+adamantyr Posted August 2, 2012 Share Posted August 2, 2012 (edited) Hi guys,I've been reading through my Compute! magazines for a bit of nostalgia, and I keep seeing the ads for Aardvark L.T.D., which turned out several text adventures and strategy games of note, primarily for the TRS machines. They also started releasing them for the TI; I think I have "Quest" somewhere on disk...Does anyone know if someone's got these up for download somewhere on one of the sites, like WHT Tech?Titles made for the TI:QuestWizard's TowerEscape from MarsPyramidAdamantyr Edited May 14, 2014 by adamantyr Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OX. Posted August 2, 2012 Share Posted August 2, 2012 (edited) Here's a catalog of their titles :- http://mocagh.org/mi...k-83catalog.pdf Looks like everything but Wizard's Tower is in Gamebase TI. Edited August 2, 2012 by OX. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+adamantyr Posted August 2, 2012 Author Share Posted August 2, 2012 Cool... uh, but the Gamebase TI files are gone? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
S1500 Posted August 2, 2012 Share Posted August 2, 2012 My first mail order purchase was from them. It was Wizard's Tower. It was like a really dumbed down Ultima. Some parts didn't make sense(like the combat numbers). Think I got through it once. You really had to grind to beat the last guy(Madgar). Curious what the other titles were like. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+adamantyr Posted August 2, 2012 Author Share Posted August 2, 2012 My first mail order purchase was from them. It was Wizard's Tower. It was like a really dumbed down Ultima. Some parts didn't make sense(like the combat numbers). Think I got through it once. You really had to grind to beat the last guy(Madgar). Curious what the other titles were like. I know I got Quest somewhere in my archives... it was a strategy game that used ASCII graphics for mountains. Actually an impressive little game. It's cool that you got a copy of Wizard's Tower, that one seems much more difficult to find, I could only find a screenshot of it for the Atari online. Do you still have the disk and/or binaries? Adamantyr Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OX. Posted August 2, 2012 Share Posted August 2, 2012 My first mail order purchase was from them. It was Wizard's Tower. It was like a really dumbed down Ultima. Some parts didn't make sense(like the combat numbers). Think I got through it once. You really had to grind to beat the last guy(Madgar). Curious what the other titles were like. Post a copy of Wizards Tower on here and I'll post the rest. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
S1500 Posted August 3, 2012 Share Posted August 3, 2012 My first mail order purchase was from them. It was Wizard's Tower. It was like a really dumbed down Ultima. Some parts didn't make sense(like the combat numbers). Think I got through it once. You really had to grind to beat the last guy(Madgar). Curious what the other titles were like. I know I got Quest somewhere in my archives... it was a strategy game that used ASCII graphics for mountains. Actually an impressive little game. It's cool that you got a copy of Wizard's Tower, that one seems much more difficult to find, I could only find a screenshot of it for the Atari online. Do you still have the disk and/or binaries? Adamantyr All of my original TI stuff was long ago. It was actually on cassette, not disk. This was prior to '86 so cassette only. Old school! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+adamantyr Posted August 3, 2012 Author Share Posted August 3, 2012 My first mail order purchase was from them. It was Wizard's Tower. It was like a really dumbed down Ultima. Some parts didn't make sense(like the combat numbers). Think I got through it once. You really had to grind to beat the last guy(Madgar). Curious what the other titles were like. I know I got Quest somewhere in my archives... it was a strategy game that used ASCII graphics for mountains. Actually an impressive little game. It's cool that you got a copy of Wizard's Tower, that one seems much more difficult to find, I could only find a screenshot of it for the Atari online. Do you still have the disk and/or binaries? Adamantyr All of my original TI stuff was long ago. It was actually on cassette, not disk. This was prior to '86 so cassette only. Old school! Was gone long ago, you mean? Bummer... Yeah, I used a cassette system for four years before I got my P.E.B. Funny enough, I was just reading an article in Compute! which mentioned "stringy floppies" the old wafer tape systems that were like an 8-track player. They could store around 64k of data and were as fast as a disk drive of the era. The author completely missed the boat on flash memory, though, and just assumed magnetic media would continue forever... Adamantyr Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+adamantyr Posted August 14, 2012 Author Share Posted August 14, 2012 Here's a catalog of their titles :- http://mocagh.org/mi...k-83catalog.pdf Looks like everything but Wizard's Tower is in Gamebase TI. I don't see them in Gamebase v1.0. There's a few games named "Quest", but none of them are the Aardvark software game. Adamantyr Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aftyde Posted May 13, 2013 Share Posted May 13, 2013 Wow - as a High School student I worked for Aardvark Software in Walled Lake and was the guy who ported all their games to the TI-99 including Wizards Tower. Wizards tower was very difficult to fit into 16K and TI BASIC. If memory serves we had some trick where we'd define all the program variables up front and when you saved the program to cassette it would also save the variable stack. That game also had some computational bugs we discovered after release that made it almost impossible to win - in the sense that it was much harder to complete than we intended. Sadly I don't have copies of the games - but would love to get my hands on a copy... 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
S1500 Posted May 13, 2013 Share Posted May 13, 2013 Interesting. What did the numbers signify in combat turns? It made no sense to me. The numbers could be anything, but not correspond to damage to you, or it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Willsy Posted May 14, 2013 Share Posted May 14, 2013 Welcome, Aftyde! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+adamantyr Posted May 14, 2013 Author Share Posted May 14, 2013 Wow - as a High School student I worked for Aardvark Software in Walled Lake and was the guy who ported all their games to the TI-99 including Wizards Tower. Wizards tower was very difficult to fit into 16K and TI BASIC. If memory serves we had some trick where we'd define all the program variables up front and when you saved the program to cassette it would also save the variable stack. That game also had some computational bugs we discovered after release that made it almost impossible to win - in the sense that it was much harder to complete than we intended. Sadly I don't have copies of the games - but would love to get my hands on a copy... That is awesome! Mind you, I know what you mean about TI BASIC... I hit the memory limit when I was writing "Aperture" for the contest. Extended BASIC with memory expansion is a lot closer to the BASIC languages on other systems, but so few 99'ers of the early 80's had much more than the console. The hunt continues for Aardvark software... Adamantyr Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
InfernalKeith Posted May 14, 2013 Share Posted May 14, 2013 I think I have the Mars game on a broken cassette somewhere in my stash. I hung on to it, intending to try to repair the tape some time. If no one else has it, I'll try to move that project up a little and see if I can rescue it from oblivion. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OX. Posted May 14, 2013 Share Posted May 14, 2013 (edited) Was reading on Google groups that Ksarul has just about one of the largest TI99 collections going so you could ask him and tbh I would'nt mind seeing what he has in order to expand the Gamebase collection to it's full potential. Edited May 14, 2013 by OX. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted May 14, 2013 Share Posted May 14, 2013 I would say that his collection along with Bryan Roppolo's and Bill Gaskills would constitute the entirety of the TI software available.... Well, maybe not the ENTIRETY, but damn close.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+adamantyr Posted May 31, 2013 Author Share Posted May 31, 2013 I did find just now a listing for "Quest" for the MC-10 machine. Hm, with a bit of work I could easily convert it for the TI! I really wish I could find Wizard's Tower, though... Adamantyr Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+adamantyr Posted June 1, 2013 Author Share Posted June 1, 2013 And now I found Wizard's Tower! For the Commodore 64, but there is no BASIC I can't read... okay, so once I finish Space Trek, my next two TI projects are conversions of Quest and Wizard's Tower back to the good old TI! Adamantyr 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted June 1, 2013 Share Posted June 1, 2013 Oh man that's awesome!!!!! Can't wait! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Ksarul Posted June 6, 2013 Share Posted June 6, 2013 I went and checked in my boxes of original TI disks for anything from Aardvark. I have a manual or two that I've picked up over the years but none of the original disks. This is not surprising though, as most of the disk/cassette software in my collection was acquired MANY years after TI pulled out of the market if it was game software. Until the mid-nineties, the majority of the games I bought were on cartridge, as I'm not too much of a game freak. I have a huge collection of original copies of utility software, and probably the most complete hardware collection there is (although I have some glaring holes there too). I also have about the most complete set of International literature of anyone I know--others may have more in specific languages, but I've got stuff in almost every language TI stuff was released for. I saw that nice set of TI manuals in Danish that Sometimes99er provided the link to and drooled--Danish is completely missing from my collection of TI manuals unless it is in one of the multilingual cartridge/harware manuals. The same goes for Swedish. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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