Update: Lone Wolf and The Ice Halls of Terror (All platforms, 1985)

During the 2013 I was questioning if Lone Wolf and The Ice Halls of Terror was ever released. Yesterday, Joe Dever confirmed me that the game never happened.

The Ice Halls of Terror did not get published. This was due to the fact that the developer went bankrupt one month before it's scheduled release! There are no copies of it in existence.

 Case closed then, another Crux Desperationis removed from my list.

P.S. If you are a fan of the series, the new adventure game has been released recently.

The Quest for the First C64 CRPG.

As some of you already read on my Facebook page, I decided to keep my researches going on this blog.
The two main reasons why this space has been particularly quiet are basically two:

• Failed attempt to date all the C64 CRPGs due the huge number of imprecise references on the main databases
• Major pressure from real life and other activities.

Since I believe I can tackle the second problem; I decided to approach the first problem differently, focusing on smaller tasks, in order to sort out the main big problem: wrong dating of the majority of software published during the 80s, which - for me- it's a major issue from an historical point of view. If you can't put a resource in its actual historical context, you can't construct a model of the past. 

Unfortunately I can't use radiocarbon dating, so everything is going to be approached with an analytical study of the available medium and resources, trying the keep the approximation of the date as close as possible to its actual one. Also, any suggestion or help from readers is more than welcome. 

Said so,  the first Quest I'm approaching is something I have been thinking about for long time: what's the first CRPG officially produced and released for the Commodore 64? 

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My unfortunate first attempt to find the Holy Grail of the C64 CRPGs started here two years ago or so.

Catacombs (Commodore 64, 1987)

Being the ardent treasure hunter that you are, you had a hard time resisting the stories about the Catacombs of Darkness and the fantastic caches of gold hidden there by the mysterious builders of the underground fortress.

Armed with only a torch, you descended the steps leading down to the catacombs without hesitating, ignoring the weird cries emanating from the dimly lit crypt, images of bulging chests of ill-gotten lucre swimming in your mind.

Today I stumbled into this simple dungeon crawler for Commodore 64 I've never noticed before. Published on Ahoy! (1987/01, Issue #37) and Compute!'s Gazette (November 1994), Catacombs is a Basic language game distributed either on disc and as listing. 

The game itself is a dungeon crawler with some really distant similarities with Sword of Fargoal (really few to be honest). The structure is based on a minimal architecture of 10 dungeons to explore, with treasure, traps and monster. To finish every catacomb level, you have to collect the key and find the exit door. For its simplicity, it might be defined as an archetypical casual game, especially for the low level of commitment requested.

More interesting details are explained on its dedicated article, where the coder explains the main stylistic peculiarity of the game. 

Catacombs is a game I created with the intention of experimenting with one of the 64’s least appreciated graphic modes-extended background color mode (EBC). Most people refer to it as a useless novelty of the VIC chip, but I have always thought that the ability to change the background color of a whole screen with a single POKE had to have a good game hiding in it somewhere. So far I have created a machine language game and this BASIC program using the VIC’s EBC mode, and have yet to run short on ideas for future projects.

Basically EBC mode works like this: your character set is cut down to one quarter of its usual 255 shapes, giving you only 64 to work with, the first 64 in the set. These first 64 characters consist mostly of alphanumeric codes, so if you are planning on writing a game, you will probably have to redefine your character set to substitute one of your shapes for one of the Commodore’s 64 default characters.

In EBC the first 64 characters of this set are displayed normally, getting their foreground color from color memory and their background color from the register at 53281. But the codes from 63 to 127, 128 to 191, and 192 to 255 get their background colors from registers 53282, 53283, and 53284 respectively. Although the colors are different, the characters still come from the shape tables of the first 64 codes!

Pretty simple game indeed, but definitely worth entering the dungeon crawler category, even though it cannot be considered an actual CRPG, since the game is limited to the simple exploration of 10 catacombs level, not providing any character creation or inventory feature.

In case you want to explore the simplicity of this archetypical game, I've uploaded the C64 disk with official documentation, and the extract from Ahoy! with the article and the actual Basic listing.

Download Catacombs for Commodore 64
Download Catacombs article and listing (Ahoy! 1987/01, Issue #37 extract)

The Valley: the first CRPG for Commodore 64?

I have spent the last months trying to list and date all the CRPGs ever produced for the Commodore 64 and I have honestly encountered a massive amount of difficulties mainly because most of the online databases report, for every single entry, copyright dates rather than the actual release year. The whole rechecking process took me months only for a partial completion of the listing; despite my efforts, anyway, I still can't see the end of the tunnel.

However, while during the listing process, I wondered which was the first CRPG ever published for the Commodore 64,  considering that Tramiel's machine was released only during the summer of the 1982. A first conclusion pointed me towards an ancient Argus Press Software title named The Valley. 

A pretty basic game, but still interesting for its age. The gameplay involves exploring the Valley where there are two safe points (castles) at either end of the path. Apart from the starting and ending point, there some other places to explore: the Black Tower of Zaexon, Swamps, Forests, Vounim's Lair, and the Temple of Y'Naigoth. To complete the game, you have to find the legendary Helm of Evanna. That's it.

The Valley has been released around the early eighties (1) for Commodore PET, Tandy TRS80, BBC Model B, Oric 1 and Sharp MZ80K and then ported to the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64. The original version of this game was published as a Basic language listing in a British magazine called Computing Today, around 1981; for the same reason there are around so many unofficial versions. 

Let's go back to official C64 version anyway. 

Here's how this game has been dated on the most relevant online databases:

MobyGames: 1982

Gamebase64: 1982

So when I started listing all the games, I had no doubt: The Valley was the first CRPG ever released for the C64. I was wrong. 

When I realized that all the games requested a double check, I ended moving The Valley from 1982 to 1983, positioning it from being the first in the list to one of the many published during the more prolific 1983. 

So why MobyGames and Gamebase64 superficially dated The Valley in 1982? 

The Valley, Title Screen, Commodore 64

Both sites probably came to a quick conclusion looking only at the main game screen, which reports as copyright date 1982 . 

When I decided to investigate a little bit more, I found the answer to my question only looking at the tape and inlay of the official ASP release. 

The Valley, Tape, Commodore 64

The Valley, Documentation, Commodore 64

Looking at the original tape and the bottom part of the documentation, the release date is clearly 1983 and not 1982,  leaving no other CPRG in my 1982 slot. 

This conclusion, unfortunately, doesn't answer to the main question: is there any CRPG produced during 1982 for the C64? 

Apparently not.  

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(1) Probably 1981.

Images courtesy of Mocagh, World of Spectrum and Gamebase64.

Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (C64), 1982 or 1987?

I know I've been quiet during the last month but I had to reorganize my entire archive and all the process is taking ages. Along with that, I've been working on a big project for this blog, which, I hope, will be published soon.  

Regarding this opera magna I'm working on, I've stumbled into a really worrying case of CRPG incorrect year dating.

As you have noticed from the post title, the game we are talking about is Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord for C64 and its release date. As you will see from below, most of the main videogame databases online, report inconsistent release date for this game, dating it from 1982 to 1987, which is a quite big gap.

Lemon64: 1982.

Gamebase64: 1982.

Ready64: 1982.

MobyGames: 1987.

We have a problem here, a very big one. 

Since a started to check all the CRPGs datations on the online databases, I have noticed that many of them are wrong or better, are referring to the copyright date rather than the actual release period. Looking at this specific case I might immediately say that Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord has been effectively released for Apple II on the 1981/1982 (original copyright) and then ported to C64 only into the 1987 (release date). 

Why cannot be 1982? 

Now, let's start thinking that the Commodore 64 machine has been released only in the middle of 1982 and the standard of the released games was more or less basic language oriented. Since Wizardry is a quite structured and complex game, it doesn't fit with the rest of the 1982 Commodore production; but let's take it as a personal assumption for the moment. 

Anyway, let's get a bit more into actual proofs. 

Exploring the box shots of Wizardry I for C64, here's what I've discovered.

Front Box: Copyright 1981-1987

Back Box: Copyright 1981-1987

Disk: Copyright 1987

Reference Card: Copyright 10/1987

According to the reference Card and Game Disk, the copyright of the Commodore 64 is version clearly set to 1987. All the references to 1981 are probably just about the original copyright of Wizardry so 1982 cannot be the release date for this porting.

Wizardry is just one the many cases of misdating I've found in the last months. Almost all the main C64 databases contain many incorrect release dates for major and minor CRPGs released between the early eighties and part of the nineties; and you can notice that especially when you find yourself in front of many C64 games dated at 1979, which, of course, is more than paradoxical.