Avesoft games and other stuff

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Crashdisk

You can always ask me, the answer will come when it is possible

Hehe, okay I'll ask you once there are a few new disks in the folder then.

[Master484]

Maybe it would be best if I just uploaded all of my remaining ADFs here at once instad of slowrolling them one by one ?

Formula Ace and Rolling were the only Avesoft published games that I had.

The remaining 12 ADFs are mainly from Avesoft's "general PD" lists, of which a few might be HOL worthy games, but not necessarily all. Also there are some finnish demo disks + one unfinished game demo (which you may find interesting), and some random stuff.

You can then scan them for viruses all at once, and analyse them at your own pace.

[TCD]

I think that would make the most sense The disks are quite independent of the HOL info and that way Crashdisk can have a look at all of them at the same time like you said.

[Crashdisk]

Rolling :
Virus > OK
TOSEC > Added


Formula Ace :
Virus > OK
TOSEC > Added


Sky Cabbie :
Virus > OK
TOSEC > Added + Cracked version (already in The Zone)

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Crashdisk

Sky Cabbie :
Virus > OK
TOSEC > Added + Cracked version (already in The Zone)

[Master484]

Okay, all ADFs are now in the Zone.

Here are descriptions for each of them:


Neutralizer Demo v0.5 (this is in the ECC Pagesetter disk)

A demo version of a game called Neutralizer, made by Achim Möller, Willi Bäcker and Lutz Osterkorn.
The disk was released by a group called Electronic Cracking Crew, and actually contains Pagesetter and other utilities, and this game demo was there as a bonus.

I don't know if a finished version exists, but in HOL there is what seems to be a sequel to this game:
https://hol.abime.net/3610

Super Brickout (the disk label incorrectly says "Superbrink")
A breakout clone, made in 1987 by James David Walley, one of the programmers of the Spirit of the Excalibur, and other big games. Or at least I think we can assume that this is the same person.
https://hol.abime.net/hol_search.php?N_ref_artist=951

Super Bumber (finnish version)
Now, this is an interesting case.
Fisrtly, it's clearly a hacked version of Pinball Wizard, with altered graphics, music and sounds.
And secondly, there is also a second version of this hack:
[ Show youtube player ]

But the finnish version is different, in that it actually displays the Pinball Wizard loading screen before the Super Bumper title screen. So which one these hacks is the "original", I don't know.

Car v 2.0
A nice little car game made by Anders Bjerin.

RAY pokeri 200mk (the disk is called "pokerietc")
This is a clone of a RAY poker machine game, with different looking graphics.

This game is in HOL:
https://hol.abime.net/4029

Padv Adventure Player
This disk has an adventure construction kit and two example games, written by Kevin Kelm. Load Workbench first, and then the run the programs, otherwise it'll complain about missing libraries.

Flood Demo
A one level demo version of Flood.

Standard games
This is a collection of AmigaBASIC games by someone. I think that the name of the author was there in the basic source code or something when I checked it years ago, but I can't remember it now. There are 6 games, including a 3D-maze "Pallosokkelo" and a nice memory game "Muistipeli". Instructions are in finnish only. You can return to the main menu by selecting "Stop" from the top menu, and then write this: run "alku".

Ratco
A game published by WSOY. This is the ADF of the original release. I included this in the case that it might not be in TOSEC, as it's quite rare I think. And the game is in HOL:
https://hol.abime.net/3903

Four Megaflash disks
Megaflash was a finnish diskette magazine. These are the disks from months 10 and 11 from the year 1991, four disks in total. There are articles, with some good music, game demos of Amnios and Barbarian 2, a PD game Tanx, and some cool scene music demos by various artists.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Master484

Okay, all ADFs are now in the Zone.

Thank you I've added them as they are to 'Non TOSEC Games/Disk/Master484' on the file server.

[Crashdisk]

ave-pelipd-68-adventureplayer.adf
T.A.C.L. - The Adventure Construction Language (1989)(Micro Momentum)
Virus > OK
TOSEC > Added but there is already another version available in TOSEC

ave-pelipd-2-superbumber.adf
Pinball Wizard v1.0 (1987)(Kingsoft)(pre-release)[h PWP][Super Bumber]
Virus > OK
TOSEC > Added, an alternative version with higher scores was classified in Non-TOSEC

ave-pelipd-100-flood-demo.adf
CU Amiga (1990-07)(EMAP Images)(GB)[h][Collection 3][Flood only][18488EC8][ALT]
Virus > OK
TOSEC > Classified in Non-TOSEC
http://amr.abime.net/issue_671_coverdisks

[Master484]

Here is some more info. The following games come from the Avesoft general PD collections: Car v2.0 , Standard Games, Super Bumper, Super Brickout, Padv adventure player and the demo of Flood. I have the magazine ads where all of these games are listed. If you want disk scans for them, I have the original disks for all except for Car v2.0 and Standard Games, which are copies.

Also I looked at the AmigaBASIC source code of "Standard Games" and the coders name is Ari Sarajärvi. And also, in the Ave PD list they have incorrectly named Super Brickout as "Superbrink", so this is where that name comes from.

About that RAY poker game, I'm not sure where I got that from...most likely it too is from the Ave PD list, as there is a poker game listed there. But the disk that I have is not the original, so I can't say for sure.

And about the Neutralizer / Pagesetter disk, this too is a copied disk, and I don't know where it came from. Would really be interested to know if that Neutralizer V0.5 demo is rare.

Also about the ADFs, the story with them is this: Some 2 years ago one guy made me these, and he said that some of them had viruses, especially the Megaflash disks. But he said that he had removed the viruses from them. So all good. But shortly after this my computer blew up (power supply failure), and I lost the ADFs. And then some 1 year later the Death Trap Demo disk thread appeared here, and people asked me for the ADF, so I sent a whole bunch of my disks to one another guy, and this way I got these ADFs again. But I don't know if this second guy also removed the viruses or not, and that's why I thought that it's better to be cautious.

---

About the Avesoft programs list, here are two new games that I found in an advert in Mikrobitti issue 3 / 1994:

Coodix
"This stylish braingame challenges the Rubik's cube on a 2-dimensional plane."

Memohex & Hextime
"Two challenging speed and memory games in the style of Speden Spelit."

( "Speden Spelit" was a finnish TV game show back in the day, where average joes competed against a guy called "Spede" in funny and simple games, one of which was a memory/speed test with a machine that had four flashing buttons )

---

In this advert Memohex & Hextime is listed as program number 4, and therefore it seems to have replaced Memoris. Memoris was one of their oldest games, and therefore probably didn't work on newer Amiga models. Also it seems that Bloody Afternoon has disappeared from the ads from 93 onwards, probably for the same reason (I read somewhere that it was coded with some kind of Basic language).

[TCD]

I've added the two new games to the spreadsheet.

Disks scans for the original games would be great. If you could include some screenshots and info I'll create HOL entries for them then

[Crashdisk]

car2.0.adf
other copies are already in TOSEC but this one seems to be from a compilation...It is basically a Vision hack but with the titlescreen and sound altered

WSOY-Ratco.adf
Other copies are also present but this version is complementary and so, I added it in TOSEC

ave-pelipd-89-superbrink.adf
We usually find this game in compilations, but as it is proposed alone, it is the occasion to add it

No virus found!

[Master484]

Okay, I'll scan the disks and take screenshots.

Also I noticed that some classic PD games are still missing from HOL, such as Amoeba Invaders and Cosmoroids. Might take screenshots for these too at some point.

Speaking of which, what is the current HOL policy on PD games? I assume that high quality ones and semi-commercial ones like these that were spread through these PD disk retailers, or that were put in coverdisks, are in most cases accepted ?

No virus found!

Good. It seems my disks are clean...so far.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Master484

Also I noticed that some classic PD games are still missing from HOL, such as Amoeba Invaders and Cosmoroids. Might take screenshots for these too at some point.

That would be great The more info you can provide the better.

Originally Posted by Master484

Speaking of which, what is the current HOL policy on PD games? I assume that high quality ones and semi-commercial ones like these that were spread through these PD disk retailers, or that were put in coverdisks, are in most cases accepted ?

There's not really a policy (except maybe not adding very low effort hacks/clones). It's more of a priority thing. Adding new entries for PD/Freeware games isn't the problem, it's more about which other things need to be done. The more info/screenshots we get, the easier it is to create an entry. It's still a low priority though, so if other things are on the to-do list it might take a bit.

[Crashdisk]

Originally Posted by Master484

Good. It seems my disks are clean...so far.

No, not completely. The disk "pokerietc.adf" has several problems including a virus...I have several alternative copies to analyze but for the moment I am finishing another topic..

EDIT : A version of the repaired disk is present in The Zone (some sectors have been destroyed by XCopy)
All versions of the game I found have the BGS9 virus but it is not activated. There is an unofficial English translation by ACS.

[Master484]

Okay, Super Bumper screenshots and disk scan are in the Zone, and a super long post below.

A note about the disk scan: These Avesoft general PD disks came without the game name on the disk; they only had the disk number in it. So we wrote the game names on the disks ourselves back then 30 years ago.

---

Game Info:

Year of first release 1987
Number of disks: 1
Number of max players: 4
Number of simultaneous max players : 1

Language: English and Finnish
(has a finnish song loop in the background + a few finnish speech samples)

Hardware: OCS
Amiga Original game: Yes

Category: Reaction & Navigation
Subcategory: Reaction & Navigation - Bat & Ball - Pinball
Dimension: 2D
Scrolltype: None
Viewpoint: Top Down

License: Hack / Bootleg
Publisher: Power Project
(Not sure what that "Free Network Sector 00" in the title screen is)

Developer: Unknown
Artists: Also unknown, no credits mentioned in game.

---

Starting the game can be a little bit tricky, so are some instructions:

In the "Pinball Wizard" intro screen, it first loads a little bit, and then stops. At this point you have to click the mouse button to continue loading.

Once the game has loaded, here is how to start it:
First select the number of players with F1 to F4.
Then click the "play" button with the mouse cursor.

During the game:
Hold down Right Alt to prime the spring and shoot the ball.
To swing the paddles use Left and Right Alt.
Space bar hits the table. (and randomly causes a tilt)
Esc pauses the game.

Notes:
A soft reset (CTRL + Amiga + Amiga) won't work, the game has a "laugh screen" similar to Pinball Wizard.

---

So, what we know, is that this is a hacked version of Pinball Wizard, made by a group called Power Project. And at least 2 versions of this hack exist.

Here is the video that I posted earlier about the other version, that we might call "english version":
[ Show youtube player ]

And here is a video of this "finnish version", skip to 16:00 in the vid:
[ Show youtube player ]

As you can see, the two versions look and play the same, but there are some differences too.

The finnish version has a finnish song playing in the background (I don't know what song this is, I guess it's some country music from the 80'ies). And also some of the speech samples are in finnish. And when you lose the ball, the music piece that plays is ripped from the song "Boys" by Sabrina Salerno.

But which version is the original hack, I really don't know for sure. But I would guess that the english version was first, and then someone took that, did this finnish version, and somehow managed to get it into Avesoft's PD list (who seemed to like it, because in the magazine ads we see that in the description of the game they wrote "we recommend" ).

So I guess we should just make one Super Bumper HOL entry, and mention in it that at least two versions exist, with a description of the different versions put in the notes.

EDIT : A version of the repaired disk is present in The Zone (some sectors have been destroyed by XCopy)

Thanks.

[TCD]

Erm... that is just a Pinball Wizard hack then?

Edit: Okay, should read your whole post Hmm, not sure what to do with that then. Was it 'officially' sold by Power Project like a full price game?

[TCD]

I've created the entry for Super Bumper: https://hol.abime.net/6938

Power Project looks like the people who did the hack, so I made them the 'developer' and used Avesoft as the publisher with a note.

I guess this entry needs some more fine tuning, so let me know what you think.

[Master484]

Yes, this is a tricky case indeed.

Firstly, to my knowledge, it was never sold as a full price game by Power Project or by anyone.

And although Power Project does claim copyright in the title screen, the game is clearly a hack of Pinball Wizard. The finnish version even has the Pinball Wizard loading screen intact in the beginning, with the Kingsoft logo and copyright statements and all.

---

Also, the game wasn't officially published by Avesoft, in the sense like their other mail order games, such as Rolling and Formula Ace were.

The Avesoft published mail order games always had the Avesoft logo in them, and clearly stated "Copyright (c) Avesoft" both in the disk and the game. In comparison the games from their general PD lists do have the word "Avesoft" on the disks, but no actual copyright claims, and no mention of Avesoft in the games themselves.

So Avesoft was only a distributor of the game; it was one of the hundreds of items sold through their mail order PD game lists. And although this finnish version of the game was only distributed in Finland, and even if Avesoft's PD mail order lists were the only place where you could get it, there is still no sign of any kind of copyright claim by Avesoft, as there are in the games that they actually published.

And therefore I don't know if we should mention Avesoft as the publisher. Although their role as the distributor should definitely be mentioned in the notes, as it already is.

The HOL FAQ guidelines also seems to suggest this way, as it says that "distributors are generally dealt with in the notes".
https://hol.abime.net/hol_faq.php?se...pages_contents

Also, in the notes you mispelled Finland as "Finnland".

[TCD]

Okay, I've removed Avesoft as publisher and corrected the misspelling (now I wonder if I should point out that you misspelled misspelled )

Indeed an interesting case. Good that we have that 'hack/bootleg' option now.

[Master484]

(now I wonder if I should point out that you misspelled misspelled )

You may do that, but then I can counter by pointing out two mistakes in the notes section of T-Racer.

https://hol.abime.net/3998

In the note number 3 there is an unnecessary period in the beginning, which now reads as: "More info. about game development..."

And in note number 4 it says "Reviews of Project X appeared in"...but of course it should say T-Racer not Project X.