Re: Rare IIgs Games

[Rubywand <rubywand@swbell.net>]

Helix Energy writes ...
> 
> In article <3763AA63.7D1C9FC8@swbell.net>, rubywand@swbell.net wrote:
> 
> > Helix Energy writes ...
> > >
> > > As maintainer of the Apple IIgs Gaming Memory Fairway, I'm becoming
> > > increasingly curious as to the rumours surrounding the development of some
> > > IIgs games that were never released.

 ....

> > It seems like there
> > was talk of developing a IIgs interpreter which would run Zork Zero.
> 
> Was this talk fairly recent?  If such a IIgs interpreter would include
> play for other games at the time of Zork Zero, including Journey and
> Shogun, that project  would be quite worthwhile.
>

     The info goes back to 1996-- do not know what progress may have been made.

 ....

> >
> >      You left out one of the top pieces of IIgs vapor ware: Bard's Tale III.
> > Supposedly, it is still being held up by the lack of artwork.
> 
> I've seen both the Amiga and PC versions of Bard 3, and the graphics are
> nowhere near the quality they were for the Bard 1 and 2.  Is the lack of
> artwork due to the lack of quality? :-)
>

     Probably not. The IIgs BT-3 seems to be a private project of someone involved in
the creation of the IIgs versions of BT-1 and BT-2 but not BT-3 for PC or Amiga. So,
it should be a much better game-- i.e. not mess up your characters when you do a
Class change, etc..

     On the other hand, the IIgs BT-3 developer would have no rights to the artwork
used in the PC and Amiga releases. Finding someone to produce decent monster pics
seems to be the main snag.

 ....

> 
> >      One game you list is Questron II/gs. Do you know if this is the later
> > release version? The original release would trash hard disks-- i.e., I'm
> pretty sure it would trash your hard disk even if you booted from the diskette.
> 
> I'm afraid to say I don't know.  I'm aware of that particular bug when it
> was reported in A+ magazine in 1987 or 88, but it was a limited run of the
> game that had the bug and I couldn't believe that copies of that
> particular version would still be floating around today.  But you're
> right, its a bit of a risk.
 ....

     The problem seems to crop up when saving game position and/or characters.
Evidently, what happens is that, instead of writing to a specific named 'Save'
volume, the program scans for a drive starting with (I think) Slot 7 and does a
direct block write on the first writeable device it finds.




Rubywand