+gnusto Posted January 21 Share Posted January 21 Getting close to Z - the tension is building! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SoulBuster Posted January 23 Author Share Posted January 23 I found this game in Atari Online's zip of games. I tried looking it up on their site, but it does not come up when searching. @www.atarimania.com does not have it. I bring this up as the game requires a pass code to run. I figured out the pass codes and made an ANTIC type Documentation disk to hold them. The results: Scaremonger - The Special Edition v2.5 (1990-10)(Holst, Frederik)(DE)[AO].zip 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DjayBee Posted January 23 Share Posted January 23 (edited) Summoning @freetz 18 minutes ago, SoulBuster said: I figured out the pass codes and made an ANTIC type Documentation disk to hold them. IMHO the secret master password is KATRIN. Edited January 23 by DjayBee Added the big secret 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SoulBuster Posted January 23 Author Share Posted January 23 19 minutes ago, DjayBee said: Summoning @freetz IMHO the secret master password is KATRIN. Nice! I added it to the Documentation file. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
www.atarimania.com Posted January 23 Share Posted January 23 (edited) 2 hours ago, SoulBuster said: @www.atarimania.com does not have it. Scaremonger - The Special Edition v2.5 (1990-10)(Holst, Frederik)(DE)[AO].zip 52.38 kB · 5 downloads Actually, I could never figure out who published what so I never uploaded the game... If I'm not mistaken, there were distinct releases of this program: _ Scaremonger _ Scaremonger 2.0 _ Scaremonger 2.5 _ Mad Marbles / Scaremonger From what I could gather, Liberal Dreams Software, KE-Soft, PPP and Powersoft all distributed this title at one point but it just isn't clear who sold what as no scans are available. My guess is Scaremonger 2.5 was only commercialized by Powersoft but I could be wrong. Are there any efforts to preserve / catalog all the lost German titles? Tons of Powersoft, Compysoft, Dynamics Marketing, Münzenloher... programs are still missing. Edited January 23 by www.atarimania.com 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DjayBee Posted January 23 Share Posted January 23 3 minutes ago, www.atarimania.com said: From what I could gather, Liberal Dreams Software, KE-Soft, PPP and Powersoft all distributed this title at one point but it just isn't clear who sold what as no scans are available. My guess is Scaremonger 2.5 was only commercialized by Powersoft but I could be wrong. Are there any efforts to preserve / catalog all the lost German titles? Tons of Powersoft, Compysoft, Dynamics Marketing, Münzenloher... programs are still missing. This might be a job for our walking Ataricyclopedia @CharlieChaplin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+CharlieChaplin Posted January 23 Share Posted January 23 I am sorry, but I do not want to be an emperor... errrm, I do not have these lost german titles available. Powersoft: I only have a few PD programs, all of them already available at atarimania Compysoft: I only have the programs (games) that were already released by ABBUC (Sokoban, etc.) Dynamics Marketing: Zero programs in my collection Münzenloher: only 1 program in my collection, available everywhere (Acrobat) So, I hand that job over to @luckybuck Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+CharlieChaplin Posted January 23 Share Posted January 23 5 hours ago, www.atarimania.com said: Actually, I could never figure out who published what so I never uploaded the game... If I'm not mistaken, there were distinct releases of this program: _ Scaremonger _ Scaremonger 2.0 _ Scaremonger 2.5 _ Mad Marbles / Scaremonger From what I could gather, Liberal Dreams Software, KE-Soft, PPP and Powersoft all distributed this title at one point but it just isn't clear who sold what as no scans are available. My guess is Scaremonger 2.5 was only commercialized by Powersoft but I could be wrong. Are there any efforts to preserve / catalog all the lost German titles? Tons of Powersoft, Compysoft, Dynamics Marketing, Münzenloher... programs are still missing. I once bought Mad Marbles / Scaremonger from Powersoft either at a KE-Soft Atari fair in Hanau or at an Abbuc fair in Herten. But I only played these "games" once and never again - I found them so bad, that I gave away the diskette for free (and I do not miss these games). For those interested in the games, one can download them for free from the author's webpage here: http://frederik.hol.st/atari/8-bit/mystuff/ Want to know more about freetz? Look here (no A8 content): https://www.iaaw.hu-berlin.de/de/region/suedostasien/seminar/geschichte/mitarbeiter-innen/dr-frederik-holst 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DjayBee Posted January 24 Share Posted January 24 8 hours ago, CharlieChaplin said: I am sorry, but I do not want to be an emperor... errrm, I do not have these lost german titles available. LOL, I did not expect you to be the hoarding emperor but more the wise not-so-old and not-so-white-bearded man who can tell us which of these publishers did release which titles for cataloging. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
freetz Posted February 5 Share Posted February 5 On 1/24/2024 at 7:14 AM, CharlieChaplin said: I once bought Mad Marbles / Scaremonger from Powersoft either at a KE-Soft Atari fair in Hanau or at an Abbuc fair in Herten. But I only played these "games" once and never again - I found them so bad, that I gave away the diskette for free (and I do not miss these games). For those interested in the games, one can download them for free from the author's webpage here: http://frederik.hol.st/atari/8-bit/mystuff/ Want to know more about freetz? Look here (no A8 content): https://www.iaaw.hu-berlin.de/de/region/suedostasien/seminar/geschichte/mitarbeiter-innen/dr-frederik-holst Well, not sure if I want to explain further on these games of my youth under this pretext, but since there seems to be some interest from others: Scaremonger was written in 1990 and published under my own "Powersoft" label (not to be confused with Markus Rösner's label of the same name, gosh, were we creative back then ). Then Kemal was interested in the program and expanded it, most notably with a better title screen and some other graphical improvements. That was Scaremonger 2.0. Things didn't really work out with Kemal back then, so it was re-released as Scaremonger 2.5 with (IIRC) the removal of some parts that Kemal provided. At some point (IIRC) I sold the non-exclusive rights to these games to Werner Rätz as well as Ulf Petersen to use for his UserMag. I know these games were not great, but for a quiz game, Scaremonger was not that much worse than, say, Quiwi (spelling?). But tastes differ. Mad Marbles was my first ever game I wrote when we were on holiday in the Harz mountain region. Without an Atari, mind you, just on paper. All I had was the Happy Computer Sonderheft where I got a first understanding about PM graphics and how to use them with Turbo Basic XL. I wrote this game specifically for my first Atari which had (and still has) a broken second joystick port where the pin for moving to the left was broken. That's why player two in Mad Marbles is always moving to the left and player one is always moving to the right. You have to move the blocks to block each your opponent and thereby win the game. As for the master password, I had totally forgotten that there was one - I don't even know that the Turbo Basic source code is available somewhere so that someone could figure it out :). But yes, both games didn't fare remotly as well as Phantastic Journey I and II did, of which I think I sold around 100 units of each in the beginning of the 1990s, most of which went into my first PC ;)... 2 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+CharlieChaplin Posted February 5 Share Posted February 5 Well, speaking of false expectations... Enrico and Enrico II were both advertised as being great SMB clones in the (newer) german Atari Magazin, allthough they have absolutely nothing in common with SMB. Anyone who bought these games was for sure heavily disappointed. And yes, SMB meaning Super Mario Bros. Thats how SMB looks there (with the player on the bottom left, beside the tree): Now, what would one expect from Mad Marbles? A Marble Madness clone maybe? Thats what I expected and looking at the game Mad Marbles, I guess everyone can understand my huge disappointment: And no, this reply is not meant to bash the author, it is just my suggestion that one should not play with false game expectations on the A8. (Notable mention: Fighter Pilot by Digital Integration and then a re-release of Fighter Pilot by Interceptor Software the same year.) Scaremonger is a Quiz ? Looks like I never got that far. The first thing the program asked for was a password (e.g. Katrin). After that it said search for a "4", visible as one b/w icon, similar to the four on a dice, while you see a coloured field with dozens of coloured squares. And in the middle are two rows with black and white icons, that look like dice numbers. So I moved the cursor to one row with these b/w dice numbers and onto number four and pressed the button, nothing happened. Moved the cursor to the other row of dice numbers, onto number four, pressed the button, nothing happened. Okay, so I moved the cursor onto the coloured squares, e.g. onto a field with four red coloured squares, pressed the button, nothing happened. (Note: The screenshot here shows at the bottom "Suche eine 5", meaning that you have to search a "5", similar to a dice 5.) On the real A8 I then gave up and thought, what a shitty game is this ? Is this even a game? On the emulator I experienced the same shit today, but then I switched the emulator to full speed and after a few seconds (on the real A8 surely a few minutes) the question changed. I switched back to normal speed, but a part of the question appeared as "garbage" (the A8 Control+character gfx) and some time later a new question appeared. Well, I would name this a very strange quiz, not one I would like to play again. But we are off-topic here, so let us end this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DjayBee Posted February 5 Share Posted February 5 On 2/5/2024 at 10:36 AM, freetz said: As for the master password, I had totally forgotten that there was one - I don't even know that the Turbo Basic source code is available somewhere so that someone could figure it out :). The source is not available but the game also has not been compiled. I used Altirra's debugger at the password request and entered ... .basic which shows various addresses incl. the address of the first and the currently executed BASIC line. .basic_dumpline <address from above> shows the source code of the line at this address. Since you garbled the variable names, the variable name table has to be rebuilt into readable names using .basic_rebuildvnt Afterwards you have to do .basic again because the addresses have changed. Finally a .basic_save writes the program to a file on your PC. A slight caveat is that Altirra does not know Turbo BASIC'c specific token codes and (probably) shows the commands from Basic XL/XE instead. After writing the file to your PC, you can open it with Memo Pad and see the real commands. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
freetz Posted February 6 Share Posted February 6 (edited) @CharlieChaplinI'm sorry for your disappointment, but did you really expect a 1:1 SMB clone after Great Giana Sisters was taken off the market within a few months? Enrico is a platform jump and run game, and if everyone thought like you, I wonder why people still bought Enrico 2 in not much lesser numbers than Enrico 1, IIRC. You are of course entitled to think that these games were "shit" as you put it so nicely, and feel free to continue with reviews of my other 30+ year old games. I'm sorry if you were so hugely disappointed. Send me your bank account details and I'll reimburse you your costs of any of my games you bought back then. But with allegations that I was misleading people or selling broken software, you'll understand that I'll excuse myself from any further discussion. Edited February 6 by freetz Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
freetz Posted February 7 Share Posted February 7 Ok, CharlieChaplin and me settled this via e-mail, everything is good, no need for any awkward silence here :). Just a quick note on the Image of Scaremonger 2.5 (haven't checked the others yet): Apparently, when I transferred the disk 10 years ago, it was already faulty, so while the game loads and you can play it, some of the quiz questions are corrupted, i.e. showing graphic characters etc. and since some of the answers are also corrupted, you may not be able to answer these questions correctly. Since I'm currently abroad, I won't have a chance until later next year to see if I can try another conversion, but I doubt that the disk has improved after 10 years (giving it a total of 30 years now). As for the gameplay, it's actually easy if you have a manual ;). You are asked to find a number, so you have to move the cursor to a spot next to an existing number (like in Domino). Then you are asked a question and if the question is correct, the empty field becomes the same number. If you answer the question wrong, then the field will become empty and unusable, making the game more difficult with each wrong answer. Back in the day, I thought this was an innovative twist to the quiz genre, but I agree that the game hasn't aged that well ;)... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
luckybuck Posted February 7 Share Posted February 7 On 1/24/2024 at 12:08 AM, CharlieChaplin said: I am sorry, but I do not want to be an emperor... errrm, I do not have these lost german titles available. Powersoft: I only have a few PD programs, all of them already available at atarimania Compysoft: I only have the programs (games) that were already released by ABBUC (Sokoban, etc.) Dynamics Marketing: Zero programs in my collection Münzenloher: only 1 program in my collection, available everywhere (Acrobat) So, I hand that job over to @luckybuck Terrible sorry, but I can't find just any entry for 'Scaremonger' Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duncan33 Posted February 11 Share Posted February 11 On 12/10/2023 at 5:35 PM, SoulBuster said: I played this one for a bit. It has different floors to explore, items to find and things to kill. Magic Escape (1988)(LindaSoft)(IT)[BASIC][B TOSEC].atr 90.02 kB · 22 downloads I did not see it on Atarimania or Atarionline. Is here https://atarionline.pl/v01/index.php?ct=kazip&sub=M&title=+Magic+Escape#kaz_fb21727e868684e33b586e53a49e5afd 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+CharlieChaplin Posted February 11 Share Posted February 11 Magic Escape = Micro Dungeon by Jerry Olejarz, released 1988 in Analog Computing; pirated, altered and sold commercially (without permission) by LindaSoft. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duncan33 Posted February 11 Share Posted February 11 (edited) @ CharlieChaplin I can't find it anywhere. Can you give it here? Edited February 11 by Duncan33 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Houdini Posted February 11 Share Posted February 11 Here is the .ATR of that issue. RUN "D:MICRODNG.BAS" Analog_88_JUN.ATR 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duncan33 Posted February 11 Share Posted February 11 Thanks Houdini 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SoulBuster Posted February 12 Author Share Posted February 12 I thought I would detail another extraction technique I have been using. I find that some of the XEX's are just BASIC programs with a wrapper around them. Sometimes, not often, you can hit reset and list the underlying BASIC program and can save it. Since an XEX may not have the "D:" handler installed, I have been using CSAVE to get a copy of the BASIC program by itself, then putting it on disk like normal. Example XEX: Spacemission (-)(-)(DE).xex Resulting ATR: Spacemission (-)(-)(DE)[BASIC][B AO].atr 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted February 12 Share Posted February 12 sometimes listing to disk, reloading using enter after a cold start and then saving the program helps them work as well. Directly saving them sometime allows a bit of flaky leavings to come along with the now freed BASIC program 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SoulBuster Posted February 22 Author Share Posted February 22 I just finished making sure that everything I recorded for Allan in the last few weeks is in the "All ATR Thread.zip". They will be included in the next release (at least through S). Now back to the S's. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SoulBuster Posted March 1 Author Share Posted March 1 I spent a couple hours playing this one yesterday. Quite fun. Sudotris (2024)(PTODT)(PL)[CA AM].atr 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SoulBuster Posted March 3 Author Share Posted March 3 It has been a long time coming: New file v.19 available on POST ONE. Titles processed through the letter 'S'. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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