any info about unreleased Tynsoft games ?

On the subject of A8 prototypes, betas, unreleased games and general insider info.

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Mr.Bacardi
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any info about unreleased Tynsoft games ?

Post by Mr.Bacardi » Thu Jan 19, 2006 2:52 pm

Hi !
Anyone has some info about following (most probably Tynesoft) titles:

- Superman - man of steel: I can remember I talked to some Tynesoft employee at the Atari Messe Düsseldorf 198?. He told me that 2 new games were planned to be released for Atari 8-bit. One was "The last guardian, which was released, after Tynesoft went bust. The other game was called "Superman - man of steel", which has been released for example on C64 !

- Acillatem: planned game by Chris Murray (author of Mirax Force). Information about this was found on original "The last Guardian" disk...

- Spooky: also planned game by Chris Murray (author of Mirax Force). Information about this was found on original "The last Guardian" disk...

BR,
Stephan
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Post by Atari Frog » Thu Jan 19, 2006 4:18 pm

Nothing unfortunately :(

It will be very difficult to track down Chris Murray as his last name is incredibly common in the UK!

I also read about Jet Set Willy II and Scorpion...

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Post by Mr.Bacardi » Thu Jan 19, 2006 4:32 pm

I know that Murray is very common in the UK :-(
As far as I can remember he also wrote his address in "The Last Guardian" (in encrypted form ...)
I can check later , maybe this is a good starting point for possible investigation... ;-)
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Post by Mr.Bacardi » Thu Jan 19, 2006 7:48 pm

Hi Atari Frog,
I sent you a pm about Chris' address.
Of course, I don't know if it's still vaild ;-)
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Post by avram » Thu Jan 19, 2006 8:27 pm

I contacted Frank Gasking from http://gtw64.co.uk/ the c64 lost game site but he's also trying to contact Chris Paul Murray! So hopefully Mr.Bacardi can get somewhere with the address he has.
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Post by Atari Frog » Thu Jan 19, 2006 9:35 pm

Nothing in the White Pages :(

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Re: Tynesoft Games

Post by carmel_andrews » Mon Mar 27, 2006 2:24 pm

you also forgot to mention Ian Bothams test cricket (or Cricket match) which was advertised in several early editions of Databases Atari user magazine
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Post by Atari Frog » Mon Mar 27, 2006 3:36 pm

You can also add Super Gran to the list... We hope to have these titles covered in a future section of the site...

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mrparp
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Hello

Post by mrparp » Mon Jun 05, 2006 6:59 pm

Hello guys, I'm Chris. It was total luck came across this site - I was training some guys today and I asked one guy's age (he looked really young) and he said he was 22. I realised I had just did Henry's House (C64 version) when he was born and we got talking and googling.

Spooky was basically going to be a rip off of Ghost and Goblins. I started toying with software sprites and I wanted to get lots of smooth moving objects. I'm not sure where I left it - I remember having the main character jumping around and firing lots of swords in one wide scrollable screen. Then uni got the better of me (not so much work... beer and unix hacking :o).

Some trivia:
I only started programming because an older friend said he was going to try to write a game and I wanted to do it first. We both had Atari 400s and had been renting games for quite a long time from some guy in Sunderland and playing loads of titles. It wouldn't have occurred to me to write one until he wanted to (he was doing a clone of Jump Bug). I bought Programming the 6502 and MAC/65 cartridge and that was it. It's also his (Pete's) fault I ended up on Atari/C64s... I was ready to buy a Spectrum.

It took me 11 days to code Mirax Force. I had been playing Uridium on the C64 and also had just got hold of a Replay sound cartridge and was dying to code something with speech. It started as an experiment to see how far I could take display list interrupts to make the one sprite look like many.

Henry's House was originally called Home Sweet Home. The publisher (English Software) of the C64 (first) version wanted to take advantage of the fact Charles+Di had just had Prince Harry so they renamed it. This is why the title piccy looks a bit odd - it was based on one of the "Home Sweet Home" stitching thingies and never meant to say Henry's House. I've got some silly letter from Buck Palace as the publisher sent a C64 and game to Diane+Charles for them to play - yeah right lol. The reason the caterpillar appears when you type my initials in the title screen (infinite lives) was so I could brag "it's the only bug in the game".

HH on C64 sold for £5.95 or £8.95 (I can't recall which) - I got £1 a unit. HH on Atari sold for £1.99 under Mastertronic and I got... wait for it... 10p a unit. I had a £1500 advance recouped against royalties which meant nothing more until 15,000 games sold and I thought hmm... nothing then. I got about £500-£1000 a month for over a year, crazy numbers and proved a lot to me that there's a price people are willing to pay (I made a lot more from the cheap version despite getting 10 times less per unit).

I, ur... used to go to John Menzies, Virgin, WHS Smiths and move my games to number one spots and spread them out a bit.

I seem to recall the name Bacardi... didn't I see your name in one of my game images when running under an atari PC emulator?

I have lots of hardware/disks lying in boxes in lofts... I sometimes think about getting them out. It's frightening how long ago it was tho.

You can email at mrparp-at-bigfoot-dot-com.

Cheers
Chris
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deathtrappomegranate
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Post by deathtrappomegranate » Mon Jun 05, 2006 8:58 pm

mrparp, Sir, you have mail!
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Andre
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Re: Hello

Post by Andre » Tue Jun 06, 2006 11:46 am

mrparp wrote:Hello guys, I'm Chris.
Oh, cool. I always admired the superior in-game graphics of Henry's House. In my opinion one of the best platform games at its time for the Atari machines.
It took me 11 days to code Mirax Force.
:shock: 11 days? Wow!

Stupid question (perhaps): Is that your voice speaking to the player?
HH on Atari sold for £1.99 under Mastertronic
That price was quite a steal I think.
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Post by Mr.Bacardi » Tue Jun 06, 2006 2:25 pm

Wow , that's really cool news !!! :shock: :D
Welcome to this board Chris !
(and please forgive me the sins of my youth ! ;-)

Your games are really awesome !
I hope you find some beta versions of Spooky and Acillatem on your disks .
(still listening to Metallica ? ;-))

Greetz,
- Mr.Bacardi -
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Post by mrparp » Tue Jun 06, 2006 5:31 pm

Andre - yes that is my voice in Mirax Force. I know its crap, I spent ages re-recording it and running a program to filter the Replay samples so they compressed better (I felt a bit dumb when I learned about filtering and run-length-encoding many years later, after trying to figure things out myself). I just wanted to bring speech to Atari - the only other game I recall was Dungbeatle "we gotcha". And at the time, I sort of looked like the piccy on the tv in one of the screens on Henry's House - well sort of.. (speccy git lol).

Bacardi - so it was you heheh. I'm glad actually, I would certainly not have played the games if it wasn't for the various emulators and you lot pulling the images. It was my brother who pointed me at the emulators a few years back, I didn't even know about em.

I'm glad someone finally saw the references to metallica etc (did you see PARP?). I thought someone might have a look one day with an editor but didn't think it would be 20 years lol.

I will dig out the old stuff and have a play. I suppose you can develop games completely on a PC nowadays and just run em under an emulator? It wouldn't be such a hard job to make new screens for the games for example.

C
Stormtrooper
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Re:

Post by Stormtrooper » Mon Nov 21, 2011 12:00 pm

mrparp wrote:Andre - yes that is my voice in Mirax Force. I know its crap, I spent ages re-recording it and running a program to filter the Replay samples so they compressed better (I felt a bit dumb when I learned about filtering and run-length-encoding many years later, after trying to figure things out myself). I just wanted to bring speech to Atari - the only other game I recall was Dungbeatle "we gotcha". And at the time, I sort of looked like the piccy on the tv in one of the screens on Henry's House - well sort of.. (speccy git lol).

Bacardi - so it was you heheh. I'm glad actually, I would certainly not have played the games if it wasn't for the various emulators and you lot pulling the images. It was my brother who pointed me at the emulators a few years back, I didn't even know about em.

I'm glad someone finally saw the references to metallica etc (did you see PARP?). I thought someone might have a look one day with an editor but didn't think it would be 20 years lol.

I will dig out the old stuff and have a play. I suppose you can develop games completely on a PC nowadays and just run em under an emulator? It wouldn't be such a hard job to make new screens for the games for example.

C
Hello Mister Chris, it is a great honour to meet the programmer of Henrys house and Mirax Force, after so many years later.

I am Richard VErmeulen, and programmed many things on the ATari 8bit and the old TRS-80 Color Computer system.

Did you know, that in the 80s , some dutch hackers/traders changed the sample of mirax force into "Metalfly".

i was a member of the High Tech team, and only programmed for fun. I made some hacker software , did a lot of conversions, made SuperBasic on the ATari 8bit, and also
the obsolete, long forgotten MS-DOS to Atari emulator system.

I broke the MS-DOS code in 1985 , just to be able to play the naughty game LEisure Suit Larry on my trusty Atari 800XL.

If i had any knowledge of commercial things, or even had a phone number to the CEOS of Atari inc in those days, then microsoft would be dead, and Atari would have won.

I also have to tell, that i started programming in Atari Basic, then Turbo Basic, then old machine language, and then the Atmas II assembler.

Anyhow, greetings
mrparp
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Re: any info about unreleased Tynsoft games ?

Post by mrparp » Mon Nov 21, 2011 12:33 pm

Hi Richard

Nice to hear from you. No, I didn't know some guys hacked it to Metafly - do you mean you replaced the speech sample or name of the game? I've seen some hacks to The Last Guardian - it annoys me I don't have an official copy of that game and I cannot find it - Tynesoft seemed to suspiciously go bust after I sold the game to them.

I never got my hands on a TRS-80 but I do remember it.

I've been recently doing some IOS programming and thinking of porting Henry's House to iPhone/Pad for a laugh... :D

Chris
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