SC-3000 Rabbit Hole... Unlisted Adventures

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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Re: SC-3000 Rabbit Hole... Unlisted Adventures

#16 Post by Strident » Sat Aug 28, 2021 7:28 pm

Ninja, from Softgold, in our database already...
http://solutionarchive.com/game/id%2C1496/Ninja.html

Seems to have had an SC-3000 release...
https://segaretro.org/Ninja

Forbidden Zone
(more research needed)
https://segaretro.org/The_Forbidden_Zone
Four parts... "Stranded in Space", "The City of Doom" and "Bandits Galore", and the unreleased "The Final Conflict"
Text adventures??

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Re: SC-3000 Rabbit Hole... Unlisted Adventures

#17 Post by auraes » Sun Aug 29, 2021 6:15 am

This is not a rabbit hole but an Ali Baba cave!

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Re: SC-3000 Rabbit Hole... Unlisted Adventures

#18 Post by Strident » Sun Aug 29, 2021 9:33 am

More details on Forbidden Zone... The New Zealand computer magazines from this period are absolutely fascinating...
forbidden-zone-sc-3000.jpg
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Re: SC-3000 Rabbit Hole... Unlisted Adventures

#19 Post by Strident » Sun Aug 29, 2021 11:16 am

It's been fascinating reading New Zealand's Computer Input magazine... I've just discovered a whole batch of previously-undocumented Spectrum/ZX81/TRS-80 games & programs, several of them which are probably text adventures. Some good features on the SC-3000 in there too.

It's a shame that there only seems to be four issues of the magazine archived online. The magazine also had some interesting little type-in programs.

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Re: SC-3000 Rabbit Hole... Unlisted Adventures

#20 Post by Garry » Sun Aug 29, 2021 4:00 pm

I have spent all day wading through the SC-3000 web sites listed above and have come up with a pretty solid list of SC-3000 adventures. Now all I have to do is find them and find a way to play them. It's not so easy...

I haven't yet found an SC-3000 repository or archive. The best I've come up with is a few wav files from a forum. wav files are no good for an emulator. They generally require a cas file, but the SC-3000 doesn't seen to have a standard cas file format and I haven't found any tools to convert them anyway. The bin files from the megacart and multicart are not the original cassette files. They have been modified to work on the cart and I haven't yet got the cart working anyway.

It turns out that blueMSX can't load cassette files. So, I downloaded another emulator called Meka. It turns out that it can't load cassette files either. So I downloaded the latest version of MAME. That requires a doctorate in computer obscurity to get it to work. I've got to the point where I can load the BASIC cartridge and see the SC-3000 screen, but the keyboard doesn't work, so I can't load anything. Sheesh.

I haven't given up yet, but I'm not surprised that there is so little information on the SC-3000 adventures, as it seems to be the worst supported system from the point of view of software preservation and emulation.

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Re: SC-3000 Rabbit Hole... Unlisted Adventures

#21 Post by Strident » Sun Aug 29, 2021 4:12 pm

Yeah, I've joined the SC-3000 group on Facebook. They seem to have a lot of the files in a usable format (not sure usable on what, though :) ) but don't seem to have any sort of central archive for them... Although they seem to share them if you ask.

I'm just having a look at having a go at getting things running myself.

I'm also going to pull all the information collected together so far and create the relevant entries for the CASA database. I'll then approach that community and see if they can help with specific files and/or additional information.

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Re: SC-3000 Rabbit Hole... Unlisted Adventures

#22 Post by Garry » Sun Aug 29, 2021 4:19 pm

Good idea. I'll try that, too. (The Facebook thing, I mean.) A little while back, I found some obscure adventures for the Spectravideo on a Spectravideo Facebook group.

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Re: SC-3000 Rabbit Hole... Unlisted Adventures

#23 Post by Garry » Sun Aug 29, 2021 4:26 pm

Woohoo! I've worked out how to enable the SC-3000 keyboard in MAME and now I've got the Megacart working.

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Re: SC-3000 Rabbit Hole... Unlisted Adventures

#24 Post by Strident » Sun Aug 29, 2021 4:32 pm

Garry wrote:
Sun Aug 29, 2021 4:26 pm
Woohoo! I've worked out how to enable the SC-3000 keyboard in MAME and now I've got the Megacart working.
Yep, me too. :)

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Re: SC-3000 Rabbit Hole... Unlisted Adventures

#25 Post by Strident » Mon Aug 30, 2021 3:36 pm

I've added skeleton entries for the games we've found; so we've gone from eight to twenty-six games for the SC-3000 now.
https://solutionarchive.com/list/platform%2C75/

All the entries will need screenshots, where available, and padding out a little.

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Re: SC-3000 Rabbit Hole... Unlisted Adventures

#26 Post by Garry » Tue Aug 31, 2021 1:07 am

Good work. I'll try to do some screen grabs when I can get MAME to behave and extra details as they come to hand.

Two that you're missing are 'Alien' and 'Case of the Mad Mummy' from Dotsoft. Annoyingly, some of the Dotsoft games go by different names on different platforms under different publishers. According to a forum thread that I saw, the Dotsoft games aren't exactly the same as the C64 games.

Two others that I came across, but can't confirm, are 'Crusader 1: The Bloodstar Conspiracy' and 'Pyramids of Mars', both from Software Concepts. Have you come across those? Assuming they exist, we'd need to confirm that they are text adventures and not something else, like RPG.

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Re: SC-3000 Rabbit Hole... Unlisted Adventures

#27 Post by Strident » Tue Aug 31, 2021 8:19 am

Garry wrote:
Tue Aug 31, 2021 1:07 am
Good work. I'll try to do some screen grabs when I can get MAME to behave and extra details as they come to hand.

Two that you're missing are 'Alien' and 'Case of the Mad Mummy' from Dotsoft. Annoyingly, some of the Dotsoft games go by different names on different platforms under different publishers. According to a forum thread that I saw, the Dotsoft games aren't exactly the same as the C64 games.

Two others that I came across, but can't confirm, are 'Crusader 1: The Bloodstar Conspiracy' and 'Pyramids of Mars', both from Software Concepts. Have you come across those? Assuming they exist, we'd need to confirm that they are text adventures and not something else, like RPG.
Cool.

We have Case of the Mad Mummy listed under the Mystery of Munroe Manor
http://solutionarchive.com/game/id%2C37 ... C+The.html

I'll amend the Alien entry appropriately
http://solutionarchive.com/game/id%2C904/Alien.html

I'll have a look for those other two. I don't recall spotting them.

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Re: SC-3000 Rabbit Hole... Unlisted Adventures

#28 Post by Strident » Tue Aug 31, 2021 8:29 am

Pyramids from Mars by Software Concepts
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Re: SC-3000 Rabbit Hole... Unlisted Adventures

#29 Post by Strident » Tue Aug 31, 2021 8:33 am

Crusader... from the same advert... Probably not an adventure? Or certainly something more combat orientated...
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Re: SC-3000 Rabbit Hole... Unlisted Adventures

#30 Post by Garry » Tue Aug 31, 2021 8:44 am

After much skullduggery, I've managed to get three of the Grandstand Leisure titles onto disk. This means you can play them on blueMSX, which is far better than struggling with MAME. The three titles are: Death Satellite, Enterprise Escape and Mars Adventurer. I'll send some screen grabs shortly.

I'm a bit hesitant to make these widely available until I've tested them, but if anyone wants a copy, perhaps I could post them here.

Now, if only I can work out how to extract the files from that mega cartridge thingy and convert the wav files to something usable and extract the BASIC files from the wav files and print BASIC listings and...

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