Games That Weren't^®

Our next entry is thanks to Gareth Pitchford, who spotted in issue 40 of Your Commodore magazine details of a History title that was being created in The Quill. It was mentioned in a small article on educational games.

The text was as follows:

The next offering comes courtesy of Duncan Bowen School, Ashford. This software uses the Quill adventure writer to create a novel approach to the teaching of History. History is usually a sure way to send pupils to sleep, as it is always full of dates, places and names and has as much life in it as a building brick.

The fact is that History is a living subject winch involves people of all walks of life. By involving the pupil in the subject, it becomes live and interesting, and software uses the adventure concept to achieve this goal.

The disk contains two packages covering different aspects of the same problem. The main portion relates to an investigation of the past. The pupil has to “travel” around seeking information which will help solve a Victorian murder.

To achieve this aim, you must examine a wide range of sources of information such as records, diaries, memorials in churches and listen to the gossip.

In the first part you have to compile the basic facts from archival material. You have access CO contempory material in the second part, and with this you attempt to form a case against the murderer. Two further parts provide further information and quiz your findings.

In the second package, the pupil has to explore a Kentish village and map it. The final aim is to compile as much information as possible about a family that lived there.

Overall, the main theme of the package is that there is a lot of material available which is used to explore the past and shows where it is found and how it can be used. The software is detailed and well thought out – the documentation is copious and extremely useful: providing teacher’s notes and help for the pupils.

The material is ideal for project work, both for groups of children and the individual. I believe that this software is free provided that a blank disk or tape is sent.

The School become no more in the early 1990s, but did anyone send off for the disk/tape and get a copy of it?

Thanks to Gareth’s investigational work, it seems that parts of the package were later redeveloped for the Atari ST as “The Search” and “History File”.

It is very much at large still and yet to be preserved, so it is unknown as of yet if it did see release. If you know anything more about it – then please do get in touch.

A short entry for an interesting title that was mentioned as being developed by John Feagans for Commodore back in the early 1980s.

John had said that there was a “Magic House” piece of kit and software where you could navigate and turn on BSR controllers for lights and appliances.

Not quite a game I know, but an interesting piece of unreleased Commodore 64 history which would be wonderful to try and preserve in some shape or form.

Do you know anything more about this hardware or the software behind it?

A short entry for a series that may or may not have ever been released.

This was an educational title that was to be released by Commodore on disk and supporting the Magic Voice module. The description of The Magic Workshop series was also in an advert:

(Ages 4-8) The Magic Workshop is a series of three animated Talking Books which helps your child read by using the Magic Voice Speech Module. Simply choose any word in the story and Magic Voice says the word. Each story shows how Mr Bits, the robot, uses his toolbox to help his friends through different problems. (Diskette)

Although advertised and listed, it doesn’t seem to have surfaced for reasons as yet unknown.

Do you know anything more about it and can you help preserve it?

A short entry for now, as we are not 100% certain if a Commodore 64 conversion was ever on the cards.

Stainless Steel was an arcade adventure game split into around four sections overall. You would start out on foot, then later progress onto driving around in your car, then going under water – before a final on foot event. You can checkout a walk through of the ZX Spectrum edition at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mALShjQTjeE

The game was only ever listed as being developed for the ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC, of which it was released for those platforms. No C64 version was ever mentioned from what we can see, hence its not been in the archive.

However, contributor @Arcachnar found a German review of the game, which lists the C64 as a platform. The review itself never mentions the C64 directly, and they only test the CPC/Spectrum version. Were they perhaps told that a C64 version was coming soon? Or was it merely a printing error?

We’ve included a page for now, whilst we try and get some kind of confirmation if a conversion was ever in consideration or not. It is entirely plausible, as Mikro-Gen did release games on the C64 and often saw conversions of their ZX Spectrum titles, like the Wally week series. Maybe this got caught up in the demise of Mikro-Gen in 1987?

Do you know anything more about a potential conversion?