Thursday, February 24, 2022

Ports of Entry: Evryware

Unknown lead platform:


Sierra Championship Boxing

Possibly released for PC in 1983. Certainly no later than 1985.

Released for Commodore 64, and Macintosh in 1985.

Released for Apple II in 1986.

 

An interview with Barry and Dave Murry states that this was published for PC in 1983. But it makes no mention of other platforms, and contradicts both Mobygames and the ingame copyright date, which says 1985. My best guess is that the extant PC version is a re-release with an updated copyright, but this assumption still leaves some questions unanswered.

The interview does state, in no ambiguous terms, that this predates The Ancient Art of War, and it would be weird, though not impossible, if they remembered that incorrectly.


Select chronology: 

 
Title Lead platform Date Contemporary ports
Interactive Fiction: Six Micro Stories
 Heath/Zenith 1980 1980 ports to Apple II and TRS-80 by Adventure International
Interactive Fiction: Dragons of Hong Kong
 Heath/Zenith 1981 1981 ports to Apple II and TRS-80 by Adventure International
Sierra Championship Boxing
 ??? c1983
 Unknown release date for PC
1985 releases on C64 and Macintosh
1986 release on Apple II
The Ancient Art of War
 DOS 1984 c1984 port to Apple II
1985 port to Macintosh
The Ancient Art of War at Sea
 DOS
 1987-8 Same-year releases on Apple II and PC
1988 releases on Macintosh and PC-88
Manhunter: New York
 DOS 1988 1988 ports to Apple II and Apple IIgs
1989 ports to Amiga, Atari ST, and Macintosh
Manhunter 2: San Francisco
 DOS 1989-9 1989 ports to Atari ST and Macintosh
1990 port to Amiga
1982 port to PC
The Ancient Art of War in the Skies
 DOS 1992 1993 ports to Amiga and Atari ST
SpaceKids
 DOS 1995
Space Dude
 DOS 1996
Labels:

4 comments:

  1. sumeeFebruary 25, 2022 at 3:12 AM

    The Apr-May 85 issue of CGW has a feature on IBM war games which includes a review of The Ancient Art of War. In the lead part of the article it's mentioned that these are IBM only (or first) titles. And the available platforms for TAAOW are mentioned to be IBM and PCjr.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AhabFebruary 25, 2022 at 7:42 AM

      Interesting. Could Mobygames be mistaken about the Apple II's 1984 release?

      Delete
  2. sumeeFebruary 25, 2022 at 2:57 PM

    Entirely possible. At least CGW is a contemporary source and they do make a big deal of these being IBM originals. And according to the interview, the Murrys seem to have been PC focused from very early on, so DOS being the lead platform is very likely.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Matt J.February 27, 2022 at 8:59 AM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Most popular posts

  • The not-so-basic mechanics of Wizardry
    Around 2012-2014, Thomas William Ewers reverse-engineered the Wizardry code and published compilable Pascal source to Asimov, which was...
  • Game 85: Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord
    I’ve hacked together a “fixed” version of Wizardry for the Apple II which restores the initial game state to what I believe is the correct o...
  • Unusual MAME controls
    Arcade games had a wide variety of controls. Most of the time, they translate pretty well to a gamepad – by far the most common coin-up con...
  • The treasury of Wizardry
    In my last post, I briefly described the treasure system of Wizardry, where one of two treasure values are selected to determine your re...
  • The bestiary of Wizardry
    I've split the monster table into several, while also merging some of the columns. Trust me, this is the least bad solution that I...
  • Versions of Zork I and their text differences
    For my last posting on Zork I, I want to highlight the differences between versions. It’s something I wanted to know about, and I couldn’t f...
  • On Apple II emulation by MAME
    I’ve always used AppleWin to emulate Apple II games. Back in 1996, it came bundled with the Roberta Williams Anthology as a means to play ga...
  • Wizardry: Proving Grounds version 3.0
      Version 2.1 of Wizardry for the Apple II came out just over 41 years ago, and even though it's been ported and remade a dozen times ov...
  • Game 105: Galactic Empires
    See my guide on Apple II emulation via MAME if you want to play, using the notes on AppleSoft BASIC. The game was originally distributed ...
  • Reach for the Stars: A 150-turn game
    My previous post about Reach for the Stars described a full play session of the shortest, simplest game, in a manner to explain gameplay m...