Recovered Adventures

[Strident]

As archivists are recovering lost (or even unknown) versions of classic adventures all the time, I thought I'd start to log them here as, although we do tend to update the game's pages on CASA to mention it, new "finds" can be easy to miss.

To start off, I spotted this one on Twitter, by prolific Apple II archivist "4am"... who tends to archive a whole bunch of old Apple disks each week...

Survival / Survival Adventure... a very early adventure from 1980
https://archive.org/details/wozaday_Survival_Adventure
We have it listed here for Atari 800... I'm not sure if that Atari version is actually archived, so it's great to see an Apple II version
https://solutionarchive.com/game/id%2C4 ... vival.html

[Strident]

This one, again by 4am for the Apple II was not in our database...

Zodiac Castle / Adventure at Zodiac Castle
Written by Dennis N. Strong and distributed by Dynacomp in 1982
https://archive.org/details/wozaday_Zodiac_Castle

Welcome to the Kingdom of Zodiac. It is a small, but very interesting kingdom. The lands are mostly wooded with large oak forests. The castle itself is quite large for the size of the kingdom, but the ruler always has believed that his subjects should support him well. There are many places to explore, riddles to solve, and many treasures to gather. The 'Guilded Cock' is where treasures are dropped to score.

[Strident]

Zodiac Castle / Adventure at Zodiac Castle
Written by Dennis N. Strong and distributed by Dynacomp in 1982

Interestingly, a Dynacomp catalogue mentions that this game has the same layout as another one, The Windmere Estate Adventure, so that's another unknown Apple adventure for the database.
https://archive.org/details/dynacomp-wi ... /page/n39/

Edit: Link to Windmere Estate https://www.macgui.com/downloads/?file_id=5918

[Garry]

We have it listed here for Atari 800... I'm not sure if that Atari version is actually archived, so it's great to see an Apple II version

I have Survival for the Atari 8-bit, so it must be archived somewhere, as I didn't buy it back in the day.

These woz-a-day files are in the woz disk image format, but that format is not supported by any emulators that I'm familiar with. Can anyone either suggest an emulator that supports it or, better still, suggest a tool that converts the woz format to something more widely supported?

Incidentally, that Mac web site is a valuable find. Who'd have thought to find Apple II files on a Mac site. Unfortunately, like all respositories, the organisation is a mess. It's just a dumping ground for files. For commercial games, you can usually guess the game from the file name, but for everything else, ha, good luck with that.

[Exemptus]

These woz-a-day files are in the woz disk image format, but that format is not supported by any emulators that I'm familiar with. Can anyone either suggest an emulator that supports it or, better still, suggest a tool that converts the woz format to something more widely supported?

AppleWin supports the WOZ format since several versions back; so does MAME, whose Apple II emulation is actually pretty decent now (depending on your needs). The format cannot be "converted" easily because it supports accurate representations of the disk data layout, including protected formats. If the disk is not protected in any way then it can be converted losslessly; otherwise, it depends. There are tools that can attempt conversion, such as https://github.com/leesaudan2/woz2dsk. I have no idea how good they may be; please report your experience if you try them.

[Garry]

Thanks for the info. I thought I was using the latest AppleWin, but when I checked, there is indeed a newer version that supports the woz format.

I had already found and downloaded woz2dsk, but you need to be a rocket scientist to work out how to use it. It has at least three dependencies that I've downloaded, but I can't work out (or was too lazy to work out) how to install these dependencies so that Perl can find them. Obviously, I'm not a Perl expert and I only use it when I don't have a choice and that doesn't happen very often.

[Strident]

Too many to list, but there's a bunch of previously unarchived WoW Software Amstrad CPC adventures in one of the latest updates at CPC Rulez...
https://cpcrulez.fr/index.php?a=1

(Some are preserved elsewhere, or already as a cassette/disk image but there are some new titles too)

[Strident]

Moonbright Tower, a game for TI-99/4A from 1983, has recently been found and archived...
https://atariage.com/forums/topic/33577 ... ame-found/

(download link in that thread)