Sunday 9 September 2012

Doriath (Commodore 64, 1985) and the Crux Desperationis (†)


Front Cover, Cassette version
The cross you see in brackets on the title of this post represents the symbol which Greek and Latin translators used to mark inconsistent or unclear part of the text (†). That particular sign was called crux desperationis and similarly I will use that sign when a particular game meets one of the following cases:

  • Not easy or impossible to find;
  • Release date uncertain;
  • Announced and never released;
  • Released and never announced.

The first crux I'm presenting it's an example of the first case scenario: "almost" impossible to find. Doriath is a minor Commodore 64 game which I personally never seen in its original form. The best I could do was just to retrieve scans of inlay, a dumped version and a detailed fan webpage. At this stage I can guess that since collectors and users didn't consider this game peculiar and interesting, it never satisfied the basic supply and demand criteria. But still something is not clear: why if even collectors don't really care about it, the original version is not on the market at all?


  • It has been printed just in few copies?
  • The game didn't sell well and all unsold stocks disappeared?

Last night so, I wondered if I could find any real trace of this piece but nothing again and even if a dumped copy is easy to find, it can't cool down that compulsion to find, possess and know more about it.

Anyway, one thing came up last night: Doriath was released either on disk (only C64), according to what one user claims on his Lemon64 personal game list.

From this tiny clue, I'm going start my research again. Updates - hopefully - soon.

Edit: I just want to mention the only Doriath fan page existent at the moment: site here

5 comments:

  1. Hi, and welcome to retrocollecto.org btw. :) - Just wanted to link you Doriath on our site:

    http://retrocollector.org/index.php?page=1&system=1&media=123456789&publisher=-1&title=doria&region=-1&release=2157

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks John! Doriath seems to be pretty hard to find actually. BTW Your archive is brilliant and really well organized. Keep going with the great job.

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  2. I have start to make this game on Coleco Vision. I would like to contact the author of the original game to let him know and make sure there is no problem doing so.

    I decided to write details about my work, here: http://fcycles.blogspot.ca/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well, better idea to check with the actual author of the game before. Unfortunately I can't help, I've misarebly failed in the attempt of contacting him.

      Delete
    2. The project has been cancelled.. for legal concerns, as I failed to reach the author too.

      the link become: http://superdoriath.blogspot.com

      You can find mock-ups and other things about it.

      Delete