Adventure from 'DCW Magazine' for Atari 8-bit

[Garry]

I asked this on the CASA forum and didn't get any response, so I'll try again here where we have many more Atari users.

 

I'm trying to track down an adventure from DCW Magazine. This is a Dutch disk magazine for the Atari 8-bit computers. I first saw it mentioned in Atari Classics, vol.2, no.3, February 1983, p. 10, where staff columnist Ed Hall did a review of disk magazines. He described DCW Magazine as follows:

"I've only seen the first side of the introductory issue. There isn't a lot of text, but most of it is in English. There's also an interesting variety of programs: a text adventure, ..."

That last phrase caught my attention! He gave no title or description of the text adventure and that's why I'm trying to track it down.

An internet search revealed very little. The comp.sys.atari.8bit FAQ (dated 30 September 1994) and Vendors and Developers list (dated 16 March 1995) gave the following details:

DCW Magazine
Richard Vermeulen
Princessenpad 3
5502 TV Veldhoven
The Netherlands
Free introductory issue, 7.50 Dutch guilders/disk, outside Holland add 6.00 guilders/disk

The same details were in Atari Magazin, November/December 1993. And that's all I could find.

There must surely be someone somewhere who knows more about DCW Magazine or even has a copy of the first issue with the text adventure. If so, please share the knowledge here or send me a PM.

[Mathy]

Hello Garry

 

Try sending a private message to "Stormtrooper of Death", that's Richard's nickname.  The postal address is no longer valid, he moved to Weert.

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy

[Garry]

Ha, ha. Great nickname. I'll give it a try.

[Stormtrooper of Death]

Hi Garry, Richard Vermeulen (DCW! / Stormtrooper of Death) here.

 

I found the DCW! Magazine floppy. Took an hour to find it in my old stack of floppys.. anyhow, I have transfered the floppy to my desktop PC using a SIO-USB cable.

 

The adventure is called "Dungeon Adventure" and i didnt make it myselve.

 

Start the floppy with BASIC enabled. Side 2 of the floppy has 3 digital sampled musics.

 

Enjoy. I made this magazine in 1990, together with Leon Haven and Johan Otten. It was fun to do. We only made 1 magazine, because we didnt get much reply from other people.

 

Feel free to copy this old Dutch Atari diskmagazine to your own webpage/Atari archive/etc.

 

DCW! Disk Magazine - Side 1.atr DCW! Disk Magazine - Side 2.atr

Edited June 22, 2019 by Stormtrooper of Death

[Garry]

All is revealed. The adventure is actually 'Escape from the Dungeon of the Gods'. This was written for the TRS-80 by Ray Sato and ported to the Atari by Rich Bouchard (a SoftSide staff member). It was originally published in SoftSide, issue 30, vol. 5, no. 9, June 1982, pp. 26–42; corrections issue 33, vol. 5, no. 12, September 1982, p. 52 & issue 40, vol. 6, no. 7, p. 10. It looks like it has been prettied up a bit for DCW Magazine with different screen colours.

 

At least now I know.

 

For anyone that's interested, I've done a map, hints and solution for it. You can find these at the Classic Adventure Solution Archive.

 

Many thanks to Richard for digging this out. Now I need to look at the other things on the magazine...

[_The Doctor__]

3 hours ago, Garry said:

All is revealed. The adventure is actually 'Escape from the Dungeon of the Gods'. This was written for the TRS-80 by Ray Sato and ported to the Atari by Rich Bouchard (a SoftSide staff member). It was originally published in SoftSide, issue 30, vol. 5, no. 9, June 1982, pp. 26–42; corrections issue 33, vol. 5, no. 12, September 1982, p. 52 & issue 40, vol. 6, no. 7, p. 10. It looks like it has been prettied up a bit for DCW Magazine with different screen colours.

 

At least now I know.

 

For anyone that's interested, I've done a map, hints and solution for it. You can find these at the Classic Adventure Solution Archive.

 

Many thanks to Richard for digging this out. Now I need to look at the other things on the magazine...

With all of that being said, is there a corrected up to date copy of the game done prettied up as stated?

[Garry]

The strings in the original listing were encoded to prevent giving away spoilers while you typed it in. That was a great idea, but it made the typing more difficult and it really slowed the game down, as the strings had to be decoded every time they were printed on screen. Here is the original listing on an autobooting atr file:

Escape from the Dungeon of the Gods (Ray Sato).zip

 

And here is the same game that I decoded. It plays much faster, so if you only want to play the game and you're not interested in preservation of the original, I'd recommend playing this one:

Escape from the Dungeon of the Gods (Ray Sato) decoded.zip

 

Both have the corrections from SoftSide magazine.

 

If you want the "prettied-up" version, it's on side 1 of DCW! Magazine (download link above). Scroll down on the menu screen and select 'Dungeon Adventure'. I haven't checked this listing, so I don't know whether it includes the corrections from SoftSide or what the extent of the prettying-up is. It might only be screen colours.

 

Incidentally, although this is a text adventure, it does have a role playing element. I hate role playing games, so if you want to avoid the random element of the role playing, read my hints at CASA at the link given previously. (I'd forgotten that I'd written these. They actually make quite interesting reading, but don't read them until you've played the game or you get stuck.)

[_The Doctor__]

looks like I have Escape from the dungeon of the gods on one of my old disks....

No wonder is sounded familiar...

edit- it's in basic and it loads... Now collecting items laying about in all the rooms...

further edit- no color to be had... standard gr.0 text. a bit slow....

 

Edited June 25, 2019 by _The Doctor__