Venus Voyager by English Software - Missing, Now Found?

[beamer320i]

Hi all,

 

Going through a job lot of recently acquired home made cassettes at the moment and came across this... I'd always been a fan of Venus Voyager 2 by English Software seeing as it was one of the first games I bought for my Atari 400 back in '84 but never knew there was a Venus Voyager (1)?

 

Nothing on Atarimania and can't even find any period ads mentioning it, was it ever released? Program is in BASIC and is loaded via RUN"C:", having long inter record gaps. Program is in about seven parts, first part the animated intro as per two first pictures, then the main program before loading 5 or 6 single record files before the "Push joystick" starting page.  I can think the only reason for this is early copy protection!

 

Game plays well and appears to be a finished product, any ideas or thoughts on this one?

[Rybags]

I don't know anything about this or the sequel.

 

Given it's not on AtariMania or Fandal's site, it's probably well worthwhile to do a capture to audio file and preserve it.

[Atarigrub]

🤔 Didn't realise this wasn't preserved. I think the copy I bought a few years ago came with a double-sided purple coloured card manual. Is that the same for yours @beamer320i?

 

[SlagOMatic]

Found a review from ABACUS on archive.org: https://archive.org/details/Page_6_Issue_05_1983-09_ABACUS_GB/page/n23/mode/2up

 

Found a "quickie" review in March 1984 Practical Computing which deemed it "unplayable": https://worldradiohistory.com/UK/Practical-Computing/80s/Practical-Computing-1984-03-S-OCR.pdf

 

Found an ad in December 1982 Compute! magazine for "Airstrike" with a mention of "Coming Soon: Venus Voyager" at the bottom: https://www.commodore.ca/gallery/magazines/compute/Compute-031-01.pdf

 

 

[beamer320i]

@atarigrub

52 minutes ago, Atarigrub said:

🤔 Didn't realise this wasn't preserved. I think the copy I bought a few years ago came with a double-sided purple coloured card manual. Is that the same for yours @beamer320i?

 

This is a "back-up" copy on a period cassette as below so it's not the original packaging but I imagine it would have been a 'baggie' release?

[beamer320i]

1 hour ago, Rybags said:

I don't know anything about this or the sequel.

 

Given it's not on AtariMania or Fandal's site, it's probably well worthwhile to do a capture to audio file and preserve it.

I'm not au fait with how to do that, if someone could point me in the right direction to learn how to do it, that would be great.

 

Failing that, I'm happy to send a copy to someone so they can preserve it and upload it for others.

[www.atarimania.com]

That's quite a find, hope the program can be archived!

 

I never understood what the magazines were reviewing back in the day. The game was always referred to as Venus Voyager - of course, no screenshots were ever shown! - but the only tape everybody could find was the second version... The first release was probably on the market for a very short period of time before it got replaced.

[SlagOMatic]

48 minutes ago, www.atarimania.com said:

I never understood what the magazines were reviewing back in the day. The game was always referred to as Venus Voyager - of course, no screenshots were ever shown! - but the only tape everybody could find was the second version... The first release was probably on the market for a very short period of time before it got replaced.

I'm thinking it's something like the old Cosmi game Aztec Challenge. There were two distinct releases of the game on the A8, one in 1982 which (AFAIK) was released exclusively on cassette, and a second graphically-improved version which (again, AFAIK) was released exclusively on disk.

 

EDIT: Interview with the author, Robert Bonifacio, where he mentions the two versions -- https://www.angelfire.com/realm/thewarpzone/bonifacio.html

Edited April 16, 2023 by SlagOMatic

[TGB1718]

6 hours ago, beamer320i said:

I'm not au fait with how to do that, if someone could point me in the right direction to learn how to do it, that would be great.

You will need a cassette player with audio out socket and something on your PC to capture the playback audio

I usually use Audicity as its free, it will create a .wav file of the cassette.

 

There may be other/easier methods, but that's how I do it

Edited April 16, 2023 by TGB1718

[+gnusto]

6 hours ago, beamer320i said:

I'm not au fait with how to do that, if someone could point me in the right direction to learn how to do it, that would be great.

Not hard to do at all, basically you want to play the audio of the cassette into an audio in on your computer to digitize it. Many PCs will have an analog audio in, usually blue in color. That's "line in". You might have to hunt around or buy a cheap composite audio to 3.5mm cable. There are free utilities from there that can record from line in to a digital file (Audacity for example). The resulting file you can send to a8pres or atarimania or hell even me and I'll get it to the right people to be preserved =).
 

[beamer320i]

Thanks for the advice guys regarding conversion into a .wav file, will try it in the next few days and report back!