Subj : Re: Commodore 128 Dual Screen Game (Ahoy Magazine?)
To   : [email protected]
From : ArcadeAge
Date : Sun Dec 23 2018 03:04 am

On Sunday, December 23, 2018 at 1:19:04 AM UTC+1, [email protected] wrote:
> I have a brain worm that's been bugging me - and Internet searching has not
been able to resolve it.
>
> What was the Commodore 128 specific game, I believe published in Ahoy
magazine, which was a dual-screen two-player adventure?  About the only use of
the C-128's dual-screen capability that I ever say.
>
> Anyone have a recollection of that?

Can't serve with recollections, but being somewhat found of hunting down what
seems impossible to find, I'd like to ask you to be more specific about what
type of game it is you remember.
I am aware that most people don't bother to make a distinction between
adventure games on the one hand and role-playing games on the other. I do: An
adventure game is anything ranging from interactive fiction (books that you can
play) to Lucasfilm/Sierra-
style point&click games. The emphasis is on riddles and puzzles you have to
solve, plus (often) some good humour in documentation and on-screen texts.
A role-playing game usually consists in a group ("party") of characters on one
or more quests to explore unknown territories, the individual characters being
incarnations of (mostly) mythical figures like wizards, elves, druids, knights
or dwarves, their
identities being defined by a set of numerically represented strengths and
weaknesses, subject to change during play, like health points or experience
points. The emphasis is on fighting enemies that appear more or less at random,
the fights themselves
generally involving an element of chance as well.
There are, of course, games with characteristics from both categories, Maniac
Mansion being on of them: Select two other kids, do physical exercise for
strength, etc.
By a quick internet search, I learned about a German adventure game called "Das
Schwert Skar". I haven't tried it yet, but it is reported to display graphics
on a 40-column (VIC-II) screen while the 80-column (VDC) screen is used for
text output (some
people would say "and for text input as well", but what they'd mean by that was
actually just the feedback of what you type in via the keyboard).

On a sad note, my internet search also got me informed that John Molloy has
died. He was involved with the development of several Magnetic Scrolls
adventure games.

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