1984 Roklan / Walt Disney / Atari
Platform: Atari 400/800
Our next title was confusingly referred to under a number of different titles, including Captain Hook’s Revenge and Peter Pan’s Daring Journey. In a CES 1983 show, it was reported by Popular Computing Weekly (January 1984) that Atari that they had linked up with Walt Disney to produce a two-part game.
Portland Atari Club newsletter in October 1983 revealed that the game was to be an educational title, but little else about the game was really known about. Various sources online linked the game to Roklan as the developer.
AtariAge forum user Randy California reports that the game was to be released with the release code of DX5053. However- the game subsequently disappeared, and likely due to the video game crash around that time.
Coverage in magazines was very limited, apart from being mentioned briefly in an educational feature in Electronic Fun with Computers and Games – Volume 1 Number 11 – September 1983. However, in an interview with Scott Stilphen in 2004 – developer Anthony Weber revealed that he had worked on a couple of Atari programs for Disney, that he helped to finish after he had left Roklan.
The two games were ‘Peter Pan’s Cove’ and ‘Peter Pan’s Perilous Passage’. Nothing else was revealed in the interview about the games, apart from the possibility that they may have been also developed for the C64 and Color Computer.
The two games mentioned would suggest that these were very likely the “two parts” that were originally reported in the CES report by PCW. Anthony Weber was the developer, and crucially the games were complete.
It is hoped that Antony or someone else may still have something of the games, so that they can be preserved and played for the first time in over 40 years. If you know anything more about the development, then please do get in touch.
With thanks to Karl Kuras for highlighting, Scott Stilphen for details from his interview with Anthony Weber and Archive.org for the scans.
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