Tunnelmaze, Underground Adventure et.al.

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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Gunness
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Tunnelmaze, Underground Adventure et.al.

#1 Post by Gunness »

In the database there are a number of games listed under Duckworth.

I've found these games for a number of platforms, often with different publishers. They were all in straight BASIC, so they should be easy to port. Does anyone know what platforms these games were officially published on, and how many that are "private" ports?
dave
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Re: Tunnelmaze, Underground Adventure et.al.

#2 Post by dave »

I always thought that these where on the BBC, I noticed that Amazon has a load of their books:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_nos ... ng&x=0&y=0

The BBC versions seem to be using the extended BBC BASIC features (e.g. PROCs)
Alastair
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Re: Tunnelmaze, Underground Adventure et.al.

#3 Post by Alastair »

Duckworth published a number of books written by Peter Gerrard called "Exploring Adventures on the X" where X is a computer platform. The meat of the book was how to program adventure games in BASIC, with the development of "Underground" being the example, Tunnelmaze and Castlemaze were listed at the back.

For those who did not want to type in the programs you could buy all three games on one cassette from Duckworth (or rather their software arm Ducksoft).
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Re: Tunnelmaze, Underground Adventure et.al.

#4 Post by Gunness »

Dave, Amazon never ceases to amaze me. I'd never have thought that such books were still available. Perhaps I should see if my "C64 memory guide" is worth a few quid ;)
Alastair wrote:Duckworth published a number of books written by Peter Gerrard called "Exploring Adventures on the X" where X is a computer platform....For those who did not want to type in the programs you could buy all three games on one cassette from Duckworth (or rather their software arm Ducksoft).
Ah.... that explains part of it. So the new question is: Where can I find a list of "X"?
Alastair
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Re: Tunnelmaze, Underground Adventure et.al.

#5 Post by Alastair »

I found this via Google: Link to Greenwich Council library catalogue search (and remember to click on the other two pages).

I don't know if there were any more books but the list seems pretty comprehensive.
Alastair
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Re: Tunnelmaze, Underground Adventure et.al.

#6 Post by Alastair »

There's an advert for the "Exploring Adventures" in "Micro Adventurer" Issue 3 (January 1984) on page 44 (bottom left corner) which lists the current and upcoming books in the series, as can be seen here at ftp://ftp.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sincl ... 300044.jpg (thank you WoS). The questions now become, were any more books published, which were written by Peter Gerrard and which by Kevin Bergin, and was there any difference in the adventures included in each book (especially between the Gerrard and Bergin editions).
Alastair
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Re: Tunnelmaze, Underground Adventure et.al.

#7 Post by Alastair »

I think I might have misunderstood the advert and that Peter Gerrard wrote all of the "Exploring Adventures" books, and Kevin Bergin wrote some of the other listed titles. This probably means that the three adventures in each book are the same. I have amended the entries accordingly using the list at http://wikireadia.org/search-books-by-isbn/3/46/14.html as a guide, note that this list does not mention the Sharp MZ.
dave
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Re: Tunnelmaze, Underground Adventure et.al.

#8 Post by dave »

I've added a note to the game: I found the version of Castlemaze for the Sharp MZ-80K on a collection tape from the Sharp Users Club. So I'm guessing it's an unofficial conversion.
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