Looking some old games
Quote from Sightsaber on 27 December 2023, 14h50As for Italian games, we have already encountered in our searches that they often arbitrarily rename games.
We do not arbitrarily rename games! Well, we did, but that was very common for sci-fi franchises to make them sound better for Romance speakers thanks to our fanatical dubbing culture (and in 1977 English wasn't a commonly taught language in Italy, we still had French as first pick). Pretty much the entirety of Star Wars has different names in Italian, much like how in the 90ies all Warhammer products were "italianized".
The Wargaming Scribe, my apologies for the technical confusion. The list should now be visible to everyone.
And thanks for adding avatars! 🙂
Dayyalu, there are discrepancies with titles in Russian too, but of a different kind. Games are often not renamed at all, gamers use English titles, but foreign Star Wars books may have two or three translations of the title: both official publishers and numerous fan translators often use their own version.
Quote from Sightsaber on 28 December 2023, 18h42The Wargaming Scribe, my apologies for the technical confusion. The list should now be visible to everyone.
And thanks for adding avatars! 🙂
Boy what a list...
... and you have not started the TRS-80, Atari 8bits and Apple II yet. You are still doing this for at least a year. It looks like you pulled @shaman7207 in a hole he will never get out of :).
By the way, my own list for wargames (for the main site, which you may have visited, if only for some context on Ralph Hopkins, the MECC and the SOL-20).
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VvFMytweJ91wxjh4UsdNt05vIN2EYziXgDQbfIehvzw/edit#gid=0
I don't have any Soviet title, so if there is anything 1980-1984 in the Soviet Union, please tell me. I doubt it, up to 1983 I only have US/Canadian/Australian/British/Japanese games, and ONE Swedish game. Other domestic European wargames only start timidly to show up in 1984...
Quote from The Wargaming Scribe on 28 December 2023, 18h51It looks like you pulled @shaman7207 in a hole he will never get out of :).
You can't even imagine what absolutely panicky pictures he sends me from time to time! 😀 But he is very stubborn person and I trust that he will handle everything and play every Star Wars game available!
Quote from The Wargaming Scribe on 28 December 2023, 18h53By the way, my own list for wargames (for the main site, which you may have visited, if only for some context on Ralph Hopkins, the MECC and the SOL-20).
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VvFMytweJ91wxjh4UsdNt05vIN2EYziXgDQbfIehvzw/edit#gid=0
I am missing Russian titles, so if there is anything 1980-1984 in Soviet Union, please tell me.
Impressive list! I'm sure I'll find something to add from Russian-language games. Please indicate explicitly the criteria for selecting games (I see a variety of genres on the list), and I’ll try to make a selection (I'll add emulators for Soviet computers).
Quote from The Wargaming Scribe on 28 December 2023, 18h51... and you have not started the TRS-80, Atari 8bits and Apple II yet. You are still doing this for at least a year. It looks like you pulled @shaman7207 in a hole he will never get out of :).
Yes, I myself did not expect that the marathon would be so long. It's been going on for a year and a half now, but most of the time I've been playing the official games. Then, for some reason, I decided to also play flash games, and then @sightsaber appeared and proposed an “adventure” with unofficial games for old PCs. I looked at the list on this site: https://old-g.narod.ru/eng.htm and thought that not everything is so scary. But @sightsaber managed to find several times more 😀
Quote from Sightsaber on 28 December 2023, 19h13
Impressive list! I'm sure I'll find something to add from Russian-language games. Please indicate explicitly the criteria for selecting games (I see a variety of genres on the list), and I’ll try to make a selection (I'll add emulators for Soviet computers).
Ah yes!
I am trying to play all wargames in relative chronological order. By wargame, I mean non-arcade military simulations in historical or non-historical settings where you give orders to more than one unit (there can be exceptions). Ideally single player thought I have played some multiplayer-only games already.
I give more details here.
The selection principle is clear. I can immediately suggest a game for ZX Spectrum about the most important battle in medieval Russian history, which I was fond of as a schoolboy. There are quotes from medieval chronicles in the border.
| 1994 | Куликовская битва (Battle of Kulikovo) | Dick Aleksei | WE Group | ZX Spectrum | Turn Based | Land strategy | Yes | Medieval | Russia | Great Troubles | Belarus |
Quote from Sightsaber on 30 December 2023, 8h55The selection principle is clear. I can immediately suggest a game for ZX Spectrum about the most important battle in medieval Russian history, which I was fond of as a schoolboy. There are quotes from medieval chronicles in the border.
1994 Куликовская битва (Battle of Kulikovo) Dick Aleksei WE Group ZX Spectrum Turn Based Land strategy Yes Medieval Russia Great Troubles Belarus
Thanks. I will add it to my list.
When you said "most important medieval battle in Russian history" I was expecting this one:
It was one chance out of 3 I guess.
I will add it to my list. For now I am trying to complete pre-90, but I don't think there are many. I found one Yugoslavian wargame already though, so maybe.
The Battle on the Ice is a significant but minor battle (thoug the movie by Sergei Eisenstein is magnificent!) At the Battle of Kulikovo (1380), Russian princes acted together for the first time in centuries, and this provided the prerequisites for ending feudal fragmentation and creating a unified Russian state.
Here is a selection of wargames for computers BK 0010 and BK 0011. Alas, only the last one is Soviet-era. Some games are available to play online. Emulator is here.
| 1993 | Expansion | Denis Izmailov | Brilliantsoft | БК0011М | turn-based | Conquest | No | Fantasy | Russia (Cheboksary) | Link | |||
| 1998 | НЛО: Враг неизвестен (UFO: Enemy unknown) | Sergei Kononenko (port) | Mercury Software | БК0011М | turn-based | Tactics | No | Fiction | Earth | Ukraine (Simferopol) | Link | Video | |
| 1994 | Warlords | V. Pogoreltsev | Computer-Servis | БК0011М | turn-based | Conquest | Middle Ages | Russia (Saratov) | Link | ||||
| Война зулу (Zulu War) | Oleg Sevastyanov | СОК Corporation | БК0011М | turn-based | Battlefield tactics | Yes | New Era | South Africa | Link | ||||
| 1992 | Две империи (Two Empires) | L. Panov | СНЕК | БК0010 (11М) | turn-based | Conquest | Middle Ages | Russia (Saint Petersburg) | Link | ||||
| Звёздный патруль (Star patrol) | БК0010 (Focal) | turn-based | Space Tactics | No | Space | ? | Link | ||||||
| 1994 | Мафия. Крёстный отец (Mafia. Godfather) | NSM corp. | БК0010 (11М) | turn-based | Battlefield tactics | 20 century | ? | Link | |||||
| 30.03.1990 | Пираты (Pirates) | L. Borevskiy | БК0010 (11М) | turn-based | Conquest | Middle Ages | Atlantic Ocean | USSR | Link | ||||
Did I understand correctly, you don’t need presidential simulators?
Thanks for this, and thank you for directly using my "format" so I could simply copy / paste!
I added them all. I don't think I will reach 1990 before 2030, but hopefully I ll get there eventually.
I don't do "political" sim, not that I don't like them but at some point I need to make choice. I am even pondering stopping with the "space" games.
@admin6572 @porkbelly I finished an article about the earliest Star Wars games. Thank you for your help!
Hi everyone!
Our Star Wars games marathon continues! Tomorrow the second issue about games on the TRS-80 Color Computer will be released.
We also found two more games for Sol-20, and we had a problem launching one of them. It was written for Helios disk memory system by Stephen Maguire (who was 19 years old in 1980) in Intel 8080 processor codes, as far as I understand, and we don’t have enough understanding of how it can be run on Solace 3.2 emulator.
@admin6572 @porkbelly , could you help us? We will be grateful for any advice you may have.
From what I read on the Solace emulator page, the Helios disk subsystem was something yet to be implemented. I think he has bits and pieces of it started, but not fully working. So I do not think there is much to be done with this one at this time until this emulator (or another) emulates Helios.
.... and I should have added what Porkbelly indicates below. About the only choice is to convert it to a different format.
This is interesting. Sure it looks like this can be modified to run in an emulator without a Helios disk system.
Where did this file (the code) come from? It looks like it was extracted from a collection of sources or maybe came off a disk or tape. It might be quicker if I can find the executable binaries and hack a few bytes, or else I need to reassemble the program from the source.
EDIT: Ok, no worries. I found it on sol20.org, there's only source code. Leave it with me for a bit and I will try and reassemble a working executable from the source. The program looks like another version of the Bob Bishop game. Getting it working will be more fun than playing 🙂
Hi guys! If you're interested, I've released a new article on Star Wars games for CoCo/Dragon 32/64:
- Return of the Jet-I (1983)
- Laser Run (1984)
- Syzygy (1984)
- Zector Adventure (1984)
- Space Raider (1987)
I have the Maguire code working finally! Not a great game, but a really nicely commented example of how to program a game in 8080 assembler.
I had some problems with pseudo-ops. It was written for an assembler other than the als8 that is packaged with Solace, but I figured it out. It means you'll need a modified source program. The HeliOS references are removed (only two bytes). The als8 assembler needs line numbers and the DB op (used for data declaration) only supports single bytes so I needed to expand the DB ops, but nothing in the code has been changed from the original.
I have no idea how to extract an *.ent file (compiled executable) from Solace but I can supply a source file and a short sequence of instructions to load the source file, then compile and run it. Both files are uploaded here.
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/yd2nb89jo6and/Maguire
Hope you can get it working... my high score is 14 on speed 3, 9 on speed 0.
Thanks a lot! I didn't understand much, but I passed on the information to Sightsaber 😀