Help looking for an old RPG game

I took the liberty of asking the wizards at "Digital Press"
about your game.

Click this > "ID An 'APPLE][' RPG" Question
ta read it.

I hope that works out !

Later!

could it have been called "Necromancer"??

I used to play this constantly in the early 80's and I've been looking for it for quite some time.

Catmistake

Do you have more info about the game so it may help others remember ?

It sounds pretty much as described above in the initial post...

I played it on an Apple II (e??) with a green monitor... no idea if it had color. It gave sort of an outllne of an island... with little details, I think, like trees, or maybe a stream, there was a tower, where I guess, the necromancer was... you worked your way up to it (well, 2 dimensional graphics, the tower was towards the top). I think maybe details were given in text at the bottom... you battled stuff... which was sort of randomized, as if rolling dice decided the fate (i.e. a simplified RPG).

I've looked around on google, but there were other games with the same title, and particularly annoying, an Apple II game cracker named "The Necromancer," so... its going to be very hard to find. I remember that I really enjoyed the game. By my recollection, this must have been 1983-84 (ug... my memory of it is so dreamlike and fragmented... maybe it was 1982). I was in Florida's 'gifted' program... so we were lucky enough to have a computer between the 2 dozen or so kids in the program, split between 2 classes.... and where all we did pretty much was play games (if not academic and legit, then at least imaginative)... but this one in particular was in heavy rotation by me and the rest of my genius classmates. I still know one of them (was in the other gifted class... coined the word 'Ajax'). When I see him online, I'll see if he remembers anything about it.

Is there a good Apple II emulator for OS X? Or would it run in classic (double emulation!)?

____
edit

I may have found the Atari version...
1982 by Bill Williams and Synapse Software:
edited: link removed at Catmistake's request

Catmistake,

Thanks for the extra info. DO you also remember you could get on a boat ?

I know for sure that the game was made before 1983. I played it in 1982 not sure with part of the year. Problem was that it was on the computer of a friend of mine and I was only aloud to play it for a little while on some days. Being a 13 year old kid at that time.

I not familiar with emulators for the OS X, sorry

I thought that was a link to a review site... but on examiniation, there is a download link... (prob for a 2600... anybody have one of those anymore?)

And I can't edit my post anymore because of a response already posted.

Admin: can you please remove the link without locking this thread?

Link removed at Catmistake's request.

Thanks, eeun!

Hey, I chatted with my pal, and he doesn't remember it at all. He remembers Ultima and Bard's Tale and Wizardry, all of which, I'm pretty sure, had more advanced graphics... and that must have been 1984. Therefore by reckoning, it had to be 1982 (he went to a different elemetary school), because in 83 I was in Catholic school for a year, and the only computer's I had access to were my Commodore 64, and my other friend's father's Itek Quadratek... I think a mini-computer for typesetting... had 9" floppies!!

Anyway... here's what we know:
Available in 1982
RPG
Simplified graphics- overhead view of an island with little details like trees and a tower
probably titled "Necromancer"
may or may not be the game formerly linked to above

Does this seem familiar?
This game will be very difficult to uncover...
Bill Williams died in 1988, and Synapse was shut down @ 1986 after being screwed by the guy that took over Atari and after being bought by Broderbund. I can find no reference to an Apple II port (but... this means little, I think. How hard could it have been to port games to other platforms back then?)

I found two games :
Lair of Necromancer
Necromancer II.

I also got copies of these two games all I need now is to get them up and running. Will let you know.

Notice the 'Krull-like' weapon? Krull came out in 1983. I know I've seen this before... because I remember seeing Krull and thinking that the weapon wasn't original.

I bought Virtual ][ for OSX, and like it a lot. It's got the kind of grace about it that you expect from developers on Apple platforms. Oh, and the most important part for me... it emulates the original un-plussed Apple ][.
http://www.xs4all.nl/~gp/VirtualII/
I don't think it is a Carbon app, though. They just released in the other direction, dual-ended binaries for PowerPC and Intel.

- David

Thanks! That looks pretty tight!

so... what's the differences between the Apple II, the Apple II+, the Apple IIe, the Apple IIc, Apple IIc Plus, the Apple III... and wasn't there one more (not the IIgs, but... the Apple IIev or something?)? I thought they were just faster procs... but by your insinuation I have to ask: were there compatibility issues in the subsequent models with the older software?

Catmistake,

Necromancer is not the game I am looking for. It seems it is a arcade type game. See the link below for some ingame screenshots

http://www.atarihq.com/reviews/atari8/necromancer.html

I think I found it. The game is called :
Odyssey: The Compleat Apventure.

info:
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/ref/odyssey_the_compleat_apventure1

I got a copies via
- ftp.apple.asimov.net/pub/apple_II/images/games/adventure/odyssey/odyssey.dsk.gz
- http://www.virtualapple.org/odysseydisk.html

I am not 100% sure that this was the game. I does look and feel a lot like it. Its just the graphics arent what I remember (it is the same style) So if anyone knows of simaliar looking games please let me know.

I also have a ingame screenshot but I have no place to put the image so I can mail it to you.

Good heavens - there's lots of differences between all of them. And books written about them, too. You might want to check out some of the various computer museums online. All of these were compatible with one another, to a degree. Each has its uniquenesses such that software written to exploit a particular model would likely fail on the other models.

The II was the first in the line. Non-autostart ROM, Integer basic in ROM. Turn the switch on, and you get garbage on the screen and you're dropped into the monitor. You need to do a reset and/or ctrl-b to get going.

The II+ saw autostart ROM, Microsoft-based floating point basic, and a few circuit upgrades on the motherboard.

The IIe got a ton of custom circuitry to reduce chip count, added an auxiliary slot. Updated ROMs, etc.

The IIc was the little portable job. Most things folks needed was included - serial port, floppy drive, etc. IIc+ saw some tweaks.

The III was supposed to be the successor to the II line; it was a full-on business model. It came out around the time of the II+ (i.e. before the IIe). Quality problems plagued it early on; the fixed III+ wasn't enough to save it. SOS, the operating system, lived to fight another day as ProDOS.

I guess I was referring to, specifically, what's the difference concering inter-compatibility of software. For instance... I know the IIc was smaller!! I know the IIc Plus was a faster version of the IIc, but the info I was looking for concerned the insinuation of the previous post, that the II was compatible with more software than the II+...

hmm... perhaps the crux is what you've explained about the difference in ROM between the II and the II+

upload the screen shots to AF: Top left corner list, click on "create content" and then "image".... name it, choose the image, submit it... then what I do is open the uploaded image in its own page, copy that url, and stick it in the tread between {img} {/img} tags (replace the { } braces with the straight brackets)

Yeah, I don't recognize the screens from the Atari version either... but your orig. description is so darned familiar, as well as the cover of the box of Necromancer (and the title). If there was an Apple II version, it may have been quite different.

The title you suggest sounds... like nothing I've heard before... but I'd need to see the screens to know (I could have had the name wrong all along, since 1982...)

The II+ is probably the most commonly targeted Apple 8-bit platform. II is less "compatible" because it doesn't have Applesoft in ROM; you needed a language card or auxilliary ROM board with the Applesoft (and autostart ROM) chips installed.

The things I like about the original II ROMs are: faster integer basic, the mini-assembler in ROM (at $F666?) and the sheer Woz-iness of it all.

Got it to work. Behold the screenshots catmistake.

Let me know if these ring a bel for you.

Here I found a link to download Necromancer.

link removed...maybe temporarily...see below

(Game is for Atari, so you will need a emu for that one).

Applefritter has a policy against posting links to copyrighted software, even if can no longer be purchased.

I don't know the legal status of the Apple II programs linked above at the Asimov archive, etc., but I think the Atari versions may still hold copyright...so link removed.

I think it may have been the very same link that Catmistake asked me to remove earlier in the thread.

Sorry about the link, I am not sure if its still copyrighted. The maker is no longer with us and the company is gone. But better be safe then sorry. But I will be more carefull in the future.

I remember the island being oriented vertically, compared to this where the island is fatter than it is tall. Also, I clearly remember some representation of the sorcerer's (or necromancer's) tower... It was either like a rook in 2D, but I think rather it was a little bold square... which was supposed to represent a keep.

This looks pretty close... but I don't thing this is what I was thinking of.

Do you think this is the game you were thinking of?

Cat,

To be honest I am not 100% sure this was the game. But then again its been so long ago. The island looks familair and the gameplay feels familair. But I remember that de border between the island and the sea was drawn in with a line. (like the mountains) and that the water was represented by drawns waves. (simple in form offcourse). But if I read the info (see link earlier) it seems to fit what I remember about the game. Also I don't know if the monitor at that time was color or black and white, which will make a difference.

But your description of the island is not the way I remember but then again may it was a different game that you played.

Hopefully the screenshots will help other players remember similair games.

though mildly interesting that we may be talking about 2 different but similar games, and that we may have uncovered another 2 and similar games (4 nearly identical games from the same era)...

however, it blows that we can't find what we are looking for...
we are, historically, in the smallest generation yet of Americans (gen X, or generation 13)... and the gen y crowd (the majority of fritterers, I think) can't help us, as they were rug rats, if even a glimmer in their daddy's eyes in 1982.

And me not even American lol.

But I know it sucks. It took me a long time also to find phantasia game series (1-3).

I made a list of adventure/rpg games that were released before 1983.
Its probably not complete and also I left out some games that I know
are Text based.

Note: the = and + refer to 2 websites where I found screenshots.
For the other games I am still looking around.
= Fandal’s Website (atari games)
+ Mobygames Website (http://www.mobygames.com/browse/games/apple2/)

= Crypt of the Undead
Curse of Ra
Danger in Drindisti
= Datestones of Ryn
= Dragon’s Eye
= Hellfire Warrior
= King Arthur’s Heir
Sword of Fargoal
= Temple of Apshai
The Keys of Acheron
Upper Reaches of Apshai

All from EPYX

= Computer Acquire - Avalon Hill 1981-82
Pursuit of the Graf Spee - Strategic Simulations 1981-82
= Rescue At Rigel - Epyx 1980
+ Swordthrust - CE Software 1981 (TEXT)
+ The Prisoner - Edu-Ware 1980 (TEXT)
Time Zone - Sierra On-Line 1981
+ Akalabeth World of Doom - California Pacific
Apple Adventure - Apple Computers
Cranston Manor - Sierra
Dungeon - TSR Hobbies
Dungeon Campaign - Wilderness Campaign
= Empire of the Over-Mind - Avalon Hill (text)
Fortress of the Witch King - Avalon Hill
The Missing Ring - Datamost
Theseus and the Minotaur - TSR Hobbies
Marauder - Sierra on-line
Ulysses and the golden Fleece - Sierra 0n-line
Wizard and the Princess - Sierra On-Line 1980

Companies:
Synergistic Software
Sierra On-Line
Epyx
Strategic Simulations
TSR Hobbies

Cat does this look familiar to you

In this game you need to collect an army and kill a necromancer.

This is another one that may be it. Havent found a screenshot yet: Apventure To Atlantis [sic] by Clardy, Synergistic Software

The little white square off to the bottom right seems familiar... The color and graphics are throwing me off a little... I saw the game I've been refering to on a green monochrome monitor, and the graphics were, if anything, thighter. But that could be it...

The game is called

"Dungeon Adventure and Wilderness Adventure."

Basicly its 2 games in one. In the wilderness adventure you have to gather an army and than kill the evil necromancer. Thats the plot I found on a screenshot of the package.

Hope it helps.

Necromancer, sounds a little wierd for a game title.

I have Planetfall, from the same era, but have lost my Stellar Patrol ID card.

Neuromancer != Necromancer. Neuro was based on the novel by William Gibson. It was also one of the few games I could stand long enough to finish. I might even still have my maps of the Matrix grid stuck in a box somewhere...

Hey Folks.

..Possible but heck. This was over a quarter of a century ago (hows that for putting it into perspective!)

I think this game may have been even more primative.

From what I remember it wasn't a bird's eye view. It was a picture view. Like looking out a window. There were two colors: Green and black. And the green drawings more akin to the early Atari vector graphics.

I think they made a version for the TRS-80.

Ah..this isn't going to be easy. The screen shots definately help. If somone finds a pic of it I'll know it in a flash! But I could start digging through that list as well. Let me see...riding my bike. It had to have been 83 or earlier if that narrows it down. I remember one of the store employees saying "goblin" or "elf" or maybe even "troll" but I think it was....ah! I just can't remember!!!

we'll get it! This is quite the challange!

It couldn't be this, could it?