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1988 Origin Intro + Quest For Clues II Press Releases

May 01
Posted by Pix in Autoduel, Books, Quest For Clues 2, Times Of Lore, Ultima 5

Updates have been thin on the ground here recently which is likely to continue for a while. I tend to be all or nothing with most things and my enthusiasm for blogging has been waning recently. I had thought about taking a complete hiatus but I’ll just reduce posting to as and when I feel the urge instead. The main distractions are work and a huge backlog of games crying out for my attention.

Having offered far too much money for her Kickstarter, I’ve been playing Jane Jensen’s Gray Matter most of the last week which I’m seriously enjoying. I’m a sucker for point and clicks and this is a about as traditional as it gets, with the sort of involving storyline I would expect from Jensen. When I get that finished, I have near enough the entire catalog of Legend sat on a shelf unplayed which I intend to make a start on.

That isn’t going to leave much time for this site but I’ll fit in some posts and the occasional Origin game somewhere. Today I have the last couple of items in a folder of press releases I’ve been slowly working through. They aren’t the pick of the crop but getting them on here does mean I can finally tidy the folder away. The first of these is a concise 1 page introduction to Origin circa 1988. This describes the company goals, foundations and gives short descriptions of the newest games at the time. It contradicts the official book of Ultima claiming that the move away from Sierra was to achieve greater creative control rather than being due to the poor royalties received on ports but I’m sure there were plenty of factors:-

Origin Press Release 1988

The second scan is a press release for Quest For Clues II from August 1st 1989. This appears to be a test run as it’s not on the usual headed paper and would probably have had a further product spec. on the back.

Quest For Clues 2 Press Release

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Origin Sales News Bulletin – Issue #1

Apr 26
Posted by Pix in Autoduel, Times Of Lore, Ultima 4, Ultima 5, Ultima 5 Cluebook

Back in 1987 Origin signed a deal with Broderbund for them to distribute their games. Dating from a year later, this is a scan of the first sales bulletin provided to the Broderbund sales and marketing team. It gives the basic info of the various ports that were just being released at the time + the Ultima 5 cluebook. That cluebook followed some months behind the initial release of the game which definitely wouldn’t happen these days. It also mentions problems with the first version of Ultima 4 on Amiga although it never shipped to customers. This does make me wonder what happened to all those faulty copies:-

Origin Sales News Bulletin - Front Origin Sales News Bulletin - Back

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ZX Spectrum 30th Anniversary

Apr 23
Posted by Pix in Times Of Lore

250px-ZXSpectrum48k

Today is the 30th anniversary of the ZX Spectrum. Anyone who has ever stumbled across my Youtube channel will know that I hold a soft spot for this computer and I couldn’t let it pass unmentioned. The Speccy was a quirky machine with a rubber keyboard, colour clashing graphics and a basic beeper for sound but it was cheap and easy to program and spawned an amazingly large and varied library of games because of it. It never became that popular outside its native UK but there are plenty of us over here who grew up with it.

TimesOfLore

You may think I’ll struggle to tie this into Origin, but they did in fact release one game for the Spectrum which was Chris Roberts’ Times Of Lore in 1989. Times Of Lore was started on the Spectrum’s main competitor (the C64) before Roberts joined Origin making it a more likely target for porting than the usual sprawling Origin games. The conversion was done out of house in the UK by Imagitec.

In honour of the occasion, I thought I should dig out the Spectrum emulator and give this port a quick go. The game had both disk and cassette versions and I’ll be playing the later. This is actually the only Origin game I can think of that ever came on cassette (feel free to correct me here if there were others).

Times Of Lore is a lot of game to fit on a 48K machine. It requires multiple loading (never good on a cassette) and there isn’t any sound. In pre-emulator days this loading would have taken ages but if you had the patience this appears to be a very close clone of the game I played on the PC. It even has the intro, although I do miss Martin Galway’s music.

I was fully expecting this to be terrible considering that this was creaky old hardware by 1989, but it’s actually a perfectly playable port and quite the achievement all things considered. It’s not the version I’d choose but back when I owned a Speccy I would have loved it. As far as I could tell, this port had never made it onto Youtube so here is a quick video of the intro + me running around the map for a couple of minutes:-

If you fancy trying out some ZX Spectrum games head on over to World Of Spectrum where there are over 10,000 of them waiting to be downloaded.

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Times Of Lore Review – Computer Gaming World

Nov 14
Posted by Pix in Magazine Scans, Times Of Lore

TimesOfLoreReviewCGWPage1.jpg TimesOfLoreReviewCGWPage2.jpg

This is from the January 1989 issue of Computer Gaming World:-

That’s all the scans for today. I’ve a couple of other things to mention while I’m posting. I thought it might never happen but Replacementdocs has started to approve some of my submissions presumably thanks to the new editor Pelleas. I never intended to host them all myself so assuming this continues, I’ll be removing them from this site as they are approved from now on. If you want them in high quality, grab them now.

I’m long overdue for some more gameplays and have decided I’d like to take a look at alternative versions of some of Origin’s classics. I’ve been adding some of these to the collection recently which is one of the things prompting this + I’ve got the urge to replay some of the games. I’ll be starting at the very beginning with the original Akalabeth on the Apple II.

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Times Of Lore Review – Games Machine Magazine

Sep 22
Posted by Pix in Magazine Scans, Times Of Lore

I’ve got more scans from Games Machine magazine today. First up is Times Of Lore on the Commodore 64. It gets a middling sort of review. I’ve never played this version but I can imagine the C64 struggling to run the game so it was probably better suited to the PC.

I’d give it around the same score myself having said that. It’s not a bad game as such but the most significant thing about it was the influence it had on the interface for future Ultima games.

TheGamesMachine1400073

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