Fruit Hunt by Zyntax Software

[carlsson]

Fruit Hunt by Zyntax Software, recovered from a tape. It appears to be an in-work copy, which just like the Mother Hen lacks custom characters. I haven't analyzed the tape further, but I doubt it contains more files.

Your task is to pick up fruits to get points and calories (energy). You move with the unusual key combination N / M / J / Space.



The development team was in some sort of co-operation with Handic Software, and the game was meant to be a cartridge release. Perhaps it wouldn't have met standards to become VIC-7304 but I have access to a bunch of unused cartridge stickers.

This version needs to be loaded with +3K extra memory or better. The first line 5 should be omitted, and on line 6 there is a reference to XXXXX which probably should read 32768. The file included in the Zip file does not have these slight modifications.

http://www.cbm.sfks.se/files/huncart.zip

Perhaps it is a candidate to review and fix graphics on. I might be able to find more or another version, but I'm unable to locate a complete cartridge version.

[carlsson]

As a side note, I just realized the C64 text adventures The Mutant Spiders (Adventure No. 1), The Ship (2) and The Fourth Sarcophagus (3) were developed by Zyntax Zoftware and released under the Handic label. Hmmm.. maybe I should investigate a bit more, perhaps getting in touch with the programmers.

[Mayhem]

Interesting... keep me notified, I'd obviously like to know who for the C64 cartridge guide

I've never seen complete versions of any of them, although I own the Spiders and Sarcophagus cartridges. Never seen The Ship as a cart though, not sure if it was disk only.

[ral-clan]

I'd really like to see a scan of the unused cartridge label, if possible.

[carlsson]

I believe I have located two of the people behind Zyntax Zoftware: Mats Nilsson and Magnus Nordin. There was a VIC Club here in town which was tightly related to a program development company, so in reality almost all of the club members may have written programs for the company to sell, but Mats and Magnus were the two people you were supposed to contact. Their 25 year old phone numbers are still valid, but point to respective parents.

[carlsson]

There is no need to research the phone numbers, they don't lead anywhere no longer. Very clever members (Stonan, Frax?) might be able to locate my "secret stash" by this information, but most of the gems have already been picked anyway.

Fruit Hunt instructions:


For those who are not so good in Swedish, here is a translation:

Fruit Hunt by Zyntax Software

Start the game
When you start FRUIT HUNT, make sure that your VIC=20 is powered off, otherwise you can damage both the computer and the game, which you probably won't find very much fun. Turn the computer around so you can see it from the back side. You will see one rectangular hole. If you compare the size of the hole with the size of your new game (that item which is a bit larger than a compact cassette case), you will find that if you'd insert it into the hole, it would be a perfect fit. That is: Insert the game with the label upwards and the slightly more narrow part into the computer.

NOTE! Push it in WITHOUT FORCE, just so it fits tightly. Turn on the computer. On the screen you see the same things as you usually see when you power on the computer - with the exception that it says RUN below the power on message. Wait a few seconds.....

Play the game
The game unexpectedly is about collecting as many points as possible. You will do this by eating fruits. The hard part is that you consume calories all the time. Each simple move uses up ten calories. If you consider that you only have 500 to start with, you understand that if you have to carefully plan the steps you take. If you would move into a monster (those who move their legs), the loss will be absolutely horrible. On the other hand if you gobble fruits, you get a varying amount of energy and points added. If you find a blue star in front of your feet, eat it! You will become green like the Hulk during 100 time units. During this time you won't lose any calories and even better: You can sweep clean all the monsters in your path. You won't get any points for doing so, but still...

If you need to dig a hole to the floor below you, press B or , depending on which side you want the hole. You will get a hole next to your feet and you won't (Baa!) get any more calories, rather you will lose a whole lot. If for a change there already is a hole there (next to your feet, that is) it will be filled again.

If you don't eat enough, you will become red out of overstrain, and last but not least (unfortunately) you have seen the last ray of light... *hickup* *sob*.

Keys

You move with: J - Up, N - Left, M - Right, Space - Down
and dig with: B - Left, , - Right

As you can see, the authors of these instructions were extremely verbose and it looks more like a prank than official instructions. I'm quite sure that Handic would've rewritten the instructions quite a lot if the game had become a commercial cartridge release.

[ral-clan]

Thanks a lot for posting those pictures, Carlsson.

[carlsson]

C64 text adventure The Mutant Spiders (Adventure No. 1) [..] by Zyntax Zoftware

I may have found the unreleased predecessor to The Mutant Spiders. Here you have Spider Mountain, a text adventure for the VIC-20 +8/16K. I haven't checked if the synopsis is the same as in The Mutant Spiders, but I believe it may be. At least it comes from the same source, so I think both were written by same group of people.

[carlsson]

In case anyone bothers, I uploaded The Temple, another text adventure by Stefan Modin, from the same group of people at RPU. It comes in two versions, of which one seems like an early (pre) version lacking parts of the program.

http://www.cbm.sfks.se/files/rpu-adventures.zip

Hmm.. really tough to get somewhere in this last adventure. I tried to "GO LOCK" which caused a ?BAD SUBSCRIPT error.

[DanSolo]

Here you have Spider Mountain, a text adventure for the VIC-20 +8/16K.

There doesn't seem to be much "verbosity" in those location descriptions.
Can't light the newspaper? Hmm, I'm hooked. Though I never finished the text adventure I started playing last year...

EDIT: You have to "L" (look) after every move which threw me a bit. So it seems you can only pass the spider once and he bites the second time?
Nice fast parser for a basic game.
There seems to be a bug and you can't read the newspaper?

This line looks dodgy
620 ifw2$<>"new"andw2$<>"pap"orpo(32)<>rnthenprint"{blu}{down}I can't read it!":goto50

w2$ is the object, here either "newspaper" or "paper". po(32)is the location of the newspaper and rn must be the current room. The next line prints what the paper says.
I'm not sure what the difference between the variables ar and rn are, but if you put ar into line 620 above then "read newspaper" works...

EDIT: OK, ar is the number that signifies an object is in your possession. rn is the room number. Hence it makes sense to have ar in that line.

EDIT: Gah, with a bit of snooping around the code I was almost there. Got the dynamite wet though didn't I. Back to the start...

[DanSolo]

All done. Not bad, and I'm pleasantly surprised how well it runs for a BASIC game. The story could do with a bit of sprucing up though... half of it is cooking a rabbit so you don't starve to death! Boring!
Of course I turned off the starvation counter and the lamp counter.

[carlsson]

You can read the newspaper if you don't pick it up!

As I mentioned, Spider Mountain clearly is the predecessor to the somewhat better known adventure game Mutant Spiders on the C64. You may want to track it down and compare versions, if the adventure is a little more verbose and varied in the final commercial version than this VIC-20 "preview" one.