
Also weirdly, appears in a legal guide to software copyright notices and gives a copyright of 1984 (rather than 1982).
Cathedral Adventure (1982, Phillip Joy, ZX81)
Mentioned in Sinclair User Issue 3. 15K of Basic, “describes more parts of a cathedral than I ever knew existed—more than 30 in fact. Shortish descriptions are given, sometimes including a cryptic clue—no pun intended—and more than 70 words are recognised.” The writer was stuck on the Mad Monk and couldn’t get farther.
Exciting Adventure (1982, Russed Software, ZX Spectrum)
This might not even be the real title! This is how it gets advertised:
Entire Software Magic Catalog (1982/1983, TRS-80)
I wrote about this company here.
The three adventure games are
Gods of Mt. Olympus
Marooned in Time
Lunar Mission
although absolutely everything listed in the catalog is gone. The catalog is the only evidence we have of the games or the company even existing.
Some of PAL Creations Catalog (1982, Tandy Color Computer)
They did Eno, Stalag, and Mansion of Doom, which I’ve written about before. They had other games listed in the ad here which are lost. (Space Escape isn’t, but it lands in 1983.) Eyeballing them, I think the adventures are
Isle of Fortune
Scavange Hunt (with that spelling in the ad)
Dark Castle
Witches Knight
Beacon
Evasion (sequel to Stalag)
Funhouse
Scatterbrain
Mother Lode
although they are mixed together with non-adventures so it’s hard to tell. Beacon is “can you signal the ship before it runs aground?” — I could see that easily being almost a mini-board game. Without the game we can’t tell.
Adventure (1982, Simpson Software, ZX81)
Helpful title, eh? Mentioned here in issue 2 of Sinclair User as being “set in a mythical castle containing evidence of an extraordinary mixture of living beings – hobbits, dwarves and pirates, among others. It is a non-graphics adventure with 25 logically-connected locations written in 11/2 K of Basic.”
Fun House (1982, ASD&D, TI-99)
We have the manual. We even have a picture of the disk. We don’t have access to the game, though. I’ve played games from the series before starting with 007: Aqua Base.
Takeda Building Adventure (1982, Micro Cabin, MZ-700/MZ-1200)
The only Japanese game I’m missing for 1982, published the same time as Diamond Adventure. (Totally different author. Diamond Adventure was by N. Minami. This was by Akimasa Tako when he was a junior high student and the game was sent to Micro Cabin by family/friends without his knowledge; he later did an Alice in Wonderland game.) I’ve seen copies come up for this before but they’ve been expensive. Please note there’s a part 1 (from 1982) and a part 2 (from 1983) but they look very similar and some websites confuse them.
Part 1 (red font) on top, part 2 (black font) on bottom. Source.
Weirdly, I have enough I could technically make an entry for this game because more than a decade ago someone made a website re-creating the game in HTML format. It’s essentially a death maze. Unfortunately the website is long gone and only a very small part has been stored at the Internet Archive, but I was able to play for one move.
Glamis Castle (1982, John Bell, Apple II)
This is the sequel to Haunted Palace, by Crystalware, the funky 3d-game that had a mystery attached which wasn’t solved in the game but through a contest.
There’s also an Atari version, and I know who has a disk, but there’s logistical issues in dumping it (please don’t bother with this at the moment).
However, the Apple II version is totally lost, and based on the predecessor (Haunted Palace) it would be different enough from the Atari version to be worth having, plus it will be easier to get a dump.
ICL Quest (1980-1983, Doug Urquhart, Keith Sheppard and Jerry McCarthy, Mainframe)
I’ve written about the Windows 95 version here. It is somewhat buggy, but there’s a version that’s for C which needs technical help porting it to be playable on modern systems. If this sounds like something you’d be interested in, ping me and I’ll re-direct you for access.
Renga in Blue 
I would be very intrigued to find out what Love was on about.
Or, given these comments, perhaps not.
I mean, think of the unhinged blogpost I could write
but yes, based on that new information it is not high on my priority list
Good luck with these indeed.
Indeed, 3 of the 4 CPS wargames in the list are lost. “King Arthur” may be a port of a game by Richard Bodley-Scott (that was preserved on TRS-80the description matches), or it may be a different game.
Hi Scribe,
I was reminded of this based on one of the lost adventures mentioned bellow, since the same guy who wrote it also published these:
https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/sec/37446/The-War-Machine/
Seems like these could be of great interest to you, as it was covering almost exactly same beat as you are, circa 1981-1984.
I did not know it. Now I need to find this publication on Internet, as the Museum only showcases the first page.
If you find it, please let me know. I searched for it without success a long time ago because it also covered role-playing games.
What there is are articles about games taken from the magazine and published regularly in Practical Computing since at least January 1982. The section was also called The War Machine.
Well, here are a few off the top of my head:
Two mainframe games –
https://www.solutionarchive.com/game/id%2C8189/untitled+adventure.htm
https://www.solutionarchive.com/game/id%2C6979/Lord.html
A few from Strident’s pages:
http://8bitag.com/info/snippets.html
And of course a bunch we’ve talked about here in the comments just recently, including that German spy game, a couple of obscure French ones, a couple of Sega titles from Australia or NZ, a couple of Interact computer titles, etc. The list goes on and on, and the more old magazines, newsletters and catalogs we comb through, the more keep popping up!
By the way, I have a strong suspicion that Sinbad game was never actually released, at least in that form.
Of course, those Sega titles I mentioned serm to have been from 84, so wouldn’t qualify for this list. The rest should be valid, though.
Oh yeah, and I just realized that you have a whole post up on Lord, but I guess since we can’t actually play it without being on site that it would still count?
LORD is not lost. I’ll write about it someday.
Not sure why the Danish one slipped my net (I notice it confuses CASA, your direct link doesn’t work) and I totally missed that Strident page! TOXOPHOLY looks wild!
Just to be more specific on a few of the titles I mentioned:
The French one was called Testament, and was advertised from 5/82 in a French DAI computer user group newsletter. There are several other candidates for the DAI, but the archive they’re stored in doesn’t make most of them available to the public.
The Interact games are The Troll Hole Adventure, from around 1981, and its sequel The Mysterious Mansion Adventure, from 1982.
As you’re probably aware, Troll Hole was translated for the French Victor Lambda version of the system as La Caverne des Lutins and is available to play, so your mileage may vary on whether you want to consider it lost or not. Someone has a copy of the original though, because if you search for “Interact computer” on YT, one of the first videos that pops up is of someone loading it up.
Mysterious Mansion was never translated, and seems to be lost as well, but you can find the full manual for it (within the “program guides part 2” pdf) here:
https://oldcomputers.net/interact.html
Similar to Troll Hole, I think at least one person still has a copy of it, as a gameplay screen someone posted on Reddit a couple of years ago would suggest.
It’s possible the Interact harbors other unknown/lost adventures (I haven’t yet combed through all the old newsletters, manuals, catalogs, etc.), as the platform isn’t listed on CASA, and it’s library is poorly documented, similar to the DAI, Colour Genie, etc.
Replying to Rob, I’ve found the Troll Hole Adventure/La Caverne des Lutins (English and French versions) and the Mysterious Mansion Adventure (English version) available for download.
olivierboisseau.com/retrogaming/Interact-Victor-Hector_programs-and-games.zip
I’ve managed to finish the Troll Hole one, but got stuck in Mysterious Mansion.
Replying to Gus:
Wow, you did it again! First the Northstar archive, and now this.
I’ll have to try out Mansion, because the manual made it sound pretty interesting…
Thanks again!
Don’t thank me, thank Olipix. :)
He’s got a Youtube channel but somehow I’m having trouble posting YT links here. Check for “Tous les jeux pour Interact – Victor – Hector”, it’ a two-part video where he shows a snippet of every game in this collection, which I think is fairly complete. If you look in the video description there’s the link to the zip file.
Thank you very much for the link to the Interact games. I had only found the French version of The Dragon’s Dungeon, but there is the original. Too bad the Mazes and Monsters RPG is not there. I know it has to be somewhere, because there are even screenshots out there, but it still resists me.
I would also love to take a look at the North Star archive that you mentioned, I would appreciate it if you could give me the link.
http://annex.retroarchive.org/disks/ICF%20Disk%20Images/Northstar%20Horizon/
but also http://annex.retroarchive.org/disks/
I checked out Apple and found some unique things
we found two “published” disks that turned out to be scenarios for Adventure Construction Set
(that’s Dwidge Factory)
http://annex.retroarchive.org/disks/Apple/15May22/
Thank you very much, there is a lot of material there, it will take me a while to check it, but it seems like there are interesting things.
I was checking the files linked here: https://olivierboisseau.com/retrogaming/
It turns out that there is a file with Mattel Aquarius games (Olipix-Micro-Expander-USB-Key.zip). I haven’t managed to get them all working, but there is one (Tab-Hipp.caq) which is a text adventure apparently originally from 1983 for ZX81 called Tables of Hippocrates, by a certain S. Fawkes. I thought you might be interested.
https://archive.org/details/your-computer-magazine-1983-08/page/n195/mode/2up?q=hippocrates
Forget what I said, apparently the game is really called Tablets of Hippocrates and here is the original version:
https://www.zx81stuff.org.uk/zx81/tape/Gamestape1
It seems that it was advertised under both names:
https://archive.org/details/Your_Computer_1983_07.pdf/page/213/mode/1up?q=%22tablets+of+hippocrates%22
Its copyright is from 1982, but I can’t find any advertisements before 1983, so the latter may be its year of publication.
It seems that a hint sheet with the solution was published:
https://www.zx81stuff.org.uk/zx81/tape/Gamestape1(CI)
thanks for checking!
Trojan Dragon (arcade game, on the same disk) has an individually packaged version where the tape version is lost, but since it’s on here the game isn’t so lost
And by the way, finally Mazes and Monsters was among those Interact games, just with a different file name, so I can cross a lost game off my own list. Thanks again!
This TRS-80 archive that can be found in the link you gave me is quite interesting:
http://annex.retroarchive.org/disks/trs80/trs-80_the_file_cabinet_disks-partial_set.zip
There were 3 totally unknown RPG games, available then only through BBS or by downloading them from online services. There are probably unknown text adventures in there too.
Each floppy disk has its own catalog, but I found them all together here:
https://archive.org/details/computer-news-80-file-cabinet-catalog-for-model-i-and-iii/page/27/mode/2up
For some reason I can’t read the disks from my emulator, but I can with TrsTools. To run the games that interested me, I simply extracted their files and put them on the TRSDOS operating system disk that I usually use with the emulator.
the two that don’t look familiar from model 1/3 are Valkyrie (described as a medieval adventure, which would be different from Voyage of the Valkyrie which is not an adventure) and Raspion Adventure (which ??? no idea what that is)
Half the time “Adventure” gets applied to something not really that in game genre, like Backpacking Adventure (which is strategy)
Some of the model 4 looks like it was originally model 1 but ported, so I’ll have to dig through that sometime too
The complete File Cabinet was not in the link, but I found a link in which all the disks seem to be included, even more than in the linked catalog:
http://bit.ly/2kQ1uMD
The Model 4 ones are mostly adaptations, in some cases even from completely different platforms, but every once in a while you find something original.
huh, so with that link I was able to get the source and figure out Raspion is a game I haven’t played
poking around more I found an ad
https://archive.org/details/80_Microcomputing_Issue_17_1981-05_1001001_US/page/n297/mode/2up
It Takes a Thief (which I already did) was sold by Randy Dobkin under the company title RanDob along with Raspion Adventure, both from 1981
it wasn’t triggering from search before but RanDob is all that’s given, not the full name of the author
aaaand it looks like Randy Dobkin (now that I know he’s the one in Florida) was a fan of road rallies. Fortuitous timing. https://www.newspapers.com/article/south-florida-sun-sentinel/135582570/
As long as this thread is still active, I thought I’d put this here for reference, even though this stuff is from a bit later (’85-’86):
https://archive.org/details/computer-shopper-february-1986/Computer%20Shopper_February_1986_Aesthetic/page/228/mode/1up?q=Adventure
That’s six potential unknown/lost C64 adventures, just on one page! A Knight in Transylvania looks particularly interesting. Really shows the need to get more full scans of 80s Computer Shopper online…
Searching RPGs on The File Cabinet I found another text adventure that I don’t think you’ve played (from 1981). It’s called The Endless Tomb, by Anthony Wood, and it’s on disc 42 for the Model 3. Here’s the author’s page with more information about this game and many others (including other text adventures):
https://github.com/twiddlingbits/anthonys-early-code?tab=readme-ov-file
big fan of the SoftSide rejection letter which goes into specifics about what can be fixed (“I” for inventory, spelling errors, disk instead of tape saving, lower-case input)
never have seen a real “editorial guidelines” list anywhere for this stuff
Great find on Endless Tomb, Explorador! Those magazine rejection letters he has up are priceless.
I agree with the Sinbad part, I’m pretty sure that it is a preliminary version of Oldorf’s Revenge, itself initially announced as The Wizard (with The Tarturian being its second part, or Wizard II).
The Sinbad ad is from a September/October 1980 magazine, and The Wizard’s is from a Fall 1980 magazine, with the same description, just a slightly different price.
https://archive.org/details/Apple-Orchard-v1n2-1980-Fall/page/n47/mode/2up?q=%22highlands+computer+services%22+%22the+wizard%22
Unfortunately, the C.P.S. games are pretty much vaporware. They were a fly-by-night that barely lasted a few weeks. We did some research for this a while back when looking for their wargames.
This one is from a reader who never got ordered games: https://archive.org/details/ComputerAndVideoGamesIssue022Aug83/page/n69/mode/2up?q=chameleon
This is an advert from Chameleon letting folks know they acquired C.P.S. stuff:
https://archive.org/details/popular-computing-weekly-1983-01-20/page/n3/mode/2up?q=%22Chameleon+Computer+Games%22
An this is an interview with Chameleon talking about C.P.S..
https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Category:C.P.S._Games
Look down at the bottom of the page in the “Artwork” section. (Home Computing Weekly interview with Chameleon Computer Games, May 1983)
Yeah, I have little doubt that quite a few “lost” games were just vaporware/unreleased or even outright scams. I found one recently that could qualify for this lost games list, called Cave-In, from an otherwise unknown Florida based company. It was advertised for a couple months in a business-oriented trade magazine for a couple of months in 1982, and nowhere else. They were asking a very high price, offering a large cash prize for winning it, and listing it for a shifting set of disparate platforms. Then it totally disappears, forever. Something like that, to me, smells strongly like a fly by night scam artist, not a legitimate lost game.
(Clickable version of the third link, I hope: https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Category:C.P.S._Games)
Yes, thanks for the corrected link. My cut-n-paste job went awry there.
I was also going to clarify that I would treat the C.P.S. game adverts as having next to zero chance of seeing any of those games. However, if Chameleon picked up those games and then advertised them, then there is at least a chance. We did find the “King Arthur” game. They did advertise 4 of the C.P.S. adventure games in that linked advert.
I had totally forgotten that LanHawk had sent me the bona fide King Arthur from CPS, which has also been recently uploaded on Spectrum Computing. In my defence, he found a LOT of forgotten games.
So yes, CPS did exist and release at least one wargame.
Don’t forget about Bureaucracy, Samurai, and Starlord (1979-80), the three early, lost Med Systems adventure games.
(https://advgamer.blogspot.com/2019/06/intermission-med-systems-marathon-1980.html)
Excellent article there. My own useless speculation:
Samurai looks like it was probably more of a strategy game, and Starlord may have been a Star Trek-ish game that was never actually released, something I’ve learned to be suspicious of with lost titles that were only advertised for a very short time. Bureaucracy definitely sounds like it had real adventure elements though, perhaps mixed in with some sort of financial simulation.
Overall, people could be pretty broad with their use of the adventure tag in the early days of computer gaming, and it often didn’t mean a game was really a traditional text adventure. Often, being anything that involved “thinking” and wasn’t a fast-action arcade game was enough to earn the description. This was definitely the case with Dynacomp for instance, which will be covered here soon. Go take a look at the “Adventure” sections of their old catalogs, and you’ll find all kinds of wacky stuff.
somehow blanked on those! I really want to try Bureaucracy, that sounds unique (even given the other game called that!)
Getting that QBASIC version of LONG0751 to run would be …difficult. Each message in “rooms.txt” and “timers.txt” is supposed to be stored in a separate file. But there’s no indication of what the file names are supposed to be.
I spent a very long time trying to get it to work, including making a script as a file splitter, but I kept going in circles. I can’t imagine what happened to cause that.
The issue with the Atari version of Glamis Castle is that the disk has another Crystalware program on it! Well, at least that’s the case with my copy… Can anybody confirm the Atari game proper was actually found?
Also, don’t trust Everygamegoing as this site steals content from others and adds fake release dates in the process! Would really appreciate it if you could add Atarimania as the proper source of the scan.
MOCAGH:
https://www.mocagh.org/loadpage.php?getgame=glamis
Was the disk loaded to ensure Glamis Castle is actually the game on the disk? This is a legitimate question as I have already seen two copies with House of Usher on it…
Also perhaps worth mentioning:
The Stephen M. Cabrinety collection at Stanford lists a handful of mysterious Crystalware/Crystal Vision titles and re-releases for Atari that aren’t on Atarimania, so you may want to investigate that further.
As for Everygamegoing, I have no idea what he/they have been up to with more mainstream platforms, but the diligent cataloging of Colour Genie games there, for instance, was invaluable in discovering a number of previously unknown adventures, so it’s not all bad…
Fixed that. I didn’t even know you had a copy! I think maybe I looked once, saw MISSING, and left. Silly me not thinking the authors would do a scam and put a completely different game on the disk.
This was super late in Crystalware and I totally not put it past them to put wrong games on intentionally. I’m leaning to it being vaporware now (which is really unusual when there’s packaging, I can’t think of this happening otherwise) although maybe they finished Apple II but not Atari, so it’s still worth finding that.
Thanks for fixing the credits. I’m with you, God knows what happened to Glamis Castle considering Crystalware’s track record…
Atarimania is updated at least twice weekly so feel free to check if you missed anything. We keep adding “new old” stuff all the time and, though text games are a rare breed, sometimes miraculously get to recover weird titles such as this one:
https://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-bawdy-adventure-in-the-magic-caverns_32206.html
Regarding Glamis Castle, I’m afraid that it is not a sequel to The Haunted Palace, if anything it would have been the other way around, since it was announced well before (the copy that is preserved has a copyright of 1981 and The Haunted Palace is a game from 1982).
At the time I researched Glamis Castle and its relationship with The Haunted Palace and the game The Nightmare. Here is everything I found:
And the truth is that now that I reread it with a clearer head, I can think of another theory that fits: Benioff and Bell were still developing the game when they separated, the former created The Nightmare for Atari based on what he had, and the second created The Haunted Palace for Apple II (the game files are called GLAMIS in this version). Perhaps some Glamis Castle material had already been produced for Atari that with Benioff’s departure from Crystalware (he was in charge of the Atari versions after Mike Potter left) could not be published as it should (although to put copies of House of Usher instead seems like a real scam to me).
For some reason, I can’t respond directly under exploradorrpg’s comment so my apologies if the replies appear all over the place. Maybe this can be edited somehow for better readability?
I find exploradorrpg’s theory very interesting, my only problem being that The Nightmare and Glamis Castle seem to have absolutely nothing in common, at least according to the instructions I just dug up.
Just to add food for thought, the Glamis Castle manual is dated 1982, not 1981, the publisher being Crystalware, Inc. (not Crystal Computer or UFO). It probably doesn’t mean much but the program is only credited to John Bell on the second page – with an allusion to Patty later on – and doesn’t mention Marc Russell Benioff at all. The two-page introductory text confirms the visit to Glamis Castle in Scotland and is mostly an extended version of the ad with the promised $500 prize. The game is still “3-D based on Super-8 films and slides we took of the castle”.
Where it gets more interesting is that the “basic movements” page tells you about how you can abbreviate the standard MOVE SOUTH command to M-S for instance. Strangely enough, only the disk label states that you need a joystick, there’s nothing in the manual.
Also, the final page announces a new program said to be “coming soon”: “In the spirit of Glamis Castle, Usher II. An all 3-D graphic game experience – March 1982 – 4 disks and Votrax option. $59.95″.
It’s in the right place.
Vortrax?! The speech chip? Is that plausible? Did anything for the Atari 8-bit use that?
Very few Votrax games on the Atari, can only think of a few Dynacomp programs right now. Guessing this would’ve been for the Apple ][.
It is interesting to know that the manual for the Atari version described Glamis Castle as a game similar to The Haunted Palace, which rules out my theory that the same thing would have happened as in the case of Quest for Power, another Crystalware game whose version for Atari It’s nothing like Apple’s (the latter, by the way, really is a text/graphics adventure).
Regarding the date, I was confused by the label on the bag the manual is in, but in any case the game was announced at least as early as September 1981, long before The Haunted Palace. I think the latter derives from the first (perhaps it was even the aforementioned Usher II), what I am no longer clear about is whether Glamis Castle was actually published, or they went directly to publishing the second game, and the existing material was not really marketed (vaporware).
Benioff may have simply appropriated Bell’s game ideas from when he was at Crystalware, and reused them to make a game with the same theme, but using the mechanics from his own games to publish The Nightmare with Epyx.
I remembered that Crystalware already did something similar with the publication of Clonus II, there being another version of the game called Clonus that actually only has superficial changes, and that was somehow preserved, although in this case the game was directly advertised as Clonus II.
Honestly, coming from Crystalware you can expect anything.
What seems clear is that both Crystalware and Benioff (in the Atari newsletter in which he collaborated) announced Glamis Castle as early as September 1981 (both Bell and Benioff take credit for the actual visit to the castle, and in the case of Benioff it seems that he was at least in London at that time, but who knows if anyone really visited it), while The Haunted Palace appears in 1982 almost without prior announcement (and to make matters worse, in the Atari newsletter they say that it is the first game of that style with 3D view for Atari, which would rule out the previous release of Glamis Castle as a 3D game for Atari).
Taking into account the new information in the manual for Atari, it only occurs to me that the publication of Glamis Castle for Atari was delayed beyond that of The Haunted Palace, or that it was canceled outright (although manuals and discs were produced). For Apple II it might not have been like that, since The Haunted Palace seems to be created on the same game files that would belong to Glamis Castle (a common practice in Crystalware, where elements from previous games are still found in the source code of the most modern ones), although that does not mean that it was actually published, just that Glamis Castle began to be created before The Haunted Palace.
Bell did not seem to master Atari programming at that time, and this is evident in his conversion of The Haunted Palace, more bugged than usual (he usually used other programmers for this work, such as Potter and Benioff). What doesn’t really fit me is that he decided to port The Haunted Palace to Atari on his own before Glamis Castle, if this was really already finished for the Apple II (if it wasn’t and they published it later, it wouldn’t make much sense to announce in its manuals another 3D game as a novelty, when they already had The Haunted Palace). I’m leaning towards the option that Glamis Castle was never actually published, and that The Haunted Palace took its place. Perhaps Benioff really was involved in the game’s development (at least with the actual castle documentation), and his departure from Crystalware prevented its publication as Glamis Castle. Perhaps Bell had the game engine programmed into the Apple II in the absence of details about the castle, and Benioff took them with him, forcing Bell to publish The Haunted Palace (reusing the Glamis engine), and port it himself to Atari, shortly before his company would go down.
We already checked the Stephen M. Cabrinety Collection years and years ago. Some programs are noted as Atari releases while they clearly aren’t but I digress… Not sure what you mean by “mysterious” Crystalware titles on this list, all of them are known and at least have entries on our pages. If you want to go down the Crystalware rabbit hole, we can discuss all the vaporware programs in their catalogs but that would be beyond the scope of this site ;-)
Crystal Vision was some sort of reboot of Crystalware set up by John Bell in 1989 or so. The games were nothing new, just re-releases of old Atari programs, sometimes with altered titles / graphics like Jihad – The Holy War and John Bell now calling himself J. B. Michaels.
Yes, I believe we discussed the whole Crystal Vision thing on here when Haunted Palace was being covered, as well as John Bell’s various shenanigans over the years, his puzzling connection with Japan, etc.
Checking the Cabrinety list, the specific titles I had in mind were:
Tower of Usher, Crystalware, 1981
Lasa Wars, Crystalware, 1985
Fantasyland 2041 A.D., Crystal Vision
The first is the “mystery”, the other two may be unlisted re-releases. They’re all most likely just mislabeled or misfiled disks, but I thought they were interesting nonetheless.
Just read your message from June 24th, 2023 so not going to bring much to the table…
Tower of Usher is definitely a misspelling. The Stephen M. Cabrinety listing is the only source where the game is mentioned so somebody was obviously drinking too much at the time the program was being cataloged.
Lasa Wars is the arcade game Lasar Wars / Laser Wars and, again, 1985 makes zero sense.
You’re right, Fantasyland 2041 AD is missing from our site but it’s just one of the rereleases by “J. B. Michaels”. The Crystal Vision games were definitely being sold by Atari vendors as you can see here:
https://archive.org/details/BCComputervisionCatalogSummer1991/page/n9/mode/2up
That reminds me of another set of possibly lost adventure games. Back in 1984, Swedish computer magainze “Allt om hemdatorer” arranged the Swedish adventure game writing championships. According to the rules, the games had to be based on a well-known story.
You can find the announcement on page 12 of http://www.stonan.com/dok/AOH4-84.pdf
The results were announced on page 35 of http://www.stonan.com/dok/AOH2_3-85.pdf
(I did not make these scans.)
The winners were:
I remember being quite disappointed that there were no listings or even screenshots of the games, and I never heard another word about them. And of course there were probably a couple of non-winning entries as well.
Oops, typo: It was supposed to be “Stefan”, not “Sefan”.
ok, I _really_ blanked out on one thing
https://bluerenga.blog/tag/colossal-adventure/?order=ASC
when I wrote about Colossal Adventure I also discussed at length the missing Level 9 game Fantasy and how it might be preserved anyway because of the very suspicious game Atom Adventures, which include 3 modules and one of them fits all the descriptions of Fantasy
https://bluerenga.blog/2020/05/13/atom-adventures-1981/
Feel free to keep more candidates coming. What I’ll do (either later this week or early next) is make a part 2 post, just for more eyeball visibility, but eventually I’ll consolidate everything into one post (probably this one) so I can link on my main All the Adventures page
I just remembered something… There’s at least one other 1982 Japanese adventure that you may not have come across:
Odyssey Part 1, Prosumer, 12/1982
It’s very obscure (although it has come up for sale at least a couple of times) and the only online description I’ve ever seen of it is buried in the 1982-and-before section of Y. Romi’s old PC-88 Game Library (“Escape from an unidentified village”). It was a text adventure with full color graphics (and probably the first Japanese graphic adventure in the classic Apple II style, predating even the early Hummingbird Soft games), released on both tape and disk, and was notable for being an early title that required a Kanji ROM, which they actually offered in a package with the game for a considerable price. Prosumer released a few adventures over the next year or two, including a sequel to Odyssey called Icarus – For Lost Phenix (sic), which came out in May, 1983 and is slightly more well-known. They also released a (very expensive) adventure creation program in early 1983, which was unique in Japan at that time. Here are a couple of shots of the tape version:
https://aucfree.com/m/items/h366233259
And of an ad, which includes screenshots and a brief description:
https://archive.org/details/Io19831/page/n524/mode/1up
And of Icarus, just for reference:
https://www.8-bits.info/gamelist/PC88/info/info_tmDQ5R29uA4A0xGw.php
As far as its “lost” status? Beats me. Japan is Japan, if you know what I mean. But I’ve never seen a screenshot online, and I don’t think it’s in any of the readily available PC-88 software archives.
Realistically, it should be considered a fairly important game in Japanese adventure history, but it never received much print coverage, and seems to have fallen into a memory hole in general. Perhaps it was just a little too far ahead of its time for the Japanese market…
I’ve seen this. I had it sorted w ‘83 (all I had was “winter” as a release time window). I have seen a real screenshot but never a copy.
it’s included in this collection being sold http://98ds.free.fr/
screenshot is page 178, second row here https://archive.org/details/avgadventuregame/page/n87/mode/2up?view=theater
mentioned here as winter ’82 (somehow I just had that down as the season, but it is possible I was unclear if they could have meant jan. or feb. with that notation) https://www.gamepres.org/pc88/library/1982/1982.htm
Ah, good old “Challenge! Adventure Game”! The Bible of old-school Japanese adventures. I’ve owned a physical copy of that one for decades. It was very comprehensive for the time, but IIRC it missed a few for the Sharp systems in particular.
Yeah, that last link is a reconstruction of Romi’s old site. He actually released an expanded version on CD-Rom many years ago, which had some really good articles on adventures and a bunch of game solutions. I think his dating syncs up well with the first ads for the game, which claim a late December, ’82 release.
Weird to see a Japanese (or is it?) site selling “warez” like that. Very much against their culture, generally speaking…
given the .fr domain, I think at least one non-Japanese person is involved
Not everyone in Japan _wants_ to be that paranoid but they have to be. I was listening to someone from the Game Preservation Society (from link 3) talk about how they had some article with an small innocuous Sega screenshot (like Outrun or something) and they got contacted by Sega to take the screenshot down. That’s miles within fair use in the US.
Every time I see the name “Stephen M. Cabrinety” I want to read it as “Stephen M. Cabinetry”.
On the next page there is an incomplete version of Adventure with some differences for Polymotphic Systems computers, but I don’t know if they will be enough to make it worth learning how to use another emulator…
https://deramp.com/downloads/polymorphic/poly-8813/software/Disk%20Images/
By inspecting the ADVENT.PM file with a text editor you can take a look and decide.
This reminds me of something I came across recently while messing around with Heathkit emulation. Search for “Fortran Adventure Games #1” on this archive:
https://sebhc.github.io/sebhc/software/Applications/H8DCATALOG_VOL9.HTML
It seems to originally date from 1981, but I’m not familiar enough with Fortran to really make anything of it. Do you have any ideas?
the one explorador mentions is new, and I will get to the polymorphic emulator at some point (another S-10 bus system so probably not that different from the North Star emulator)
I’ve scrounged H8D archives before so I might have seen the one you mention, I’ll poke at that later
btw, if someone really wants extra credit, there’s some Prime computer files stashed at bitsavers
http://www.bitsavers.org/bits/Prime/
including one very very large archive could easily have either lost game (Pits or the 1000+ Adventure, if the latter one is something different)
there’s an emulator but it is a pain to get everything together
https://github.com/prirun/p50em
Rob, I have no idea what it could be, when I have some time I will try to run it in the emulator, but I am not an expert in Heathkit or FORTRAN, so I don’t know if I will succeed.
I’m interested in the Prime files, I’ll try to review them, because I also have a lost RPG from that platform: Blackdragon or Black Dragon. Like The Pits, it was initially on The Source, although it was later also offered by CompuServe. The game is clearly based on PLATO’s dnd, but adding merchants that worked exactly the same as those in The Wizard’s Castle. The fact is that the game had some success (they even sold merchandising such as t-shirts with its name on it) and they interviewed the author, who didn’t say anything about his “influences”, which was normal at that time, I suppose.
I was able to telnet to the prime server mentioned on one of my links and poke around, but I don’t think they have any archives linked, it’s just the operating system? If you want to try it the user name is guest (you just type the word when prompted) followed by the password pr1me
commands I could figure out were
LIST (shows directory)
SLIST BLAH.TXT (shows contents of a text file)
change directories with ATTACH, but it works funky, just type the full path each time like
ATTACH GUEST23>HELLO
which would be current directory guest 23, subdirectory hello — just typing ATTACH HELLO won’t work
if nothing else, those should also apply on an emulated system
The Prime emulator only has executables for Linux, so I’ll leave it to you for now.
In any case, I found this other page where it seems that you can download a Prime system already configured for the emulator, with PRIMOS operating system already installed:
https://sysovl.info/downloads_prime_emulator.html
If you can get it to work, try these tapes first (on the second one, according to the label, there is an “Adventure” and on the third “Games”):
http://www.bitsavers.org/bits/Prime/sbd/
That’s fine, I don’t think I’ll be getting into that until the weekend but I can certainly handle Linux.
I was able to run the individual Fortran files on a Heathkit emulator, but they just seem to be programming modules to define the rooms, objects and obstacles (“dangers”) in a game, as far as I can tell. There’s also a listing file in BASIC, but it was all garbled when I tried to look at it, for some reason.
Thanks for the Notepad++ rec, I had meant to take a look at that.
I was just going to tell you the same thing. It’s some kind of adventure creation system. And it doesn’t come with any samples, because when you enter data, new files are generated. I suspect that once everything has been entered, the adventure would remain in the LISTING.BAS file, ready to be loaded into BASIC, because that file barely takes up space initially, it is almost empty.
In that same volume 9 and in volume 5 there are other disks with adventures, I have to try them, but I imagine they will be the version of the HUG.
Confirmed, the rest of the adventures in volumes 5 and 9 are the same as HUG.
Regarding the Prime emulator, here is a step-by-step guide to configure an emulated computer, which I understand that with the other link I posted it might not be necessary, but the interesting thing is that it explains how to extract files from a tape:
https://www.sysovl.info/reference_prime_drb_installing_primos233.html
Unfortunately I don’t have a Unix system configured right now.
Yeah, that’s definitely what it appears to be.
Incidentally, I noticed a couple of obscure, seemingly RPG-ish Heathkit titles that you might be interested in, if you haven’t seen them already:
Caverns of the Doomed (Keyboard Studio Software, 1981)
The Chasm (FGL Enterprises, 1983?)
https://archive.org/details/sextantissue8winter1984/page/n47/mode/1up
Caverns in particular seems pretty interesting (some kind of action-RPG with Votrax speech):
https://www.parrygamepreserve.com/media/magazines/buss/1981/buss_1981_10_October_21.php
Thank you! I searched for Caverns of the Doomed some time ago without success, but I didn’t know about The Chasm.
In any case, I don’t add them to the website if I’m not sure they are RPGs or are listed as such on Mobygames or similar, and I’m really not sure if there is character development in those games according to their reviews.
I found a couple of text adventures for North Star on the following page (in the file NorthStar_Double_Density_Disk_Images.zip):
https://deramp.com/downloads/north_star/software/h_harte_disks/
One disk contains Dynacomp’s Original Adventure, and on the disk labeled Games there is a 1983 adventure called The Game Adventure, in which the theme is video games (from what I have read you are chased by a kind of ghost of Pacman who you must overcome by consuming something that makes it change color and touching it, and things like that).
Game Adventure is copyrighted to Richard Rodman and I’m afraid it’s for CP/M.
Here’s another disk version of the game along with another two-disk copy of the Original Adventure (in the file nscgames.zip):
https://deramp.com/downloads/north_star/software/d_dunfield_disks/
I forgot to mention that there is a third adventure in the latest archive, Butler Adventure, also by Dynacomp. It’s educational, but it’s still a text adventure. Oh, and both Butler Adventure and Original Adventure, I’m afraid, are also for CP/M.
I’m already set up for CP/M emulation, fortunately!
one of the more interesting CP/M titles Strident found is General Hospital, where you play a doctor at a hospital with realistic cases
https://www.solutionarchive.com/game/id%2C10094/General+Hospital.html
So I hope you can take a look at this:
https://deramp.com/downloads/altair/software/8_inch_floppy/CPM/CPM%202.2/Adventure/
There are several versions of Adventure for the CP/M 2.2 of the Altair.
There are the one with 350 points (A02) and the one with 550 (B00 and B01), but also one with 580 (B02) and another one that is not indicated (B03).
Looking at the “Adventure Family Tree” (see https://mipmip.org/advfamily/advfamily.html):
The 550 is definitely a version of Dave Platt’s Adv550, which Jason already played many years ago. The 580 is an extension of that which, if that page is to be believed, came out by late 81, so Jason in theory can go play it any time if he wants. (Mike also has an onlie version of that one – along with his own unrelated 660 and 770 – on his site if you don’t want to go to the trouble.)
If the version described in the next comment with the rabbit, frog etc. is an Adventure expansion, I don’t think it matches any variant on the family tree list so far, and I’m sure the guy who maintains that list would love to here about it.
yeah, the polymorphic one is new to the tree
I might bump it up higher on my queue just so Culver gets the information, although I was planning on playing the Software Toolworks version first
580 is weird in that I had it at a much later date (based on a prior reading of the chart) but the footnote description says Dec. ’81 so it came sooner
btw, for those who took a stab at the QBASIC (the Ruby port of adv750), I should have my “file split” version hiding somewhere amongst my hard drives, I will try to dredge it out when I have time. I believe I got to the point I could start the game but it was still crashing.
this version of 580 is marked ’87, which is the date I had it at
https://mipmip.org/adv580/adv580.html
which makes me wonder what changed between ’81 and ’87! It might be something trivial like how Don Woods “2.0” version of Adventure was really just a port from his ’78 version but was functionally identical so should really be considered a ’78 game even though the port is early 90s
Wow, more great finds, Explorador! A few comments:
The Game Adventure seems to be themed after TV game shows (the Pac Man parody bit seems to be the only video game reference). It looks completely insane in general. Might have to try this one out myself…
Butler Adventure shows up in the Dynacomp catalogs online from ’84 on. It’s a traditional treasure hunt with the addition of occasional word scrambles and math problems, with a strict turn limit and selectable difficulty levels. There’s supposedly a PC version as well.
Also, on a couple of those game pak compilation disks, there’s a port of Roger Chaffee’s Quest, and what might be a cut down or slightly altered version of Crowther & Woods.
I became somewhat fascinated with Game Adventure and did a little poking around. Here’s what I came up with:
The Richard Rodman who wrote this game is most likely the same person who was a frequent contributor to various computer magazines and newsletters from the late 70s all the way to the late 90s. He lived in Virginia, and was mostly into the very technical side of things, but he did contribute at least one type-in game, “Cut ’em off at the pass!”, a Barricade/Surround clone for TRS-80 published in the 5/80 issue of Kilobaud Microcomputing. At some point in the early 80s, his interest seems to have shifted over to CP/M, and by the late 80s he was a contributing editor to the long-running newsletter The Computer Journal. It was mentioned in one of those that he also had his own newsletter at some point, and had an interest in public domain software, so one could guess that this game made it out into the wild via a similar avenue, since it doesn’t seem to be mentioned anywhere else. In any case, the sarcastic and satirical tone of many of his letters and reviews (including an incredibly dorky cartoon) would seem to fit in well with the style of this game.
Great research on your part, Rob.
Regarding the television show, it seemed to me that it was really imitating another video game from that time that I have seen on other disks and which in turn imitated a television show in which you had to choose one of several doors. There was also a part in which you played Blackjack with someone and another in which you found a computer with the game Shooting Stars (or Galaxy, as it was also known). In short, it seemed to me that the theme was video games, although everything really took place in a kind of television show.
Ah, maybe you’re right. I have to admit that once I realized the game was so crazy that I needed to actually play it, I started just skimming the code so that I wouldn’t spoil it!
Speaking of which, I read the CP/M emulation instructions on your site, and saw similar recommendations elsewhere (myz80 through dosbox), but then I found this:
https://www.heinpragt-software.com/cpmbox-a-cpm-2-2-emulator/
It looks pretty nice, but I’m not knowledgeable enough to really say. Do you think this might work as well?
I can’t test it right now because I’m not on the computer, but the problem with those games is that they are on a North Star disk image, so either you use a CP/M emulator that recognizes that disk format, or you can run the North Star CP/M in the North Star emulator and load the game disk afterwards, or you can look for some kind of tool to extract the game files from the North Star disk so you can use them in the CP/M emulator.
I may have found something of potential minor interest, if it hasn’t been noted already. Check out the file manygame.zip here:
http://www.retroarchive.org/cpm/games/games.htm
In the ADVENT-2 folder, there is a CP/M adaptation of Peter Scargill’s Adven-80 system, done by Bill Soon, in November ’81, right after Scargill’s article was published. The interesting thing is that there is a sample adventure included, described as:
“SAMPADV.ADV is a small test adventure, generally close to the example given in the DDJ article. This describes the environment in a more readable and easy to enter form than trying to do it in straight Z80 mnemonics.”
Looking back at the original article, there’s nothing in it that you could really call a true sample or test adventure, just a few isolated item and location descriptions used to illustrate how the system works. So even if Soon used those lines as a starting point, he must have added more to make anything resembling a real game, however small it may be. In any case, it might be worth checking out.
There’s also a version of Crowther & Woods in the folder, the interest there being in it that it was supplied by Randy Suess, the original BBS pioneer. I’m sure it’s just one of the many known variants from the Adventure family tree, but it would be interesting to know exactly which one.
Took a quick look at the Polymorphic game, and there do seem to be some minor differences, as well as at least three distinct additions that I noticed:
An Alice in Wonderland inspired bit with a rabbit and some gloves
A frog (seems to have a couple of different functions?)
A glowing ring (LOTR reference?)
Maybe this could be covered in a compilation post with the Heathkit version (and possibly others) of early ports that deviate enough from Crowther & Woods to warrant covering, but not enough so that they deserve individual write-ups?
By the way, I was wondering what your preferred tool for looking through code is? The generic text editors I’ve been using don’t always seem to cut it.
I use Notepad++
https://notepad-plus-plus.org/
For the most mainstream platforms there are usually specific tools, but for the rest, if I don’t want to fight with each emulator and operating system to get the code listed and if possible export it (or when the game is compiled), I usually use notepad on the PC, or the browser on the mobile (after adding the .txt extension to the file), to at least consult the text strings.
I didn’t know about Notepad++, but I’m going to try it.
Pingback: Raspion Adventure (1981) | Renga in Blue
Finally found one: Fun House for the TI-99
https://forums.atariage.com/topic/309792-got-these-games-for-download/?do=findComment&comment=4601719
You want the “SINGLEFILE.dsk” download.
woooooooow
that’s a pretty esoteric hiding place!
got it running but I had to extract the file using TI99Dir, copy the text, enter Classic99 with an extended basic cartridge in, and paste
When you know the filename, it can be a bit simpler. With Classic99 started up in Extended Basic mode and the disk inserted into DSK0, start it by running this:
RUN “DSK0.FUNHOUSE”
Give it a few seconds and off you go.
Pingback: Adventures (1974-1982): Lost Media and Otherwise Unplayable Games (Part 2) | Renga in Blue
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Potential new clues on the Glamis Castle mystery?
https://www.mocagh.org/loadpage.php?getgame=houseofusher-alt
I’ll leave it to Explorador and Atarimania to say if this has any relevance to figuring out that whole situation.8
Glamis mentioned as “will be”, no Palace. So deeply weird.
In some circumstances I could see one product being aborted and the other one made instead (especially given the manic-episode feel of the whole company) but despite it being somewhat broken Palace was pretty ambitious. It’s not like they made a cop-out game (like that Arthurian one that Wargaming Scribe played from the scam company).
I don’t want to draw any conclusions unless we find the Apple version of Glamis and find that it, too, has Palace on it instead.
One thing I noticed is that this lists Glamis as a 2 disk (although maybe here that just means 1 double sided?) game at a higher price point, which I think is what Haunted Palace was as well. House of Usher seems to be a cheaper 1 disk/single sided game, which makes it even stranger that they were apparently slapping it on the Glamis-labeled disks, according to Atarimania.
looks like the most recent appearance on eBay was also one disk
https://www.ebay.com/itm/267418867101
“untested” of course
It’s up again now. Looks like this is Feldman himself, which is why all that stuff he was open to selling on MOCAGH is suddenly marked as “unavailable”.
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?sid=finesse&_pgn=1&isRefine=true&_trksid=p4429486.m3561.l49496
There are a few undumped things he has I’d be open to bidding on for preservation purposes, but not at these prices.