Pipeline (Schatztruhe)

[DrBong]

Hey EAB peeps!

Whilst rummaging through packing boxes full of Ami stuff in the garage the other day, I found in a box of games an original copy of a rare German release by Schatztruhe called Pipeline (not to be confused with the pre-release of Pipe Mania/Pipe Dream of the same name).

Quite a handy find for a couple of reasons - (a) the HOL entry of Pipeline didn't have a DBS or any screenshots, and (b) there doesn't seem to be a disk image of the game in TOSEC or anywhere else on the net.

http://hol.abime.net/4014


Anyway, find an ADF image of Pipeline in the Zone. While the game is rare, it's not the greatest to play and I don't think there is any computer opponent to speak of (i.e. 2-4 human players are needed to get any joy out of it AFAI can tell).

From what little info. I could find on the net, it looks like this game started out as shareware......but was signed up for commercial release by Stefan Ossowski at Schatztruhe back in the day.

Pipeline is very much a curiosity, but hopefully someone will find some entertainment value in it. Enjoy!

[niobyte]

Originally Posted by DrBong

Hey EAB peeps!

Whilst rummaging through packing boxes full of Ami stuff in the garage the other day, I found in a box of games an original copy of a rare German release by Schatztruhe called Pipeline (not to be confused with the pre-release of Pipe Mania/Pipe Dream of the same name).

Quite a handy find for a couple of reasons - (a) the HOL entry of Pipeline didn't have a DBS or any screenshots, and (b) there doesn't seem to be a disk image of the game in TOSEC or anywhere else on the net.

http://hol.abime.net/4014


Anyway, find an ADF image of Pipeline in the Zone. While the game is rare, it's not the greatest to play and I don't think there is any computer opponent to speak of (i.e. 2-4 human players are needed to get any joy out of it AFAI can tell).

From what little info. I could find on the net, it looks like this game started out as shareware......but was signed up for commercial release by Stefan Ossowski at Schatztruhe back in the day.

Pipeline is very much a curiosity, but hopefully someone will find some entertainment in it. Enjoy!

Hi DrBong,

Awesome work.

I also managed to finally image and do a DBS for 'Historia Interminable II, La' the other day, as that has been a M.I.A. entry for a long time.

Would be worth checking out if the disk has been modified or not to include into SPS. Do you have a KryoFlux, I guess you could also use the 'Free KryoFlux (a.k.a. CAPS dumping tool)'.

Hopefully mai is reading this to also include your entry to TOSEC. As he informed CrashDisk about mine as well.

[DrBong]

@Niobyte
Yeh, I saw your post about the Spanish version of Neverending Story II not long after you opened the thread. I was up late doing HOL stuff that night, but Belgarath beat me to the punch and had already upped your DBS + screenshots. Good stuff!

BTW I've been meaning to ask for ages, how did you first stumble on to Spanish versions of Amiga games and then decide to start collecting them? The way I ended up with so many German releases of games in my collection is mostly through a private purchase I did with an ex-German dealer around 2000. I bought two large 20kg boxes of Ami games, and Pipeline was part of that deal. Ever since, I've been a bit fascinated by the German releases and have picked up more of them here and there on Ebay (like Biing and Lettrix, which have just arrived in the mail!).

It's the same thing with North American releases - I've done a few large private/Ebay deals with U.S. sellers in the past and have a lot of them in my collection. The interesting thing about some of them is how the releases have been tailored to suit the North American market, where the Amiga wasn't anywhere near as rampantly popular as it was in Europe. Also, some of the early obscure U.S. releases (1985-88) - which sometimes only made it to Europe or over here on "import only" at ridiculous prices - are quite interesting from a historical perspective.

Anyway, back to Pipeline - no, I don't have a Kryoflux......but Denis has already asked me to dump it for his own "analysis" purposes, so I'll probably give the KryofluxFree software a whirl some time soon!

[niobyte]

@DrBong,

Interestingly it was through looking at Hall of Light, looking for games that had not been found or had scans yet. Spanish releases were quite scarce and did not have much information. At that stage I had a very large interest in changing that.

I always knew that the Amiga didn't do very well in the US. So I have quite a few rare US items in my collection too.

In my collection I have stuff from all over the world. Australia, England, France, Germany, Italy, North America, Spain, etc.

I first noticed stuff rare in my own collection once looking at all, then comparing with what was on Hall of Light. As I noticed in Australia we often sometimes ended up getting some of the US versions of the software imported. For example the Spectrum Holobyte and UbiSoft US releases.

Also the Australasia ECP published ones.

I have found it kind of surprising that here locally I have even found French, German and Italian published versions of titles. Strangely some of these were distributed by Pactronics and Ozisoft. I guess they imported whatever they wanted regardless

Mindscape Australia would sometimes import US versions of titles instead of the ones from the UK.

In a way you've helped showcase that.

BTW, if you want a high capture using a real Kryoflux device I am more than happy to help/assist with that. As afterall we are not far away from each other

[DrBong]

Originally Posted by niobyte

Interestingly it was through looking at Hall of Light, looking for games that had not been found or had scans yet. Spanish releases were quite scarce and did not have much information. At that stage I had a very large interest in changing that.

Wow, cool that HOL was the inspiration! Cody would be so proud!!!

My disease goes back many moons - some time before HOL (scary and unimaginable, I know!) - and Jeff, Bert and the early JST/WHDLoad patchers (Abaddon, Ralf Huvendiek, Mr.Larmer, Harry, Dark Angel, Codetapper, Bored Seal, John Girvin, Psygore, CFOU!) are largely to blame!

My collection went from 20-30 boxed games to 1000+ very quickly in the mid-to-late 1990s. Very cheap 'n' easy to do after C=/Escom went under coz dealers and Amiga owners who had moved on to PC, PSX etc. were practically giving Ami games away!

I first noticed stuff rare in my own collection once looking at all, then comparing with what was on Hall of Light. As I noticed in Australia we often sometimes ended up getting some of the US versions of the software imported. For example the Spectrum Holobyte and UbiSoft US releases.

Yeh, weirdly enough, Aussie distributors would sometimes bring both the UK and U.S. releases of the same games on to shop shelves here. Other times different distributors handled the respective UK and U.S. versions and competed against each other here for sales of the same game!

Also the Australasia ECP published ones.

They were great, weren't they?! Dunno how they managed to get EA games on to budget here so quickly when they were still being sold for months/years afterwards at full-price overseas! Some of the dodgy budget Aussie games they released (like Belial and MACE) - which were such blatantly poor coin-op rip-offs - were quite funny too!!!

I have found it kind of surprising that here locally I have even found French, German and Italian published versions of titles. Strangely some of these were distributed by Pactronics and Ozisoft. I guess they imported whatever they wanted regardless

You know what?! For the longest time I thought that it was just my imagination, but they popped up on Ebay Aust. often enough for me to figure that foreign game versions had to have been officially distributed here at some stage. Again, quite nuts.....but it'd be interesting to hear from someone who worked for the Aussie distributors back then about how those situations came to be.

Mindscape Australia would sometimes import US versions of titles instead of the ones from the UK.

They ended up being one of the biggest Aussie distributors of Ami games, and were probably the biggest one left standing in the latter days. When the Ami died a commercial death here around 1995/96 they had craploads of games that they couldn't shift. They ended up offloading a lot of their stock cheaply to one of their part-time employees (Peter) and another guy they were supplying (bob4979, who's been selling what he couldn't move back then on Ebay the last few years).

In the late '90s, Peter advertised brand new shrinkwrapped Ami games (including gems like Turrican 2 and Moonstone) on the newsgroups for $5 each plus p&p. However, he threw in free postage after the first 20 games if you bought more than $100 worth. Haha, he didn't see me coming......I bought like 75 games in the first lot and then 60 more in another batch. I remember him joking in email that I almost sent him broke on the postage costs alone!

BTW, if you want a high capture using a real Kryoflux device I am more than happy to help/assist with that. As afterall we are not far away from each other

I've got PowerCopy, X-Copy and Catweasel hardware (in packing boxes somewhere, d'oh!), but it'd be cool to perhaps try Kryoflux before I get around to buying......so I might take you up on the offer! Got a lot more time for Amiga stuff atm too, now that I've got a couple of major life goals outta the way

[Crashdisk]

@all
ready for the next release of TOSEC
PS: 2 interesting files are deleted from the disk

[DrBong]

Nice find Crashdisk!

I'll reformat that text manual for uploading to the HOL entry when I complete the image processing/PDF'ing of the printed manual for the game.

[DrBong]

Anyway, find an ADF image of Pipeline in the Zone.

@Denis
As requested in PM, a raw dump of Pipeline made using KryoFlux Free is now in the Zone as well for you and anyone else interested. Enjoy!