A short entry for a series of titles by The Steam Powered Computer Company which were highlighted by contributor Dan Warren.
At present, the only game by the company in the archives is The Inheritance, which was released in 1985 by the company. The advert shown here was from August 1984, which suggests that these games were released and it wasn’t a case of the company disappearing before they could sneak out.
An earlier advert interestingly states that the games are C64 based, but also interestingly they are priced at around £10-11 pounds on disk and £7-7.50 pounds on cassette. The later advert the prices drop to £3.99, suggesting there may have been poor sales at the start.
It seems the games were only sold by mail-order, so they may have sold very limited numbers overall. The titles in the advert were as follows:
- 42 Camelot Close – Graphic text adventure
- Trolls Cavern – Animated adventure
- Holocaust – War game
- Tycoon – Strategy game
- Copter Run / Zaphon Attack – Double pack arcade action.
- Mouse Muddle / Nine Lives – Double pack educational games.
All the games were listed as having “Rocket” express loading, and other games listed as coming soon were:
- The Cure – 1000 location text adventure
- Siege – Battle simulation
- Neptunes Lair – Underwater adventure
How many of these games actually made it out, and can you help us preserve them?
Interestingly, according to Anonymous Contributor, Steam Powered not only published its own games, but they also did development work for Visions Software Company too (here and here).
Contributions: Dan Warren, Anonymous Contributor
