“As good a danger-filled dungeon as you could wish to expire in” – Personal Computer News describes The Greedy Dwarf.
The game was a text adventure that apparently had a very powerful command structure. It seems that the primary releases were for the BBC and Electron. The C64 version is completely missing.
It could be a case that the game just hasn’t turned up yet, or it was cancelled because the developers struggled with it. A lot of research needed – Goldstar doesn’t seem to be a well known company, so did they fold early?
Thanks to contributor Strident, we learn the following:
Talking to Mark Hardisty, in issue 5 of the Classic Adventurer magazine, Greedy Dwarf author Simon Ainsworth said:
“I seem to recall that Dorling Kindersley got another programmer to port the game to the Spectrum. I’m not sure what happened to the CBM version, but both ports should have been fairly simple since there was no graphics and the only machine code was for quick table searching. I think I was working on another adventure at the time, so did not get a chance to help out. So, they would have been straight ports, with no extra locations or puzzles.”
So was anything ever started, or did perhaps the company collapse before the other versions could be completed.
Contributions: Peter Weighill, Michael Plate (GB64), Strident
Talking to Mark Hardisty, in issue 5 of the Classic Adventurer magazine, Greedy Dwarf author Simon Ainsworth said:
“I seem to recall that Dorling Kindersley got another programmer to port the game to the Spectrum. I’m not sure what happened to the CBM version, but both ports should have been fairly simple since there was no graphics and the only machine code was for quick table searching. I think I was working on another adventure at the time, so did not get a chance to help out. So, they would have been straight ports, with no extra locations or puzzles.”
Thanks Strident, added that snippet to the main write up with credit.
The Classic Adventurer credits you for various bits of information too. :)
I still need to trawl back through the interviews there to check I’ve not missed any new information… for example, Simon Ainsworth had completely programmed a second BBC text adventure for Dorling Kindersley; based on Raffles the Gentleman Thief… There’s absolutely no indication that that was ever likely to be ported to C64, though.
Greedy Dwarf was included on the first PC to be installed on British Royal Navy warships in the early to mid 80’s. When not being used for operational purposes(alongside in harbour) it formed a new entertainment for large groups of sailors offering advice on what to type next, great fun in it’s day