1988 Origin Intro + Quest For Clues II Press Releases

Posted on May 1, 2012 by Pix

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:-

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.

Origin Sales News Bulletin – Issue #1

Posted on April 26, 2012 by Pix

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:-

Ultima 2 Review – Computer Fun

Posted on April 24, 2012 by Pix

I’ve just been glancing through a load of Electronic Fun magazines which was a short-lived gaming publication that started life in December 1982, to be renamed Computer Fun for the last issue or two before dying off in April 1984. There were plenty of interesting articles, with my highlight being an interview with Roberta Williams done shortly before Kings Quest came out. I almost entirely failed to find anything relevant to the blog though but the very last issue did have this short review of Ultima 2 on the PC:-

ZX Spectrum 30th Anniversary

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Pix

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.

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.

2400 AD – IBM PC Press Release

Posted on April 22, 2012 by Pix

This is a press release for the PC version of 2400 AD dated September 16, 1988. As far as I know, this was the only port the game ever received from the Apple II original which is something of a shame as I quite enjoyed playing it and wouldn’t mind having an enhanced Amiga version to try out.

As an added extra, I’ve played through Legend of Grimrock this weekend and thought I’d give a quick opinion. I’ve heard numerous times that it’s supposed to be influenced by Ultima Underworld which would have warranted a full review if it were true. Instead it’s unashamedly a Dungeon Master clone, with near enough every aspect (other than the automap) being almost straight from that game.

This is my single biggest problem with Legend Of Grimrock. Yes the graphics are quite nice but the gameplay is firmly rooted in 1987. Dungeon Master was regarded as something of a relic on the PC when it finally saw the light of day in 1992 having already being surpassed by games like Eye Of The Beholder 2 and Ultima Underworld. Legend Of Grimrock is so faithful to its roots that I’m not so sure that the same thing doesn’t apply to it as well, fancy graphics or not. There are plenty of dungeon crawlers that have more to them than this, many of which are available on GOG at 1/3 of the price such as Stonekeep, Might and Magic 4/5 and Lands Of Lore. I can’t help but think that anyone who hasn’t already would be better off playing one of those first.

If you’ve played all of those already, or can’t get over 90’s graphics there is plenty of fun to be had with LoG though. The difficulty level throughout was well judged with a reasonable challenge but rarely anything that would hold me up too long. Above all, it has been a long time since I’ve played a new dungeon crawler which is a genre I always liked. LoG certainly had me hooked for the 8 hours or so it took to play to the end, and is a well put together if uninspired game. I came away a little disappointed but I can’t say I was ever a massive fan of Dungeon Master which is arguably key to how much you are going to like LoG.

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