Text adventure from Kayde who went into administration at the 26th August 1983. Did Spectrum releases, tried to do C64 and Vic 20 ones, which never seemed to surface.
The game in the advert (Two adverts were submitted by Peter Weighill) was described as follows:
“In his job, Colin Grasmere has investigated many strange and baffling phenomena. Hauntings visions, flying saucers, poltergeists, to name a few. Colin Grasmere is a psychic investigator. Dare you face the beastly one with nothing but a cross and a heart full of purity?”
Originally we did not know exactly how far the game got or if it actually ever got released before the company collapsed, but GTW contributor Kevin Steele recently found the game on Ebay. You can see the inlay and tape of the game in the scans below.
So the game did get a release, and also Kevin found Leopard Lord. The very odd thing is that the game does not come with a proper inlay, and is on a recycled Leopard Lord tape. A game that only just sneaked out when the company was in big trouble?
In March 2017, Kevin managed to get the game backed up and recovered from a damaged tape. Then in December 2017, Hedning/Genesis Project kindly fixed the game into an original file from its freeze state.
Just how many copies are there out there in the world of this? Case closed!
Contributions: Peter Weighill, Kevin Steele. Hedning/Genesis Project
Supporting content
Available downloads
- Game_Arcaine_Quest (zip)
Gallery
Update history
- 23/12/17 – Hedning/GP kindly fixed download into proper C64 ready file.
- 10/03/17 – Full game preserved thanks to Kevin Steele. Case closed!
We are glad to report that this so far only surviving copy of the game does not have fatal bugs (it only has a couple of bugs, but nothing important) and the whole game can be completed “as is”. We have posted a walkthrough at CASA:
http://solutionarchive.com/game/id%2C1957/Arcane+Quest.html
It makes one wonder why the game was apparently not “officially” released for any platform, though. The only surviving copy found so far of Kayde’s “Horror Atoll” had a fatal bug that had to be fixed, but this one did not. There should not have been anything preventing the release of this game.
That’s great to hear, thanks Juan!
As Kevin has an original tape, it does look like it had a very limited release by the publisher. But Kevin’s copy is the only one i’ve ever seen – they may have ever only sold a handful before the company went under.
Notice that this so far only one found cassette copy looks too “raw” to have been a commercial release, though. It does not have cover artwork, and the label on the tape seems pasted on and handwritten. I think that what Kevin got is likely one of Kayde’s working copies, not something that was sold to any customer.
Hmmm – I think you’re probably right Juan. Though early productions did sometimes look a little rough and re-used old tapes, it’s more likely to be like you say some kind of pre-production copy.
I’ll be happy to update the description on CASA to indicate its release status – I’m just not sure whether this should be “awfully limited release” or “working copy only” :)
But let’s be honest here – none of the Kayde games are particularly memorable, so I’m quite impressed with your extensive conservation efforts!
Thanks Jacob, very kind – though in this case, plaudits have to go to Kevin. I just uploaded his work essentially :)
Any news about what happened to that rare copy of the game that was found on eBay? The “download coming soon!” advertisement has been around for a while now.
Good question! – It’s one title i’d forgotten about, as the guy converting hasn’t got back to us. Just chased them now to see how the progress is, but last time we spoke there was issues with the spindles not moving. Could be that we need to find another source for this game.
I’d love to hear more about this, too, as I’ve been trying to update our Kayde section recently. Crossing my fingers that it’ll become available at some point!