Games That Weren't 64^®

In April 1985, an issue of Commodore Horizons (Page 33) mentioned a particular adventure collection called “The Gold Collection”, which was seven games that were to be marketed by Gilsoft and written with the aid of The Quill. These would have therefore been adventure games featuring just text and no graphics.

The games in the collection were:

1) Adventures of Barsak the Dwarf
2) Africa Gardens
3) Spyplane
4) Magic Castle
5) Devil’s Island
6) Mindbender
and 7) Diamond Trail

Games 1), 2) and 7) are all currently in Gamebase and have been preserved, however the rest are at large and it is unknown if the games ever got to see the light of day.

Interestingly, Magic Castle and Devil’s Island are known to exist on the C64 but are missing currently. GTW contributor, Peter Weighill supplied us with photos of the game’s cassette and inlay, which clearly states C64 from an old auction.

Where is this game, and will we get to preserve it soon? It seems these two at least may well get preserved, as a well known collector bought these and hopefully will be porting them for a preservation project.

In December 2011, I had a mail from Rio Baan saying the following:

“GB64 has located tapes for the following games from Retrosoft in the UK

Spyplane by Gilsoft
Devil’s Island by Gilsoft
The Curse by Gilsoft
Mindbender by Gilsoft

We’ve ordered them today. They haven’t arrived yet, but now we we can confirm that they exist. “

So another 3 found, and a previously unheard of title as well!…. These will no doubt make their way into GB64 very soon! Magic Castle was then later preserved at some point.

So, all games were released and are now all accounted for, so its therefore a case closed!

Contributions: Peter Weighill, Rio Baan, Steve Brown, Gamebase 64

Supporting content

• Gallery
• History

Gallery

Update history

25/01/26 – All games found – so case closed!