Colecovision Adam "Temple of Apshai Trilogy?"

[ballyalley]

I have been playing the "Temple of Apshai Trilogy" for various systems over the past two weeks (Amiga, Atari 8-Bit and Commodore 64). I have been mapping the levels and posting graphics from the games in an AtariAge forum topic that I started. If you're interesting, you can read about it here:

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/183584-temple-of-apshai-trilogy-maps/

 

I have seen references to the "Temple of Apshai Trilogy" for the Colecovsion Adam, but I have not actually been able to find this title. I HAVE found "The Temple of Apshai," but NOT the Trilogy. Does the Trilogy actually exist for the Colecovision Adam or was only the first Dunjonquest game released on disk?

 

I use BlueMSX for Colecovision emulation (and it works great), but I don't see any support for Adam emulation with this emulator. What is the best Adam emulator for Windows XP that will support the disk drive so that I can play "Temple of Apshai" (and the Trilogy too, if it exists).

 

Adam

[NIAD]

Temple of Apshai Trilogy was never developed for the ADAM, only the first game in the series was under development, and actually it was never completed by Epyx before they stopped further development of the game due the the ADAM's failure in the marketplace. Eventually a prototype/demo found it's way into ADAM Community and was made available for everyone as Shareware/Public Domain and the Disk Image is available all over the web.

 

BlueMSX only emulates the ColecoVision (although the authors have stated an interest in adding ADAM emulation), so as far as options you can use M.E.S.S. (pretty good ADAM emulation, although no saving back to the disk image is available) or your best option is ADAMem with ADAMem Manager. A tremendous Frontend was developed by Steve Pitman that allows users of Windows Vista and 7 to use ADAMem in those operating systems and it will also work in Windows XP... so I would go this route if I were you.

 

You can download Virtual ADAM v1.03 for the Download section at this location:

 

http://www.sacnews.net/adamcomputer/index.html

[ed1475]

Only the Temple of Apshai is available for the Coleco ADAM.

 

Nice work mapping the levels. I've been following your thread in the Atari 8-bit forum. The levels in the ADAM version appear to be identical (or very similar) to what you've mapped.

 

Here's the most complete disk image for Temple of Apshai. Temple of Apshai - Rev. 2 Patched a1.zip

It's version 2.1 and it's the only version where level 1 is playable.

 

 

I've got a gameplay video of the ADAM version. I started on level 2 and edited it to highlight the monsters. 13 types of monsters are included in the video.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLG7ziQMf-0

Edited June 30, 2011 by ed1475

[ballyalley]

Nice work mapping the levels. I've been following your thread in the Atari 8-bit forum. The levels in the ADAM version appear to be identical (or very similar) to what you've mapped.

 

Just from watching your video I can tell where you are in the game, so the game sure is very similar. I have not yet played the Adam version of The Temple of Apshai, but it appears to be a cross between the original game and the game from the Trilogy. Is it written in BASIC, as the original game was written?

 

Here's the most complete disk image for Temple of Apshai.

 

That's for providing that-- it makes sifting through various versions unnecessary.

 

13 types of monsters are included in the video.

 

The monsters are animated more than in other versions of the game that I've seen. I wonder how come Epyx did away with the animated monsters in the Trilogy?

 

It's pretty fun seeing these different versions of the game!

 

Adam

[NIAD]

Temple of Apshai is a machine language program.

 

I have some Temple of Apshai knockoffs that were done in SmartBASIC and are surprisingly decent. Will have to look for them as I don;t remember of their titles.... I think one was called "The Black Dungeon of Midor".

[ballyalley]

I finally got a chance to play the Adam version of Temple of Apshai a bit. As I observed from watching the video, this version of the game is rather different from the other versions of The Temple of Apshai that I've played. Your character gets tired VERY quickly in this game. This game is also FAR faster paced then I've seen on other systems. When I exited the level after just beating 16 monsters I had gained millions of experience points. I presume that this game, while playable, isn't NEARLY finished or is this hacked to make the game easier? I also was unable to save my character or game in progress. The game warns me that the disk is full.

 

Adam

[NIAD]

Cool findings re. the game and interested to hear what else you are able to come up with as I never did spend a lot of time playing around with it back in the day as I never seemed to be able to find the time to sit down and give these types of games the necessary play time.

 

The original prototype/demo/unreleased version as was obtained from Epyx was indeed buggy, but this mainly dealt with the inability to get it working on a disk, it was originally supplied on data pack, the save feature was a mess and there were a number of menu (especially at the start of the game) that were messed up. A programmer by the name of Joe Waters spent considerable time fixing these issues or most of them to get it to the state we now know. He actually lived in Albuquerque and released software for the ADAM under the Federation Software label and did the Temple hack and some others under the Falcon Federation Hack Group (or something like that) label, but I lost touch with him in the very early 90's.

 

As far as saving your progress, which emulator are you using? I'm pretty sure the version that was posted above should be the best available with the save feature corrected. If you are using MESS, you can't save due to incomplete emulation, you have to use ADAMem or Virtual ADAM. In Virtual ADAM, make sure to uncheck the option "Run copies of images" on the options screen before booting the game.

[ed1475]

The save feature doesn't work on any of the 3 disk images available. Version 2.1 makes level 1 playable.

 

For the 2 older versions:

1 version has the original copyrighted title screen. Another version has the "Phoenix Rev 2" title screen. Level 1 isn't playable on either of these 2 versions. Only levels 2 thru 4 are playable.

 

The 3rd version is the one I posted above. It's the version 2.1 Falcon Federation Hack version. It has the original copyright info but the bottom half of the copyright symbol is missing. All 4 levels are playable.

Edited June 30, 2011 by ed1475

[Draugr]

I still can't believe no one has tried to remake this game, or the Gateway to Apshai for modern PCs or mobile OSes like Android 2.x or 3.x. I loved the entire Apshai series and would love to see a modern remake today.

 

John

[ballyalley]

I still can't believe no one has tried to remake this game, or the Gateway to Apshai for modern PCs or mobile OSes

 

I was wondering about this myself. So many games have fan translations, but I haven't seen anything at all about The Temple of Apshai games. Isn't there a way to at least build the dungeons (perhaps I should say "dunjons")? I don't play modern games, but I imagine that there are editors that would allow a fan to do this. If nothing else, at least the dungeons could be created-- even if they weren't populated by monsters. It would be extremely neat to explore the dungeons in 3D. If someone went all-out and found a few artists, then the descriptions from the booklet could be used to make every room unique. This is all lots of work, which is why I suppose it hasn't been done before. Plus, it has been twenty-six years since the last Apshai release, which was the Trilogy, and even at that time the game was already six years old. How many people actually remember the game? I guess all it takes is one person to get the ball started...

 

Adam

[ballyalley]

So many games have fan translations, but I haven't seen anything at all about The Temple of Apshai games.

 

I've still been looking through various versions of the Temple of Apshai Trilogy. Completely by accident I happened to come across a link to a remake of the game. I found this link AFTER I stopped looking for remakes of the game.

 

It turns out that The Temple of Apshai has been remade at least once. There is a fan-made module by a user called gotherthanthou35 that is available for the computer game Neverwinter Nights (which is a Dungeons and Dragon's game).

 

The description of the module says:

 

Remake of the classic game by EPYX from the early 80's. Arguably the first graphical CRPG. This is a classic dungeon crawl with some nice setup plot, but no real plot development in-game. The game works well single-player, and does not need a DM for multi-player. Mutliplayer should be set up for 1-party-only. It is not set up to have any PW support. You should start with a new first level character, possibly second if running an arcane spellcaster. The module will take you well into 4th level and possibly to 5th. Version changed to final as I have had over 100 downloads with no bug reports. I will still update this module if anyone finds problems.

 

Here is a link where you can download the Temple of Apshai module:

 

http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Modules.Detail&id=3418

 

While I have plenty of experience playing D&D with pen and paper (over twenty years ago), I have very little experience with the computer games. The last one I really played at all was the Commodore 64 version of Pools of Radiance, but because of all the constant disk-swapping I didn't play it much at all.

 

Neverwinter Nights was originally released in 2002. The module for Temple of Apshai requires the game plus two expansions: Shadows of Undrentide and Hordes of the Underdark. Luckily The Neverwinter Nights Diamond edition is available for $9.99 from Good Old Games (www.gog.com). This is a 2.1GB download. Here is a direct link to the D&D game:

 

http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/neverwinter_nights_diamond_edition

 

Although I don't play new games like this, I MAY purchase this game just to play the Temple of Apshai module. However, I'm still busy mapping the Atari version of the game, so this may not happen at all. Is there anyone on this forum who plays this D&D game and can try this Temple of Apshai module and let us know if it is true to the original game?

 

Adam