Destiny Software was a short-lived publisher active in 1988. Their demise has already produced one GTW, The Bobby Yazz Show, but the game that was planned to be their first release is another. Titan Find was described in issue 32 of Zzap! as “A tense, all-action arcade strategy adventure game, featuring fast action”.
Thanks to Anonymous Contributor, it seems that the game was based on a sci-fi horror movie of the same name released in 1985, more commonly known as Creature. According to the article, it was released in the UK as “The Titan Find”, and therefore may have been the inspiration.
German magazine Aktueller Software Markt, issue 12 1987, mentions the game as slated for release on several platforms (see scans), where they said:
“A new label wants to cause a sensation with a new idea and distribution by Activision: DESTINY. Each game comes with a paperback matching the plot and includes sound by a current band. The first releases are already available, namely TITAN FIND (strategy) for Atari ST, C-64, Amstrad and Spectrum [the passage also mentions Teladon].”
Interestingly, an Atari ST version exists in demo form which was recovered way back in 2005. It seems to have been created by Andy Routledge and Fergus McNeill and was a graphic text adventure. The person who discovered the demo had this to say (and yes, we’ll need to get an ST entry on the site sometime!):
“Some may remember the software company Delta 4 and Fergus McNeill on the 8-bit machines. Games such as The Boggit, Bored of Rings, and The Big Sleaze established them as one of the top interactive fiction software houses with a great sense of humor.
When Delta 4 folded in 1988 they had been working on The Smirking Horror, a parody of Infocom’s The Lurking Horror, for some time, it was named Titan Find in development due to contractual reasons that were never disclosed. Despite the game nearly being complete it was never released since Delta 4 had collapsed. Delta 4’s had a sister company called Abstract Concepts who carried on, but they were developing more serious adventure titles and so they too never released the game.
I have given the above overview of Titan Find to give you some idea of it’s importance in game history. There is only one demo avialable for the game and that is on the Atari ST, since Delta 4 only ever released there games on th 8-bit’s it is natural to conclude Delta 4 were moving to the 16-bits before they folded, to late in the day it seems to save them.
The demo seems pretty complete to me having played it for some time, obviously, a proper title screen was never added but everything else seems to be there. Another obvious thing that needed to be soughted by Delta 4 before they could have released it was to make it compataible with more than just TOS v1.0.
As mentioned the game is a parady of Infocom’s The Lurking Horror and is also based on Hitchcock’s Pyscho, even the Beast from 20,000 fathoms makes an appearance. The graphics are splendid and the humor is something else!
OK enough of the details, just load the image into STeem and make sure you are using TOS v1.0 with 2mb or less. I have made the game bootable using StartGEM so you should have no worries starting it!”
So it confirms that the game seems to borrow from various classic sci-fi and horror stories, including maybe The Titan Find. And so, a classic text adventure, and not what Zzap describes as “A tense, all-action arcade strategy adventure game, featuring fast, fast action”.
Question is, can anything of the C64 edition be recovered as well?
Contributions: Peter Weighill, Anonymous Contributor
