Moonbright Tower - 'lost' game found?

[InfernalKeith]

Just came across a disk from "Cinquedea Software" for an adventure game called Moonbright Tower.  It's disk-based and comprised of multiple files, and looks to be a fairly primitive text adventure.

 

I'm not finding any info about it online or any mentions of it here on the forum, apart from one ad in the Nov. 1983 99'er.  

 

Does this one need resurrected from my disk copy, or is it already archived elsewhere and I'm just missing it?

[+Schmitzi]

hmm, never saw it. Sounds interesting

[+Ksarul]

I have never run across this one either, so putting a copy online would be a very good thing.

[ti99iuc]

3 hours ago, InfernalKeith said:

Cinquedea Software Moonbright Tower.

 

I'm not finding any info about it online or any mentions of it here on the forum, apart from one ad in the Nov. 1983 99'er.  

Nice find! I have never seen it around and I also haven't in my personal TI stuff dumped.

seems like that Cinquedea Software produced a lot of adventure games for the sinclair ZX81 and this is the only one developed for the TI-99/4A

 

I really would like if you will be able to preserve it  Thanks!

 

https://www.ti99iuc.it/web/sfoglia/?cid=283&sub=Sfogliabile/v2n013/#book/84

[+pixelpedant]

Interesting.  Definitely would be cool to see this preserved. 

 

Likewise, all I could find of it was this ad in Compute! from November 1983.

 

 

 

Pekin, Illinois seems to have had a UG with a good number of active members and a newsletter. 

 

Cited as having 15 members in June 1985 by the Mid-South TI UG. 

 

Mike Christianson appears to be the most published member of the Pekin group in the broader literature. 

 

[InfernalKeith]

Ah man, this is exciting!  I'll try to get the files up for you all tomorrow.  I hadn't even realized it would run in 16K.  It's a set of linked standalone programs, I'm not sure what (if any) data they pass back and forth via files, I didn't have long to play it yesterday. 

[+Propane13]

Neat find!

[jrhodes]

Awesome! Finds like this are why i like visiting old flea markets, and even Hospital Auxiliary Thrift-Stores.

I tend to snatch up any 5-1/4 or 3-1/2 floppies i come across. Usually they are blank, but i've found some cracked C64 games and some old DOS games before. Sadly though, i have no way to use a real TI disk if i were to come across any.

Edited May 18 by jrhodes

[+OLD CS1]

1 hour ago, jrhodes said:

Sadly though, i have no way to use a real TI disk if i were to come across any.

Plenty of us here are able and willing to help with that.

[DuaneAL]

5 hours ago, jrhodes said:

I tend to snatch up any 5-1/4 or 3-1/2 floppies i come across. Usually they are blank, but i've found some cracked C64 games and some old DOS games before. Sadly though, i have no way to use a real TI disk if i were to come across any

What would a ti disk look like to a non ti OS or disk system?  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[+OLD CS1]

10 hours ago, DuaneAL said:

What would a ti disk look like to a non ti OS or disk system? 

Unreadable or unformatted. If the controller can read the disk sectors, the TI file system would be unknown.

[DuaneAL]

Thanks!  The reason I asked was jrhodes mentioned finding blank disks.  I was wondering if they were truly blank or if they were just formatted differently than the computer he was using was expecting. 

[jrhodes]

Boxes of 25 Memorex floppies, sometimes missing 3-5 from the pack.

Edited May 19 by jrhodes

[JB]

13 hours ago, DuaneAL said:

Thanks!  The reason I asked was jrhodes mentioned finding blank disks.  I was wondering if they were truly blank or if they were just formatted differently than the computer he was using was expecting. 

Impossible to say if they're unformatted or formatted for something weird, as those look the same.

 

If it appeared as formatted but blank, it was formatted but blank. That's quite common as a LOT of disks were sold pre-formatted for MS-DOS.

 

[+OLD CS1]

13 minutes ago, JB said:

Impossible to say if they're unformatted or formatted for something weird, as those look the same.

 

If it appeared as formatted but blank, it was formatted but blank. That's quite common as a LOT of disks were sold pre-formatted for MS-DOS.

Going to make one last post on this to keep from straying too far off the topic.  The hardware to read floppies now is ridiculously inexpensive and easy to use; worth getting if you want to collect disks of unknown origin.  It only takes a little bit of work to identify and get a good digital copy of a disk.

[+dhe]

Sorry, did I miss were the files where posted?

[wierd_w]

I don't think he's dumped it yet.

[InfernalKeith]

Here it is!  Lacking a better way to do it, I saved all 11 separate programs to cassette from my PEB, then from cassette to my CF7+, then to my PC and a .zip file.

 

Let me know if you have any issues with it.

 

Lastly, a small and petty request.  I can't tell anyone what to do, but I'd like to put up a Youtube video this weekend with the 'rescue' story and some gameplay, so if you wouldn't mind giving me first crack at that, I'd appreciate it.

 

Like I said before, it doesn't seem to be the most complicated game, but I still haven't played it too much yet.  

 

Enjoy!

 

 

moonbright.zip

[+OLD CS1]

8 hours ago, dhe said:

Sorry, did I miss were the files where posted?

Here.

[ti99iuc]

1 hour ago, InfernalKeith said:

Let me know if you have any issues with it.

Really thanks Keith!

for the moment I can say, do not write the word INVENTORY 😛

 

 

[wierd_w]

Just typical, this 30+ year old software needed a zero day patch.  Tsk Tsk.

 

 

[Ed in SoDak]

1 hour ago, ti99iuc said:

Really thanks Keith!

for the moment I can say, do not write the word INVENTORY 😛

 

Try INVEN  

 

[InfernalKeith]

I should be clear, I meant issues with the .zip file itself.  I'm not running tech support for a 1983 game.