Microbee – Alan Laughton

Microbee – Alan Laughton

Collector Alan Laughton. “Back in the 80’s I was also a stamp collector, so collecting came natural.  But for computer games, there was a scarcity of games for the Microbee at the time, so one collected everything you could, be it a type-in, public domain, downloaded from a RBBS, swapped with a friend, etc.”

Home Coder: Lost Treasure Recovered

Home Coder: Lost Treasure Recovered

  Forgotten what amused your 12 year old self? Rediscover the pleasure of school boy gags and code with this lost game of the 1980s. Matthew Hall‘s Microbee adventure game the “Jewels of Sancara Island” had survived the last thirty or so years as a Turbo Pascal...
How I got started in games – Matthew Hall – Klicktock

How I got started in games – Matthew Hall – Klicktock

I started making games when I was 8.  I got a Commodore 64 for my birthday.  And I got one game, which was a game called “The Pit” – it’s rather obscure and it’s really shit – and the other thing I got, of course, was a manual.  And so the game I finished very quickly, and then I had nothing else to do so I dove straight into the manual.

If you had access to a micro computer in the 1980s chances are you played a text adventure.

If you had access to a micro computer in the 1980s chances are you played a text adventure.

Frustrated gamers playing text adventures would inevitably find themselves at some time typing a string of expletives into the hapless interface only to be rewarded by a snide comment or just more stonewalling from the game. Infuriating and often very punitive on the player the punishing nature of these games made the actual mastery of a text adventure a special pleasure.

Jewels of Sancara Island

Jewels of Sancara Island

Matthew Hall‘s Microbee adventure game the “Jewels of Sancara Island” had survived the last thirty or so years as a Turbo Pascal listing has been resurrected by Alan Laughton from the Microbee Software Preservation Project. Hall was 12 years old when he wrote “Jewels of Sancara Island” at a school computer course. He used as his guide the book “Creating Adventures on your Commodore 64”. He explains “it was an adventure game, following the standard themes of the time. You wash up on a mysterious island. You have to find the jewels of Sancara Island and escape!”.