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

#31 Post by Garry » Tue Aug 31, 2021 8:54 am

More good finds. I don't know how you do it. It sounds like Pyramids of Mars is a text adventure. There's a good chance that this is a port of one of the other games with a similar title, but we won't know for sure until we can find a copy.
Strident wrote:
Tue Aug 31, 2021 8:33 am
Crusader... from the same advert... Probably not an adventure? Or certainly something more combat orientated...
It sounds like Crusader is an RPG. I think I read somewhere that Crusader 1 is the only part of the trilogy that was ever released.

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

#32 Post by Strident » Tue Aug 31, 2021 9:03 am

Garry wrote:
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.
It'll be interesting try and ascertain whether Enteprise Escape is...

Trek Adventure
http://solutionarchive.com/game/id%2C10 ... nture.html
...or...
Save Our Ship
http://solutionarchive.com/game/id%2C92 ... +Ship.html

...or something original that just uses the same plot idea!

I really wouldn't be surprised if Death Satellite matches up with an existing entry.

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

#33 Post by Garry » Tue Aug 31, 2021 9:32 am

I just had a quick look and both games look quite different to anything with similar titles. I'll try and give them a play over the next few days.

Incidentally, there is no such game as 'Save Our Ship'. That's the title of the magazine article, not the title of the game. It's actually called 'Star Trek Adventure':
Star Trek Adventure (Randy Hawkins) screen 02.png

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

#34 Post by Strident » Tue Aug 31, 2021 3:06 pm

Garry wrote:
Tue Aug 31, 2021 8:44 am
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.
I wouldn't mind giving them a go. I'm not particularly enjoying the "MAME" experience.

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

#35 Post by Alastair » Tue Aug 31, 2021 11:39 pm

If MAME is causing headaches you could try either MAMEUI or MESSUI (if you don't care about console emulation), see https://messui.1emulation.com/ or https://arcade.mameworld.info/messui/

Not only do these versions contain an integrated front-end but they also have an optional menubar available when an emulated machine is running.

Failing that, early versions of MESS also had a built in menubar but I cannot recall the last version that had this feature.

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

#36 Post by Garry » Wed Sep 01, 2021 2:15 am

Zipped disk images are attached below. Download and unzip the ones you want.

In blueMSX, choose Options > Emulation.
For MSX machine, select SEGA - SF-7000, as this is required for disk support.
Click OK.
Choose File > Disk Drive A > Insert.
Navigate to your sf7 disk file image, select it and click Open.
Click Run button on toolbar.
When 'SEGA SC-3000 Disk BASIC ver 1.0p' screen appears, enter FILES to get a directory listing.
Enter RUN "filename", where filename is the file name in the directory listing.

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

#37 Post by Strident » Wed Sep 01, 2021 7:07 am

Thanks for those. They seem to work great.

And, yes, Enterprise Escape is actually just Bob Retelle's Trek Adventure https://bluerenga.blog/2019/04/08/trek-adventure-1980/

I wonder if Aardvark et al. were paid for these games?

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

#38 Post by Garry » Wed Sep 01, 2021 7:27 am

Strident wrote:
Wed Sep 01, 2021 7:07 am
Enterprise Escape is actually just Bob Retelle's Trek Adventure
Good to know. I checked the others, but I only checked Enterprise Adventure against the TRS-80 magazine listings.

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

#39 Post by Strident » Wed Sep 01, 2021 8:13 am

I'm pretty sure that D. Van Kan, of Death Satellite and Pyramid, is Danny Van Kan as he also contributed programs to Sega Computer magazine.
danny-van-kan-2.PNG
danny-van-kan-2.PNG (153.81 KiB) Viewed 16675 times
danny-van-kan-1.PNG
danny-van-kan-1.PNG (243.56 KiB) Viewed 16675 times
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danny-van-kan-1b.PNG (193.43 KiB) Viewed 16675 times

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

#40 Post by Garry » Wed Sep 01, 2021 8:37 am

If it is, then that would confirm the spelling of his name. I've seen it as D van Kan, D Van Kan and D VanKan. The latter is the more common spelling on the SC-3000 sites.

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

#41 Post by auraes » Wed Sep 01, 2021 11:48 am

I made a tape from the type-in program The Land of Sorcery. I don't know if it works with blueMSX (my version with WineHQ doesn't work), but it works with the eSC-3000 emulator: http://takeda-toshiya.my.coocan.jp/

Operating mode:

Code: Select all

Launch sc3000.exe
Menu: Cart:Insert:Sega_BASIC_Level_3_V1_SC-3000.sc
LOAD"LoS"
* Loading start
Menu: CMT:Play:LandofSorcery.cas
Found LoS
* Loading end
RUN
Attachments
LoS.zip
(35.05 KiB) Downloaded 76 times
LoS.png
LoS.png (8.9 KiB) Viewed 16665 times

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

#42 Post by Garry » Wed Sep 01, 2021 12:20 pm

auraes wrote:
Wed Sep 01, 2021 11:48 am
I made a tape from the type-in program The Land of Sorcery.
That's great! It saves me typing it in. I was going to suggest that it is a very simple game with single-character input and more RPG than adventure, so doesn't deserve a place on CASA.

Just out of curiosity, where did you find the listing? I posted a message on the SC-3000 Survivors Facebook page and Giancarlo Oneglio gave me the following link to his archive. There's lots of good stuff on there, including scans of books and magazines that may be of value to Gareth. http://segasc3000.altervista.org/index.php?
auraes wrote:
Wed Sep 01, 2021 11:48 am
I don't know if it works with blueMSX (my version with WineHQ doesn't work), but it works with the eSC-3000 emulator: http://takeda-toshiya.my.coocan.jp/
You can't read or write tape images on blueMSX, as there is no standard digital tape format for the SC-3000. That's one reason why I'm trying to get everything onto disk. MAME is awful to use. I haven't heard of that Japanese emulator before, so I'll give it a try. Thanks.

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

#43 Post by auraes » Wed Sep 01, 2021 12:33 pm

The listing of The Land of Sorcery: http://www.sc-3000.com/images/stories/b ... 0pfsc3000/

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

#44 Post by auraes » Wed Sep 01, 2021 2:03 pm

Garry wrote:
Wed Sep 01, 2021 12:20 pm
I was going to suggest that it is a very simple game with single-character input and more RPG than adventure, so doesn't deserve a place on CASA.
Yeah, you can kick it out of CASA.

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

#45 Post by Garry » Sat Sep 04, 2021 3:52 pm

Time for an update.

I now have quite a range of tools to help with the conversion of SC-3000 files to different formats. Fabio Dalla Libera has been extremely helpul and has been updating his Python scripts as I find issues and adding extra features. I'm extremely grateful to him.

Fabio also put me onto some scripts for converting from tokenised BASIC to plain text and vice versa. One of them is a bit buggy, but once I'd worked out the problem, I could fix it in a hex editor. I've also found a couple of neat tools from XavSnap.

I have found 4 emulators:
  • blueMSX is my favourite, but it doesn't have any wav file support. I use this when using disk images.
  • eSC-3000 is my second favourite, but it doesn't have any disk support. I use this when using cassette images.
  • Meka is awful.
  • MAME is even worse, but it supports wav files and disk images if you download the sf7000.zip file. At least I think it supports disk images, but I haven't yet worked out how to set it up. The user interface is absolutely atrocious.
I checked auraes' 'Land of Sorcery' listing. It had a couple of typos, which I've fixed. There was also a bug fix for line 350 in Sega Computer, July 1986, p. 2.

I've converted a few more games to disk, which I'll post here in a day or so.

I'm trying to work out how to run one BASIC program from another BASIC program so that I can put multi-load cassette files onto disk. No luck so far, but I've got a couple of ideas. Unfortunately, I know virtually nothing about the SC-3000 and SF-7000, but I'm getting there...slowly.

I believe I've found the author of the TTS games. It's Graham Gaskell. TTS Sega Magazine started an Adventure Mania column in issue 2. The author of the column said he'd written 'The Time Capsule', 'Transylvania Castle of Horror' and 'Underworld of Kragon', but the author's name wasn't given. In issue 3, he said his name is Graham, Graham Gaskell is the editor of the magazine and TTS publishes the magazine and the games, so it all fits.

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