The Tripods was to be a graphic adventure game based on the John Christopher novels / BBC TV adaption, featuring creatures which look like something out of War of the Worlds.
The adverts mentioned that the game would promise something revolutionary, when infact it was just a standard graphic adventure game – not a bad one though…. Basically no C64 version ever surfaced, but the ZX Spectrum version did surface in 1985…
So what happened to the C64 version?…. We’re not sure just yet, but it surely wouldn’t have been too difficult to convert from the Spectrum.
Peter Weighill recently found a snippet from April 1985 of Commodore Computing International. But also the Spectrum instructions mentions the Commodore 64 here… ftp://ftp.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-info/t/TripodsThe.pdf
Do you know anything about this game?
Well, Dave Cogbill came to the rescue and made a very interesting discovery in a batch of C16/C64 games recently purchased, when he found not 1, but 2 copies of the C64 game! Check out the photo which Dave has kindly submitted.
Unfortunately though the news is not great – both tapes seem to contain the ZX Spectrum edition of the game, and not the C64 version … meaning there must have been a mastering cock up with the game of epic proportions. It is possible that there are two copies, as one was a replacement copy for what was thought to be a defective copy. A massive massive shame, but at least confirmation that a C64 versions *should* exist! But can it be found? Will other copies merely have the Spectrum edition on?
Watch this space…
Contributions: Peter Weighill, Dave Cogbill
I have a C64 release of a Red Shift game called “English Civil War”. That too is considered extremely rare and its possibly the only known copy of this game so far. Here is some photos of that:
https://retrocollector.org/index.php?page=1&system=1&media=123456789AZ&publisher=531&title=&box=-1®ion=-1&type=0123&release=22262
What a great find John! I’ve got a ZX Spectrum release of one of their games somewhere, but that’s the only Red Shift game i’ve ever seen. Hopefully The Tripods will turn up some day too!
What a bizarre twist. A glance at World of Spectrum suggests that Red Shift released only one other game as late as 1985 – City of Death, reviewed two months earlier by Crash! magazine. Sadly I wouldn’t be surprised if the company folded before a mastering cockup could be corrected (and any master disk or PDS containing a complete copy of the game long gone) or that the C64 version as never finished and the company simply tried to pull a fast one for a quick buck knowing they were on the brink. The Spectrum programmer Bill Potts appears to have no other credits so he may be tough to locate.
Thanks Martin, yeah – I had guessed the same sadly. I wonder if the programmer can ever be found!