(Continued from my previous posts.)
Curses, foiled again!
The review that mentions PRISM (Creative Computing, May 1983) only lists the game for Apple II, and PRISM barely got any mentions later, so I didn’t even think about a second port until Atarimania asked in the comments about it. To be fair, that version is rare enough it gets a perfect 10 from its Atarimania listing. Given there are three eBay listings of the Apple II version right now as of this writing (one, two, three) I think it likely the Atari version didn’t sell as well.
After some emulator issues I did get the game to work, and there are enough differences it’s worth downloading the set if you’re trying to work out PRISM in earnest. For now, I’m going to put all the art-screenshots (but not the text-screenshots, which you can find in the file if you want to delve for cryptograms or whatnot).
Just to make clear what I mean by differences, here’s the first screen of the Apple version…
…and the first of the Atari version.
PIMS are a different color than the R, which is not the case for the Apple II version. I had been thinking of the exact colors of the letters as highly significant, but maybe not. (Or the puzzle is broken on one platform but not the other!)
Here’s the remainder of the images, including a brand-new image for Atari (you’ll know it when you see it).
One last observation is the sound is different. The opening of the Atari version has a better melody, and there’s no “random music” going on at the XXXVI picture.
If nothing else, this clears up the squinting I was doing at some of the Apple II screens trying to see if the “noise” meant anything (that doesn’t even appear in the Atari shots). I don’t know what to think about the color changes. Look at the tree: it’s TRE + T now! If you consider just the blue letters, you get T from that page plus UNA from the last page. The only time red appears is the “R” at the start.
Coming up: some TRS-80 Color Computer games which should hopefully be less trouble!
Renga in Blue 
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