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The "unidentified game from your childhood" thread


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There's one little game from my childhood for the Amstrad CPC that I know for sure it's not available neither from the thousands of games on FTPs nor from the type-ins or tapes included in the magazines (I have checked them all!).

 

The game was called "Minotaur" and was one of those 3D mazes where there's a monster and a diamond. There was a "random maze generator" option where you could choose the maze dimensions. It was very similar to 3D Maze, but it had a monster and blue background with white lines using "high resolution" (320x200), or the Amstrad CPC's mode 1, instead of mode 0 (which 3D Maze seems to use, see huge pixels).

 

Ironically, the game Sultan's Maze uses the same resolution as Minotaur and shows blue walls, a diamond and a monster that almost looks like a minotaur on the cover, but the actual game has green walls, small red jewels and a ghost:

 

220px-Sultans_Maze_Game.jpg

 

sultans_maze.png

The Minotaur game was not commercial, but it was written in Basic, so I mention it here in case anyone has found a version of it for their own 8 bit computer.

 

Edited by IntelliMission
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Hmm.  An unfound CPC game, you say?  Neat. If it shows up I'll have to add it to my emulator rig.

 

I don't think it was the same game, but there was a Minotaur for the Apple II.  It was programmed by Activision's legendary Larry Miller, who also wrote Enduro for the 2600 amongst others.

 

Incidentally, if anyone knows Larry Miller, let him know John Romero wants to get ahold of him.

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Interesting... for the Apple II, there was a "Minotaur", a top down 2D game which looks pretty fun for 1981, and a "Theseus and the Minotaur", which is very similar to the missing Minotaur for the Amstrad CPC (graphics, random generator with a 100 to 1 complexity value, name of the game, look of the monster) but has some additional features (trap doors to change floor, snakes, turn based combat against the minotaur). Also, in Minotaur you could check the 2D map at any time, with only the parts you had explored in 3D revealed.

 

It's very likely that some guy around 1985 picked up Sultan's Maze Basic code and changed a few things to create Minotaur. Or maybe it was the other way around.

 

I'm aware that there are zero chances to find the actual game, but it's the only game form my childhood I haven't had the chance to experience again, so my hopes are basically:

 

1) To find a version of it for another 8 bit computer

2) To program it myself

3) To manage that somebody else programs it by request

 

The most complex aspect about the code would be the monster, as the diamond was really simple and motionless. I seem to remember the minotaur was moving (probably one square at a time and not necessarily towards you, maybe in the direction it was facing and choosing a random corridor at intersections), but I'm not sure. And I'd pay some money to see the graphic for it consisting of one white line drawn over a blue background.

 

This is a real retro drama here, it was my first 3D experience and playing with the X and Y dimensions was kind of fun. I remember creating 20x1 mazes that were actually a long corridor, hehe! You could even create a 2x1 maze where the diamond appeared always in front of you. Good times!

Edited by IntelliMission
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  • 1 month later...

Okay, I got one.  This is a game from sometime in the 1980s.  My whole class played this in elementary school in NYC; it was a interactive fiction game complete with text and graphics similar to Dragon's Keep.  The computer system was either an Apple II or a Commodore 64 (as we played Dragon's Keep on that).

 

The game involved you going to a spooky house called the Belwerd or Belward House.  You started out by typing in someone's name (we typed in our teacher's name) and the game opened with you waking up in bed from some sort of dream or nightmare.  Your options there were:  1) go back to sleep, 2) call [person's name] to check, and 3) go to the Belwerd House.

 

When you got to the house, your options were to ring the doorbell or go around back; my class chose to go around back and you find a ladder leading into the house.  That's all I remember.  If anyone can ID this game, please do!

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2 hours ago, 7800Knight said:

Okay, I got one.  This is a game from sometime in the 1980s.  My whole class played this in elementary school in NYC; it was a interactive fiction game complete with text and graphics similar to Dragon's Keep.  The computer system was either an Apple II or a Commodore 64 (as we played Dragon's Keep on that).

 

The game involved you going to a spooky house called the Belwerd or Belward House.  You started out by typing in someone's name (we typed in our teacher's name) and the game opened with you waking up in bed from some sort of dream or nightmare.  Your options there were:  1) go back to sleep, 2) call [person's name] to check, and 3) go to the Belwerd House.

 

When you got to the house, your options were to ring the doorbell or go around back; my class chose to go around back and you find a ladder leading into the house.  That's all I remember.  If anyone can ID this game, please do!

Sounds like MYSTERY HOUSE (Apple II).

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1 hour ago, 7800Knight said:

@retrorussell It can't be Mystery House.  I'm watching a playthrough of the game right now; this game we played didn't have 7 people to find.  

Hmm.. maybe see if it's on this list.

https://www.rediscoverthe80s.com/2019/10/9-spooky-haunted-house-80s-video-games.html

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  • 1 month later...

A childhood friend of mine had a computer game (I am pretty sure it was DOS) in black and white (or blue and white or something) where you were competing against the computer on a map with terrain. Each side had several people located at different places on the map, and these people represented an army of 10-20 people or something.

 

There were different kinds of armies. Most common/memorable was a very basic type of fighters, who I remember being a little ape-like, and they fought without weapons, I think.

 

You could order those people to go to waypoints. I think there would be a white or black dot where you wanted them to go, and then they would slowly start to move to those waypoints. I think some terrain was slower to walk in than others. Maybe it was possible to pause or speed up the time.

 

When two opposing people/armies met, there was a battle, in which I think you were supposed to press a button as fast as possible to achieve the best possible result. 

 

I think the object of the game was to capture the opposing team´s flag.

 

I don´t think I want to play this game, but I would like to see some You Tube videos of it.

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11 hours ago, Emulator 67 said:

Lord Mushroom, is the game Bannercatch?

 

No, that´s not it. The graphics of Bannercatch reminds me of Digger, which I also played at this guy´s house. We also played Paratrooper and some strip poker game with non-real women. My friend had very christian parents, so whenever we heard someone approaching, we had to quickly turn off the computer if we were playing the poker game. :)

 

One more thing I think I remember about the mystery game is that during battle, the people/soldiers/fighters on each side were arranged in two lines.

 

I think you use the mouse to set waypoints (when not in combat).

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On 2/12/2021 at 1:26 AM, CaptainBreakout said:

I don't think it was the same game, but there was a Minotaur for the Apple II.  It was programmed by Activision's legendary Larry Miller, who also wrote Enduro for the 2600 amongst others.

Cool. The name suddenly triggered a recollection. LM wrote Epoch and Hadron for the Apple II. Love it how some authors make eminently playable games that progress smoothly through their levels with good controller action.

 

Edited by Keatah
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I wish I could add to this caper about the DOS game with armys and such. Was it, by chance, a hex grid game?  That would imply it was an SGI game or something from Avalon Hill. 

 

OGRE maybe?  Not my field of experience.

...

 

Here's one _I_ want to know about. There was a game for the Apple II, and I'm pretty sure it was by Sunburst Communications.  It was an airplane arcade bomber game, but it was also an educational game involving math.

 

If the player answered a bunch of math questions right, the player got more bombs. The game then moved to an arcade action sequence that looked a little like Star Blazer or Scramble.

 

The arcade sequence was actually pretty good. The player had as many bombs as the math questions they answered.

 

Since this was an educational game and had good copy protection, I don't think this ever showed up on Asimov FTP.  It might be something 4am archived recently, but I don't know the title.

 

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8 hours ago, The Usotsuki said:

Almost sounds more like MECC than Sunburst.

Yes, it does... but I'm almost certain it's Sunburst.  I remember seeing the label on the 5.25 disk when I was booting it up on an Apple IIe in gradeschool.  I also remember the teacher saying that it was the only copy, because the disk had copy protection on it.  The MECC disks at the school had a ton of copies- I think the school had a copy-protection free license or possibly just a ton of duplicates on the MECC titles.

 

Either way, I can't remember the name of the title at all.

 

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On 5/10/2021 at 6:22 AM, CaptainBreakout said:

I wish I could add to this caper about the DOS game with armys and such. Was it, by chance, a hex grid game?  That would imply it was an SGI game or something from Avalon Hill. 

 

OGRE maybe?  Not my field of experience.

 

No, it is not OGRE, and no hex grid.

 

It is similar to Heroes of Might and Magic, except:

- you don´t get more armies than the ones you start with.

- battle is very basic.

- graphics are much worse.

- it is real-time (slowly), so all armies on the map move at the same time.

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I found the game I was looking for! It is The Ancient Art of War:

 

Apparently, it is one of the first real time strategy games. I think the gameplay looks pretty fun for such an old game, but I still wouldn´t want to play it today.

 

The reviewer mentioned that his original version of this game was in four colours, which must have been the case for my friend´s game too.

Edited by Lord Mushroom
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Excellent!!!!   Another one found.  Wished I'd have guessed this.  I remember seeing "The Ancient Art of War: At Sea"... On the back cover of computer mags... Probably A+ or Compute!

 

I've been looking for the lost Apple II math arcade bomber game of mine the last couple evenings.  I went through most of the Sunburst titles from 4am on internet archive.  No dice.  Either it's not a Sunburst game or, if it is, it hasn't been archived yet.  I'll keep looking... Maybe there some Sunburst educational catalogs yet to be found or something.

 

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  • 1 month later...

I got another one and it involved Greek mythology.  You were trapped in a maze because rather than study for a school test on Greek mythology, you spent the night doing a book of puzzles and mazes.  You are teleported into the Labyrinth and told you are in trouble with someone more powerful than your teacher - the Greek gods are upset with you!   You must find your way through the Labyrinth, avoiding the evil Minotaur, learning about Greek myths, collecting items and eventually making it to Mount Olympus where you'd be quizzed on what you learned.

 

Anyone ID this game?

Edited by 7800Knight
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