Quest for Cyrus

Quest for Cyrus was announced in 2001 as coming soon by programmer Lorin Millsap. Described as “a game with a playing style much like that of Nintendo’s Zelda and the Final Fantasy series.”

Commodore Wire news site at the time suggested that:

“Quest is designed on “a fairly versatile game kernal that sports a fast loader. The game is highly disk intensive and as a result, its capabilities are incredible.” The game is currently in the testing and error checking stage. Millsap hopes to release Quest for Cyrus before mid 2001.”

However, just a month later, Lorin reported that there was a delay in publishing due to technical issues via the C64games.de website:

“Lorin Millsap from Pixel Pyramid Software has now announced that development of the planned C64 game ‘Quest For Cyrus’ will be delayed. The reason for this is a change in the basic system. It is currently expected to be released in September this year. The report still has good news: the game will be compatible with all known Commodore drives. It would also be nice to have compatibility with CMD drives – let’s wait and see.”

The game never surfaced after that, and we’re not sure yet why. Lorin is still active in the C64 scene, so we hope to learn more in the future. Thanks to Anonymous Contributor, we learn that Lorin had a brief homepage about the game which adds a bit of info:

Welcome to the Pixel Pyramid Software Website
Quest for Cyrus

Currently the ScaleTone graphics routine is under development and bug testing. It displays all game graphics and does so in a black/dgrey/lgrey/white color scheme that very well resembles the classic Gameboy. The source code is being rewritten to function and compile without the use of macros. This makes it easier to share source code and to bug test (sometimes macros don’t quite do what they are supposed to.) I’ll try to keep you posted on this work in progress as I have never seen a Japanese style RPG on a C64. 10/25/01

The ScaleTone graphics driver source code is complete and will now under go bug testing and refinement. Routines that go hand in hand with this routine are also being written and tested. When available and enough testing has been done, I will develop a screenshots page that will show real graphics that will be in the game. 11/2/01

System Requirements:

• Commodore 64 or compatible
• 1541 drive
• color monitor
• Joystick
• emulator equivalent to the above.

Quest for Cyrus will at this time have the following features–>

* 20 X 20 byte game window (same as Nintendo GameBoy)
* ScaleTone greyscale color scheme
* Will hopefully be Super CPU compatible.
* Will most likely work properly on all third party drives (including CMD)
* Fastloader technology that can be disabled for compatibility with third party drives and emulators.
* Kernal called ARK that is developed just for this type of RPG.
* Is not like “The Newcomer”. Play and style is more like Zelda, Final Fantasy, and Poke`mon.
* Player must rely entirely on strategy to win.

Last updated October 26th, 2001

So according to the site, Quest for Cyrus was meant to emulate the Gameboy look, with a monochrome display. Lorin described the game as a “Japanese style RPG on a C64”. For comparison, Lorin mentions the game not being like “The Newcomer” – presumably the Protovision C64 RPG released in 2001: https://csdb.dk/release/?id=3431

News then stops after Nov 2, 2001 sadly. Did it ever get any further? If you know anything more, please do get in touch.

Contributions: Anonymous Contributor