I generally only upload games to my Retrogame site that I have confirmed the distribution status with the owner of the copyright. However, one of the people it has been difficult to find extensive biographical information about in order to try to make contact with is Greg Hassett. Many commentator's note that Mr. Hassett started programming at the age of 12 and that he was very prolific [1][2]. But it is unclear what happened to him after his contribution to the early age of home computing. But I've noticed that some people might already have been using one of my early games distributions to examine one of his games, such as:
https://www.retrogamestrove.com/game-15-king-tuts-tomb/
I've also been contacted by a number of people wanting to play this game from my faculty site, so I have decided to upload his games to the Internet Archive so these people can access them, at least for an indefinite time. If anyone out there knows anything about the copyright status of these games, please contact me.
I have already ported the following games by Hassett:
- The House of Seven Gables
- Journey to the Center of the Earth
- Sorcerer's Castle Adventure
- King Tut's Tomb
- Voyage to Atlantis
- Enchanted Island
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I am now in the process of considering converting some of Hassett's games to Micro Color Basic, so that people will have easy online access to the works of this important contributor:
- Mystery Mansion
- World’s Edge
- Curse of the Sasquatch
- Devil's Palace
I have listed them in order of my priority for porting. When I have finished any of these conversions I'll also make them available. I'll take them back down by April 2022. Let me know if you have any thoughts on the priority.
I've also stumbled across a neat publication: Captain 80 BASIC Adventures. It has a huge list of classic text adventure games, many I have already converted to Micro Color BASIC (See the ones with *s).
Chapter 2 Dog Star Lance Micklus 87 *
Chapter 3 Thunder Road Don & Freda Boner 97
Chapter 4 Deadly Dungeon Don & Freda Boner 107
Chapter 5 Revenge of Balrog Don & Freda Boner 117
Chapter 6 The Fortress at Times-End Don & Freda Boner 125
Chapter 7 Temple of the Sun Jack Powers 134
Chapter 8 Lost Ship Charles Forsythe 148
Chapter 9 Spider Mountain Teri Li 157
Chapter 10 Lost Dutchman's Gold Teri Li 167 *
Chapter 11 Journey to the Center of the Earth Greg Hassett 177 *
Chapter 12 King Tut's Tomb Greg Hassett 187 *
Chapter 13 Voyage to Atlantis Greg Hassett 197 *
Chapter 14 House of Seven Gables Greg Hassett 206 *
Chapter 15 Sorcerer's Castle Greg Hassett 216 *
Chapter 16 CIA Adventure Hugh Lampert 225 *
Chapter 17 Arctic Adventure Harry McCracken 234
Chapter 18 Adventureland Scott Adams 241 *
I will be converting some of these that I haven't done yet over the next few months. But first I must investigate which one's are already easily available in repositories. If I find any that are not I'll come back to this list and mark them with a + sign to indicate that they are on my radar screen for porting. If anyone has any suggestions for any that I should prioritize for porting please post a comment.
One final "Text Adventure" project I am thinking of undertaking is converting my re-code of Planet of Death by Artic Soft. I have read many reviews of this game, and they all praise its innovative features. But there are also a number of specific complaints that reviewers make about its puzzles that they agree spoil the game, especially for modern players. It might be nice, since I have converted it to BASIC, to make my recode a new version of the game that addresses these complaints. That way it might serve a useful function of providing an opportunity for modern players to give it a try and not be overly frustrated. Any comments on this project would be much appreciated.
Addendum
Found an inspiration online of a simple "Pharaoh" graphic to use for Hasett's Tut's Tomb game.
I worked up a SG6 version of it to replace the simple pyramid I had originally created for an intro screen.
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