Guardian has an interesting history. From the meagre snippets I've been able to find, and a degree of conjecture, it sounds like it was originally written in Atari BASIC by Mark Stinson as 'Guardian' in 1992, submitted to New Atari User and rejected. This was probably unpublished.
It was then modified by Paul Hampshire (with the author's permission) as 'Guardian of the Sacred Sword' in 1992 and released by A.U.R.A. as a public domain game. This has multiple files including a documentation file, a title screen, modified font and upper case room descriptions and nicely coloured blue screen.
It was then compiled by John E and Spite Ripsoft (two of the main characters behind A.U.R.A.) and released as 'Guardian Adventure' in 1992. This has a single AUTORUN.SYS file, lower case room descriptions and default GRAPHICS 0 screen colours. This is the version in the CASA entry linked above.
In view of the above, I think that the title for the existing entry should be changed to 'Guardian of the Sacred Sword' and some explanatory notes added. I'll send some screen grabs of both versions.
Last edited by Garry on Sat Apr 15, 2023 9:11 am, edited 1 time in total.
Good catch, I completely missed the compiled version of the game. Was this originally available on a particular disk or just on its own as an executable file?
As Die Schatulle is only short, I translated it to English as The Casket. In the process of doing so, I can see that it is absolutely awful. Amateurish, inefficient code, no parser, no world model, buggy, cruel and guess-the-verb. Nevertheless...
Not another one. Probably a first for the Atari, though. I'm pretty sure I ported the Apple II version from Byte to the Atari in the dim, distant past, but that's probably lost to the mists of time. I've still got extensive notes on it.
Interestingly, the porter chose to use the Jyym Pearson look and feel. That was a strange choice.
The publisher is HACE. I'm presuming this is H--- Atari Computer Enthusiasts. Any idea what the "H" stands for?