Cranston Manor
Artworx, Sierra On-Line 
1981
- Language:
- English
- Authors:
- Harold DeWitz, Ken Williams, Larry Ledden
- Systems:
- BASIC
- Platforms:
- Apple II, Atari 400/800, CP/M, North Star Horizon, PC
- Genres:
- Treasure hunt
- Related:
- Hi-Res Adventures [1: Mystery House, 2: Wizard and the Princess, The, 3: Cranston Manor, 4: Ulysses and the Golden Fleece, 5: Time Zone, 6: Dark Crystal, The, 7: Mission Asteroid]
- Entered by:
- Alastair, Alex, Amby, benkid77, dave, Gunness, Strident, THayes
- Added:
- 10-05-2010
- Edited:
- 21-05-2025
Synopsis
The game takes place in the deserted town of Coarsegold, where an old man named Cranston hid sixteen valuable treasures in his mansion before he died. You play an unnamed adventurer in the game who is determined to restore Coarsegold to its former glory by collecting the sixteen treasures from the mansion.
Notes
The game was originally produced, by Artworx, for the Atari 400/800 systems as text only and written in BASIC.
A CP/M version of the game (CP/M with MBASIC) is listed in the Dynacomp Summer 1981 catalog; as is a version for the North Star Horizon.
benkid77 has produced a YouTube walkthrough of the North Star Horizon version.
The original game was later licensed by Sierra, who ported the data objects across and added graphics.
The Museum of Computer Adventure Game History has a statement from Larry Ledden about the game.
Also available in Japanese.
Resources (Upload file)
- Solution
- by ?
- Solution
- by THayes
- Solution
- by benkid77 (North Star Horizon version)
- Map
- by Simon
- Map
- by Canalboy (trizbort)
- Review
- by Canalboy
- Further Info:
- YouTube walkthrough
- Search at Atari 8-bit Forever
- Search at Atari Mania
- Search at Museum of Computer Adventure Game History
[+] Users currently playing this game
I could never get Altirra to run this as the emulator always crashed when I opened it. I spent ages tracking down online ROMs and fidling about with the settings. I eschewed the Apple version as I don't like graphics. Recently I tried again after a long gap and v4.21 ran perfectly with the original Altirra ROM and no changes to the "out of the box" settings whatsoever. Talk about overcomplicating things.
The Atari version is buggy; any attempt to interact with the tin soldier elicits ERROR 138 at LINE 70.
It appears that saved game states via the Atirra emulator are easily corrupted; this appears to be the reason for the random crashes and error codes which are occasionally encountered.
This game does not seem to run in Enhanced Video Mode using Altirra 4.30. The screen freezes if you change from Video Mode after running it, or will not run at all if you change to Enhanced Mode prior to loading. I use Enhanced Mode and Monochrome White as I do not like the standard Atari screen or font. The program runs O.K. in Enhanced Mode with different fonts and a monochrome display monitor via Altirra 4.21 however.
The North Star nsi file of this game appears to be corrupted. Viewing the contents it appears to be more of a text dump. This is the only one of the North Star games that is irrevocably bugged although Uncle Harry's Will needs the following amendment:
1730!V0$\P1=1\X(12)=L\\GOTO300
you need to type
1730!V0$\P1=1\X(12)=L\GOTO300
@Canalboy, thanks very much for your map - it helped a great deal with me completing the North Star Horizon version. It does work OK, provided you boot off the Zodiac Castle disk, load BASIC and then swap disks, as mentioned (in regard to other N* horizon games) on Jason Dyer's site.
As for the Atari 8-bit version, I had the same problem with it crashing on loading the disk image. In my case, it was solved by following the advice by user Ahab on the Data Driven Gamer website at https://datadrivengamer.blogspot.com/p/my-history-adventures-experience-and.html (about 3/4 of the way down the page) which was a reply to a comment you made in 2022. As soon as I had enabled Atari BASIC it worked OK.
@benkid77 yes it's always good to find a large old-school puzzlefest; I don't know if you have played the following games but if you fancy a couple of large and obscure curiosities that Jason hasn't hasn't got round to chronologically yet I can recommend Chris Allen's Gorm for the Archimedes and Weird Wood 2 (Windows). Castle Blackstar for the Commodore 64 is very Zork-like.
I also note that the excellent Robico game Rick Hanson has been ported to the Atari.
Thank you for the info. It is always good to know about more of these games.