Appleton/The Village... Original source?

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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Appleton/The Village... Original source?

#1 Post by Strident » Sun Apr 04, 2021 3:55 pm

The Walter Pooley Quilled game, Appleton...
http://solutionarchive.com/game/id%2C77 ... C+The.html

...has an comment in the database originating from the WOS archive, namely...

"According to the author, this was a remake of an older Dragon game. It was never officially released."

I've determined that, despite "never being released", this game was fairly widely circulated in the community; with hints appearing in Sinclair User and also Adventure Probe as early as 1990 (pushing back the date of (non!) publication from 1992 to at least as early as 1990.

However, I'd be interested to try and track down which Dragon game (or possibly TRS-80 CoCo game) it was based on. I know that there are people more familiar with those games on here... I'm presuming it would've been a BASIC type-in game, from a magazine or a book. Walter's Desert Island was inspired by the plot of a TRS-80 game, if I remember correctly.

Here's some details of the basic plot of Appleton, as I've quickly ascertained...

IN THE SLEEPY VILLAGE OF }APPLETON
Nothing ever happens,
Crime statistics are zero.
Then recently a major theft took place,
Your task,to discover what has happened?, and to return the stolen, ? ? back to the owner...

The aim of the game is to find the missing Church Roof restoration fund and return it to the vicar.

The solution is here...
http://solutionarchive.com/file/id%2C1084/

I've uploaded a copy of the Quilled database here...
http://8bitag.com/temp/APPLE1.TXT

Alastair
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Re: Appleton/The Village... Original source?

#2 Post by Alastair » Sun Apr 04, 2021 10:09 pm

The name and plot don't resonate with me, perhaps it was one of those games advertised in the small ads. I'll have a look though Dragon User, I just need to resist the temptation of reading any of the articles - so many hours/days/weeks can be lost that way!

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Re: Appleton/The Village... Original source?

#3 Post by Alastair » Wed Apr 07, 2021 9:06 pm

An update.

I have looked through all of the issues of Dragon User, the Dragon program listing books I own, and any additional English language Dragon program listing book I could find at the Dragon Archive and I have been unable to find any game that matches the plot or name of the Quilled title.

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Strident
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Re: Appleton/The Village... Original source?

#4 Post by Strident » Wed Apr 07, 2021 11:09 pm

Thanks for looking.

It's possibly going to be a TRS-80 CoCo title then. Or the author has misremembered the source... It certainly wouldn't be the first time. :)

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Re: Appleton/The Village... Original source?

#5 Post by Alastair » Wed Apr 07, 2021 11:16 pm

Do we know if Walter Pooley also wrote the original version? It could be that it was the original Dragon version that was never released and he later Quilled his own game.

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Strident
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Re: Appleton/The Village... Original source?

#6 Post by Strident » Wed Apr 07, 2021 11:26 pm

Alastair wrote:
Wed Apr 07, 2021 11:16 pm
Do we know if Walter Pooley also wrote the original version? It could be that it was the original Dragon version that was never released and he later Quilled his own game.
Yeah, it could've been from his own Dragon game which itself wasn't released. Or it could be from his own Dragon game and the Spectrum version wasn't released. Or it could be from someone else's Dragon game, which is why the Spectrum version wasn't released.

The comment was...
"Appleton was never released as it was a rewrite from an old Dragon game."

Which seems to say that it was the Spectrum version that was never released (even though it was obviously circulated in some way, as we have evidence for that).

It doesn't confirm if Walter wrote the Dragon game... he may have done. It is odd that the Spectrum versions never made an appearance when his other games were published, if he wrote it.

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Re: Appleton/The Village... Original source?

#7 Post by Garry » Thu Apr 08, 2021 2:06 am

I searched through my Dragon games and couldn't find anything with Appleton or Village in the title. I have a very good collection of CoCo adventures and couldn't find anything there either. I also searched through all the book and magazine type-ins and couldn't find anything close on any platform.

Without more to go in, I'd say the thing that it was based on was never published or it has been renamed/disguised to hide its source or avoid any confusion with the original game.

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