Xor, Anyone?

RallyDriver asks: "Does anyone else remember the fiendish British puzzle game 'Xor' (pronounced 'Zor')? The game pieces were (among other things) theatrical masks, chickens, fish, dollies and two types of bombs. Was developed on the BBC micro and later ported to the ZX Spectrum and possibly Amiga, Atari ST and MS-DOS. It was produced by a little distributor above a pub in Gwdywr St, Cambridge, England, whose name escapes me." Darn. And they say that the US has all of the interesting games!

"It would be a great shame if this unqiue gem (think - Lemmings) were to be lost forever, so I was thinking of doing a C / X11 rewrite of the game engine (very easy and very portable) but I thought I'd ask to see if it had already been done. Also, does anyone know what the legal situation would be regarding distibution of the original game levels (concept, not exact binary data) with it? A RAM snapshot of the Spectrum version appeared a few years ago on one of these emulator download sites, but it was in Slovenia..."

Bolo

[Anonymous Coward]

If you dig puzzley games, go out and grab 'Bolo' or "adventures of bolo' he kicks ass, and the puzzles are fairly challenging, one of the few i continued to play over a few years. I think its shareware.. worth a look. ./DuRab www.cotse.com www.2600.org.au www.wiretapped.net

Binary implications

[Sesse]

A sad thing for all retro gamers, is that you'll have to get a legal copy of a game if you want to play it, even 10 years later. Some very nice people (mostly Amiga folks) have freed their ultra-cool games (now that the Amiga is dead), but you can't force anybody to do it. So I'm afraid you can't just spread the levels around -- their copyright is still valid. However, I myself wouldn't slam you for that -- as long as there's no easy way to get the game, what can you do?

/* Steinar */

I would think its ok

[FIGJAM]

Look at the many copies of say Tetris. Old WordStar, Wordperfect and whatever else uses the same key layout. I wouldnt think writing a game that happens to have the same levels/layout as the original would be so illegal - not with a different name anyway. Theres also the 'intellectual property' issue to take into consideration tho. Maybe if you changed just one small part of it to demonstrate yours is original code.

NAND?

[look]

Maybe you should call your copy of the game NAND. [grin]

OK, that was pretty stupid...

Luke

RetroSpec

[Dreadsy]

If you have a nostalgic love of old games, check out the work of the RetroSpec team. They port classic Spectrum games to the PC and Unix/X11. Available games include remakes of Skool Daze (an excellent and very original game), Splat, Cookie, PSST, Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy. They are working on a several new projects too. All available from http://www.retrospec.co.uk

Why not schmitt trigger??

[Thats_Zena_with_a_Z]

Rolls of the tongue nicer. Only stupid for those who don't know what a Karnaugh map is.

Retro Remakes

[Nyarly]

There's a Mac only shareware company - Ambrosia Software [ambrosiasw.com] that specialized in remaking old games. They put their own spin on them, modernize a bit, but basically the game is the same. Their most famous is Maelstrom, which is Asteroids. But they've also done a Centipede remake, and even a wierd Windows game called Jezeball (also known as Maxwell) got redone as Barrack. It's a decent example: the addition of some higher-power features and some attitude makes the games so Ambrosia that they never even mention the originals; and nobody really cares.

Old software

[Borealis]

I don't know about source, but there are a lot of old games floating around out there under the category of "abandonware". I recommend Home of the Underdogs [cjb.net], The Gaming Depot [gamingdepot.com], and Gangsters.org [gangsters.org] for good sources of old software.

Checking those links right now, I see that Underdog's is currently down for maintenance, but I recommend checking them periodically as it is one of the best sources of quality old software. Note that while abandonware is not always sanctioned by the companies who originally created the games, most abandonware sites make an effort not to provide games that are still being marketed or whose manufacturer's request that the games not be made freely available. If you hold extreme negative views regarding what constitues software piracy then you may want to stay away from abandonware. I can't speak for The Gaming Depot, but Underdog always honors requests from game manufacturers requesting removal of games.

YES I have got one!

[jim]

... well most of one. No music, no end-of-level coded message display, X11 only and it re-uploads the background on palette changes so don't run it over the network yet. Oh and it busy-waits for frame timing and pegs your load at 1. Game engine is reproduced faithfully as far as I can tell.

I'm not quite sure of the legal angle myself so I've been keeping it under my hat a bit. Logotron (for it was they) apparently still exist [logo.com] but I can't find anything about Xor on their site ... the original game binaries are available for download here and there on the Web (I got my info from disassembling the BBC version). The upright thing to do would be to contact Logotron and ask them if they'd consider releasing it into the public domain as they don't seem to be selling it any more. The sneaky thing to do would be to distribute the game engine and let players download binaries themselves.

No, my source isn't downloadable (in fact it's not even with me at the moment) but contact me if you're interested.

Prospector in the Mazes of...

[D.A.Alderud]

The game you refer to as "Xor" was released on Amiga under the name of "Prospector in the Mazes of Xor", it was made by Logotron.

I think you should contact Logotron about legal issues, if you want to use their levels that is.
And I honestly don't know if there is a clone for X of it.

XOR was cool for headaches

[Nik Picker]

OK heres my rememberances on this subject.
1. XOR was a comptetion computer game in the eaclry 80's that was initially run on the BBC micro as part of the UK hobbyist scene.

2. It was up against Repton (can anyone say Boulderdash) and was actaully quite cool in terms of Gimmick.

3. IT WAS HARD AS HELL TO 11 year olds ( Im 28 now btw).

4. If we can do this im in to help any way I can.

5. Try the BBC micro emulator people they are certified to remember, try Stuart Mconighie(Spelling) He Works (worked for Boots Opticians UK) and has a a totally unmemorable site. However he has one of the best emulators going and it runs in Dosemu sweet. From there your connections to Acorn and the like are bound to jump around.

6. err thats it

Sorry Private Eye gag had to be done !

Zor

[shariz]

If you're still interested, drop me a line and I will try to find out how to contact the author (I got his address somewhere) so you can check with him about updating it.

Its still one of my fav games, but then again I like games that are not time dependent :-)

Shariz

Re:Retro Remakes

[dalraun]

Note that there is also a linux port [devolution.com] of maelstrom [ambrosiasw.com], its one of my favorite svgalib games. There is also a debian pacakge [debian.org] of it in the non-free section.