Major Istar - Under the Doomed Sea
Computerware, Microdeal 1984
- Aka:
- Aquanaut 471
- Language:
- English
- Authors:
- B. J. Chambless
- Platforms:
- Dragon 32/64
, Sinclair QL , TRS-80 CoCo - Genres:
- Science fiction
- Entered by:
- Alastair, gamingafter40, rwap
- Added:
- 26-05-2010
- Edited:
- 28-02-2022
Synopsis
Plot
By the beginning of the 21st Century, undersea cities have become necessary to avoid the mess we made of the Earth's surface. You will play the part of Major Istar (Aquanaut 471 in the UK release - see notes), a high ranking member of the Oceanic Federation. The O.F. is an organisation dedicated to keeping peace in the underwater world.You begin your adventure in a submarine headed towards Trident Dome, a scientific research station. You are going there because of a mysterious call for help. The message was from the service droid, Huey-14 and was cut off before he could tell you what the problem was. Something is going on at Trident and it will be your job to find out what the problem is and rectify it.
Notes
Originally called Major Istar - Under the Doomed Sea in the US release, for the UK market it was renamed Aquanaut 471.This is a fairly simple adventure game that nevertheless contains a non-player character which is needed to solve some puzzles. Unfortunately the game also contains several mini-arcade games that cannot be avoided, though the arcade games are not too difficult.
Resources (Upload file)
- Solution
- by Alastair
- Map
- by Alastair
- Map
- by farique
- Hints
- by Alastair
- Further Info:
- Search at Curtis Boyle's CoCo site
- Search at Museum of Computer Adventure Game History
- Search at QL Wiki
- Search at The Dragon Archive
[+] Users currently playing this game
- —
Originally written for the CoCo, like many CoCo games written in the USA it uses NTSC artifacting to create additional colours (red and blue) in what should be a 'high resolution' black and white display mode. This trick does not work with PAL so in PAL countries you end up with a black and white picture. Fortunately most emulators can emulate the artifacting, even in PAL mode, so you can get an idea of the author's original intentions. The above images illustrate some of the game's screens both with and without artifacting enabled.
I just love the way that programmers were able to exploit the various technical deficiencies and drawbacks of the early home computers. Like on the C64, where an unintentional clicking noise made by the sound chip was used to play back samples.
This way of creating colour sounds pretty ingenious.