Late period BBC stuff

Jeremy Grayson · Post by **Jeremy Grayson** » Thu Jul 03, 2003 11:21 pm

Hi there,

An appeal this time: does anyone know how to get hold of the following games, released at the very very end of the BBC's life (1992/3, if not later)?

Explorer (Dragonsoft)
Time Slip (ProAction)
Play It Again, Sam 19 (ProAction)

None of the usual sources have turned up trumps, and, whilst David Bradforth did pass on all of his ProAction assets to Steve Hanson of Superior for him to sell / distribute, the latter no longer has any of these in stock.
So, where to next?

Whilst I'm at it, five words on another very late release, Paradox by the Really Good Software Company. And those five words are: HOW DO YOU PLAY IT?!? I always seem to time out trying in vain to massage the meteorites (that's not a euphemism!) on screen. All suggestions welcome!

Jeremy

AJW · Post by **AJW** » Tue Jun 22, 2004 12:44 pm

I was looking through some old magazines Jeremy and saw Explorer. It was released in '91 by Dragonsoft although I can't find it here or on Beebgames.com.
PIAS 19 was never released.
TimeSlip was the original title for Paradox AFAIK.

regards

Andrew

ChuckieChamp · Post by **ChuckieChamp** » Sun Jul 04, 2004 4:21 pm

yeh, i've got ads in Micro User for Explorer too. it was one of those games that needed a lot of extra hardware to play and looked quite interesting but i seem to recall reading a bad review for it somewhere.

still, i did always fancy playing it - surely someone, somewhere must have bought it!

Timeslip was indeed the same game as Paradox. i bought it but found that not all of the game would work on a standard Beeb - but it would probably have been okay on a Master. the aim was to shoot the meteorites with your laser until the (meteorite) temperature reached maximum and then to ram it - thus extracting some element. once you'd filled your cargo bay with enough meteor gunk you could pass through a 'ringo' to the next lev. like i say tho', on a standard Beeb the game wouldn't go any further than the 4th level i think. although i did manage to play the other segments whilst fiddling about with the programs.

Play It Again Sam 19 was indeed released - i love contradicting people! i have it right here in front of me as i'm prob'ly one of the only people that bought it from ProAction.

it was supposed to contain 3D Pool, Moonbase Beta, Kingdom Of Hamil and XLCR. but i purchased it on 3.5" disc and David Bradforth said there was some hiccup with Kingdom Of Hamil's disc protection so he substituted Holed Out Extra Courses vol.1 as the fourth title.

i believe all of these titles are available individually thru' the archive so you're not missing out on anything.

there was talk of a P.I.A.S. 20 from ProAction but shortly after that they unfortunately gave up the ghost. however, they did allegedly have a conversion of an Archimedes game called 'Man At Arms' for sale - did anyone ever see sight of that one?

AJW · Post by **AJW** » Mon Jul 05, 2004 2:29 pm

That's interesting. Another Mode 7 graphics one I found was Gideon's gamble by superior.
I was reading that Level 9 article and saw a game I've never heard about called 'Knight Orc' - sounds pretty good. Didn't know anything about it.

melchett · Post by **melchett** » Mon Jul 05, 2004 4:08 pm

I'd also read about "Knight Orc" and also another adventure called "Gnome Ranger II:Ingrid's Back" a couple of years ago but had no success whatsoever tracking down the BBC versions of them. Apparently, BBC versions exist for all Level 9 games but I think these two will only work on Master computers e.g. they need shadow ram and lots of sideways ram.

If you're interested in playing them then you can download the DOS versions from the following "abandonware site" which is where I obtained them from a while ago now. Not sure if they'll run under W2K or XP as lots of old games don't. There are some DOS emulators out there but the best ones (ironically) seem to run under Linux.

Knight Orc: http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?name=Knight+Orc

Ingrid's Back: http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=460

Knight Orc also appears to be universally accepted as one of the best Level 9 games out there. If you go to google and search on Knight Orc you'll see what I mean...

Maybe Knight Orc and Ingrid's Back should be included on the Lost+Found list? That's bound to drive them out of the woodwork.

AJW · Post by **AJW** » Thu Jul 08, 2004 1:26 pm

I definitely think they should be in that section. I found some information on all the BBC level 9 games from a site called 'Adventureland' that was linked to from one of the other links you posted.
As you say Knight Orc really sounds good although I never saw it reviewed - probably missed it.
It's strange because the review I've got in the Micro User 1989 is for Gnome Ranger 2 and one of the screenshots in the magazine (the rainbow one) is the same as a screen shot in the version of Gnome Ranger in the archive on Stairway to Hell. Don't know what that means.
I've been checking Ebay for BBC Level 9 titles but haven't seen any yet.

BTw, I think a BBC could take both SRAM and shadow RAM. The Master must have had much more SRAM though mustn't it, to be 128K?

AJW · Post by **AJW** » Thu Jul 08, 2004 1:29 pm

I've just realised I've been posting in the wrong thread!

Sorry ChuckieChamp!

Jeremy Grayson · Post by **Jeremy Grayson** » Thu Jul 08, 2004 4:49 pm

AJW wrote;

I've been checking Ebay for BBC Level 9 titles but haven't seen any yet.

Well, if you've got a spare £30 (at least) going spare, there's a copy of Return to Eden with all the inserts and send-off helpsheets which will be won in three hours' time.

JY

melchett · Post by **melchett** » Fri Jul 09, 2004 7:53 pm

I'm not so convinced anymore that Knight Orc was ever released on the BBC. I downloaded the OCR'd manual from "The Home of the Underdogs" and it gives installation instructions for a whole host of 8-bit computers (notably all of which have at least 64k) and a bunch of 16-bit machines but unfortunately there's no mention of the beeb...

AJW · Post by **AJW** » Mon Jul 19, 2004 1:15 pm

Jeremy - Thanks for letting me know but I think I'd prefer to try to get one of the later versions or later games with graphics.
Melchett -according to one site it was released in 1987. Might be worth checking magazine reviews.

Jeremy Grayson · Post by **Jeremy Grayson** » Mon Jul 26, 2004 1:25 pm

Hi AJW

Would the copy of 1988/9 text and graphic title now on sale on Ebay fit the bill? 

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... eName=WDVW

Cheers,

Jeremy

AJW · Post by **AJW** » Sat Jul 31, 2004 12:05 pm

Yes that is ideal but unfortunately I've missed it not having checked here for several days - damn!
Thanks for letting me know, I'll have to keep checking.
Btw, I let Dave M know about Knight Orc so hopefully he can try to find out about it. He's also looking into 'Explorer' and 'Bladedancer' I think.

melchett · Post by **melchett** » Sat Aug 14, 2004 8:55 am

Well it looks like ebay has confirmed that Gnome Ranger II: Ingrid's Back does in fact exist for the BBC Master or expanded BBC B.

<a href="http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... otohosting

Shame it's going for such a ridiculously high price (I guess this is such a rare item though)? Wonder if anyone who reads this forum is going to be the lucky bidder and will submit an image to the archive for the rest of us to enjoy... ;)

STH Administrator - any chance of including Knight Orc and Ingrid's Back on the Lost & Found page?

Post by **Arcadian** » Sat Aug 14, 2004 11:03 am

Phew! The "lucky bidder" was me, so provided it arrives in one piece and is readable, you can look forward to a disc image (and scans) appearing on STH soon! :)

melchett · Post by **melchett** » Sat Aug 14, 2004 3:56 pm

That's superb news - I hadn't realised you were bidding for the item. Can't wait to see the adventure and thanks for promising to make it available to us!

Only Knight Orc to track down now... ;)

Fraser · Post by **Fraser** » Sun Aug 15, 2004 9:43 am

When I load the disc version the emulator freezes. The uef version must be have a bad block.

AJW · Post by **AJW** » Sun Aug 15, 2004 7:54 pm

I saw that myself although I was more sure it was released than Knight Orc having seen the review (with screenshots of the original version - maybe they're duplicated?)

melchett · Post by **melchett** » Wed Aug 18, 2004 7:35 am

Hi AJW, 
 
I must admit that I'm also becoming somewhat sceptical as to whether Knight Orc was ever released on any of the BBC variants. Most of the interactive fiction websites do not have a reference to a BBC Micro version and the only reference I have found has been on the BBC Games Archive. 
 
The only slight hope I have is that "Gnome Ranger", "Gnome Ranger II:Ingrid's Back" and "ScapeGhost" were all written using the KAOS (mangled name of Knight Orc Adventure System) engine and therefore after "Knight Orc"... This makes me think that one existed although it may never have been released?

AJW · Post by **AJW** » Thu Aug 19, 2004 11:23 pm

Hi,
I didn't think about the KAOS system although it does seem to be looking unlikely.
Shame Level 9 ended although Scapeghost was some way to depart on the Beeb! Great concept like many of their earlier titles.

Post by **Arcadian** » Sun Oct 17, 2004 1:09 pm

Well I'm happy to report that after an anxious two month wait, Ingrid's Back finally arrived on my doorstep this weekend, and a quick check using my BBC Master reveals that the discs are perfectly readable (though a little noisy!) and the game loads as it should.

I'd pretty much given up hope of receiving it, as the ebay seller had built up a huge glut of negative feedback over the past month, and he wasn't responding to any emails. Even the phone number he had listed with eBay was fictitious!

Anyway, all that matters is that it's here now, so watch out for a disc image on STH very soon!

melchett · Post by **melchett** » Mon Oct 18, 2004 11:57 am

Hi Dave, Many thanks for buying this game and making it available to us to play - it was definitely worth the wait...

stardot.org.uk

Late period BBC stuff

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DAMN!

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