Arthur Davis Detective Encounter

Games for Spectrum, C64, Amstrad, Amiga, Apple ][ and the rest of the 8-bit and 16-bit platforms. Pleas for help, puzzles, bug reports etc.

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Strident
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Arthur Davis Detective Encounter

#1 Post by Strident » Fri Sep 09, 2022 4:51 pm

Every so often I come across a game, missing from all archives, that I'd really love to play! They're probably not adventures, but these games "starring famous Welsh detective Arthur Davis" for Atari, Vic-20 and C64, sound interesting! (Only appear in ads in Compute 30-35)
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jgerrie
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Re: Arthur Davis Detective Encounter

#2 Post by jgerrie » Sun Sep 11, 2022 2:52 am

Are they written in BASIC?

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Garry
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Re: Arthur Davis Detective Encounter

#3 Post by Garry » Sun Sep 11, 2022 7:49 am

What happened to #1 and #2?

There are no dumps of the Atari versions at AtariMania. Haven't checked anywhere else.

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Strident
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Re: Arthur Davis Detective Encounter

#4 Post by Strident » Sun Sep 11, 2022 9:49 am

Are they written in BASIC?
No copies are archived but I'm guessing they probably were.
Garry wrote:
Sun Sep 11, 2022 7:49 am
What happened to #1 and #2?
No idea. Not found a reference to those yet,
There are no dumps of the Atari versions at AtariMania. Haven't checked anywhere else.
They seem to be absent from all the Atari and Commodore archives, even given the five month advertising spree, of quite large placements, in a big US magazine.

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Exemptus
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Re: Arthur Davis Detective Encounter

#5 Post by Exemptus » Sun Sep 11, 2022 3:05 pm

There is no evidence that I'm aware of that any of these ever had existed. Advertising for software that was not yet finished (or even started!) was relatively common in the 80s, and there are plenty of examples of games confirmed by the people involved that were never finished / released. If any of these did exist, finding a copy would be exceedingly rare.

It's become a nontrivial task for digital archeologists to decide to what extent a given piece of software is genuinely MiA or suspected to never have existed. Things like screenshots are weak evidence (since they could be artistic impressions) or at best prove there was a WIP version. Reviews are better evidence, but I know of at least a couple of reviews of games that were later confirmed as never been programmed, as opposed to existing in a pre-release press version. One could make a full-time hobby out of these things (wink, nudge).

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Strident
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Re: Arthur Davis Detective Encounter

#6 Post by Strident » Sun Sep 11, 2022 4:01 pm

Exemptus wrote:
Sun Sep 11, 2022 3:05 pm
Advertising for software that was not yet finished (or even started!) was relatively common in the 80s
It was, but the advertising over a period of five months; the fact that they started with two games, then expanded to four; the fact that it was originally for a single platform, then two, then three; increases the chance that these were real games. I don't think they were probably good games, but I think at least a couple of them existed. And the lack of a #1 and #2 is interesting.

There is no firm evidence that they existed, yes. But there is equally no firm evidence that they didn't. We've found plenty of "lost" games like this before.

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Exemptus
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Re: Arthur Davis Detective Encounter

#7 Post by Exemptus » Mon Sep 12, 2022 8:09 pm

Strident wrote:
Sun Sep 11, 2022 4:01 pm
I don't think they were probably good games, but I think at least a couple of them existed.
We can hope! I admit to having been intrigued by the ads as well, and I'd very much like to see one of those. Stranger things have happened, as you rightly point out.

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