Book of the Dead - CRL... bugged?

[Strident]

As flagged up by Alex on the CASA forums, the archived versions of the CRL-published Amstrad port seem to be bugged in that they start in the wrong first location... i.e. they start in the town and not in "the egg", which is the starting location in the original Spectrum version (and the C64 port). This is potentially the bug fixed in the later indie-published versions (from Recreation Re-creation, Adventure Workshop) as mentioned below... I wonder if there are copies of either a bug-fixed CRL version or the republished version(s) out there?

[Gryzor]

So who was Rec Rec? A company buying older titles and re-releasing them? I don't think I've ever seen a release of theirs...

[Nich]

As flagged up by Alex on the CASA forums, the archived versions of the CRL-published Amstrad port seem to be bugged in that they start in the wrong first location... i.e. they start in the town and not in "the egg", which is the starting location in the original Spectrum version (and the C64 port). This is potentially the bug fixed in the later indie-published versions (from Recreation Re-creation, Adventure Workshop) as mentioned below... I wonder if there are copies of either a bug-fixed CRL version or the republished version(s) out there?

I received a copy of the Recreation Re-Creation version of Book of the Dead back in 2004, along with a lot of other text adventures to upload to the NVG archive. I didn't retain that copy, but instead I modified the version of Book of the Dead that was already on NVG by replacing the bugged first part with the one from the Recreation Re-Creation version. Here's a link to download it.

I see that the versions on CPC-POWER are bugged, so I'll have to rectify that and send my bugfixed version to Kukulcan.

[Strident]

So who was Rec Rec? A company buying older titles and re-releasing them? I don't think I've ever seen a release of theirs...

Recreation Re-Creation were a fairly short-lived homegrown Amstrad text adventure company run by Mark Ellingham of Norwich. They published new titles and ports of games for other platforms, as well as older titles (such as the Charles Sharp adventures). When the company disappeared many of the games were split between P.K. Computer Graphics (selling the tape versions) and The Guild (selling the disk versions). Many of the adventures would later go on to be distributed by The Adventure Workshop or one of the other indie companies.

See, this page on my website for a sample of their catalogue and advertising. http://8bitag.com/info/homegrown-adventure-companies.html

[Strident]

I received a copy of the Recreation Re-Creation version of Book of the Dead back in 2004, along with a lot of other text adventures to upload to the NVG archive.

Cool. It would've been nice to have retained the original Rec Rec version, but your fix will do the job. I'll add a link to the download in our entry on CASA, thanks.

There were a few items in the old Rec Rec catalogue that haven't been fully archived online too... I'll need to check my files to work on which... Off the top of my head, I don't think all three of the versions of The Hermitage (and some of the other Tony Collins stuff) are preserved. (Preservation of the Amstrad homegrown text adventures is very patchy in general, especially the 1990s stuff)

[Gryzor]

See, this page on my website for a sample of their catalogue and advertising. http://8bitag.com/info/homegrown-adventure-companies.html

I never was into CPC adventuring (apart from the modern titles and a couple of titles back in the day - Vera Cruz seemed very fascinating!), but I've seen your page before - very nice and interesting Thanks!