A quick entry, but this educational game was advertised early in 1984 in a few magazines as a list of games coming soon from Comm*Data / Channel Software.
At the time we knew little about the game or what happened to it, and wondered if it was the very same game that Rabbit Software released on the VIC 20.
Contributor Brandon Campbell confirmed that he had the C64 game and it was indeed the same as the VIC20 title, where you would see a word fly down and press V for Verb, N for Noun etc.
In 2021, contributor Allan Pinkerton very kindly passed on a copy which he produced from a tape back up. Here it is fully preserved!
We hope to get the tape added soon, but it confirms that the title was indeed released, so its case closed!
Contributions: Peter Weighill, Brandon Campbell, Allan Pinkerton, Matt Sweetnam
Supporting content
Available downloads
Gallery
Update history
- 23/06/22 – Credit confirmation
- 27/09/21 – Another disk version preserved thanks to Allan Pinkerton.
- 08/09/14 – Game preserved thanks to Allan Pinkerton
- 28/08/14 – Brandon Campbell confirms the C64 version is the same as Vic 20 version.
Ha. So a friend of mine wrote this – Joe Cape was his name, we lived in Milford Michican. Com Data was in town and we could walk there. We were coding buddies. He wrote it in assembler. At the time (it was probably 1982 actually) com data sold it on cassette tape and then it graduated to disk at some point. Joe and I were working on a Dungeons and Dragons game too, but we never finished that one.
Thanks Matt – that’s great to put some credits to the game. Do you know if Joe also did the VIC 20 edition as well?
Would be great to learn more about the Dungeons and Dragons game. If you fancy sharing some details, please feel free to contact us via https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/submit-news/
I uploaded the Disk version which is the same except the boot code since the one above came from Tape and had dox added this new one is the disk version! Uploaded to Frank last week so it can be preserved!
Thanks Frank!
Thanks Allan, getting these added today – thank you so much!
I see a website selling the game. The website is called Retrogames.co.uk.com. I saw it there back in the year 2008. I confirmed with the owner 6 months ago that it’s still in stock.
Good spot David! Looks like it isn’t as uncommon as we thought. Glad that it is finally preserved now!
Awesome, thanks for finding it!
Frank I sent the game to your Facebook Page in a message so hope you find it!
This contains the Compilation. I sent this message in case you got on here first!.
Have a Great week!
Allan
That is brilliant Allan, thanks very much! Will get that added in a bit!
Yes, that was one of the games! Another one had two halves of a word coming towards each other and you were supposed to tell it if they were an actual word or not. There were 4 games in all, English Invaders, Grammar Smash, Wordspot, and I forget the other name. It included both a disk and two cassettes. My mom still has a lot of our old Commodore 64, Amiga, and TRS-80 stuff buried somewhere in her apartment, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that was among it. She’s in Texas and I’m in California so I don’t know when I’ll get to visit next, but I’ll be sure to let you know when I do.
Thanks for confirming Brandon! Updated the page accordingly. Would be great to find the game and preserve it some day, so we hold out hope :)
I had this! My mom bought it in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, it was the first program we got with our 64. She chose it because it didn’t require a joystick. There were 4 different little educational-type games based on English grammar, the graphics weren’t too fancy even by 1984 standards but for this 8 year old at the time it was fun.
Hi Brandon – that is good to hear confirmation that the game exists somewhere. Was it a game where you had English verbs and nouns flying down, and had to press a key to shoot the word? (N for Noun, V for Verb?). Also – do you still have it? :)