Sunday 2 October 2011

Talisman

Talisman has a long history and goes back to 1985 with the creation of a single character for an old Spectrum BASIC adventure game. The character grew and eventually the world in which he lived became a Play By Mail game hosted on a local BBS.

Play By Mail games, in case you are not familiar, were text adventures that callers to the BBS could play by sending commands via email. Once received, the game master (in this case me) would take the action and report back to the player.

It was a long, slow process, but back in the mists of time, it was the forerunner to online games today, and was certainly around and popular for those that could not afford huge phone bills to play MUD or other such games.

From this came a four-year struggle to write a novel. The book took just a bit longer than that and never got published!

The next phase was a graphic adventure for the Amiga. The title of the game/novel changed many times since its first inception but finally was released into the PD market in 1992 as Talisman.

Even his wasn’t the end, as Games Workshop contacted me and demanded I rename the game and remove a few images I had used. I duly went about this and told them I would re-release the game once I had received a letter from them confirming their request. I never got the letter and so the newly named game was never put out (although the name of the novel was changed!).

Back to the game, and this two-disc graphic adventure required 2mb of RAM to play, but could be installed easily on hard drives. The game was completely driven by the mouse and took nearly a year to finish!

The images used come from a wide variety of places including a cartoon I saw on German satellite, All Dogs Go To Heaven, Lord Of The Rings cartoon, Time Bandits and Eye Of The Beholder plus many more I can’t even remember!

It got good reviews in several Amiga magazines, Amiga User gave it 9/10!

The game can played on an emulator and I suggest you read the README file (please be aware, the address in there for help is no longer mine – I moved in 1995!).

Reviews

Amiga User International
One Amiga Magazine

Download
Screen Shots




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