Eureka!
DoMark 1984
- Language:
- English
- Authors:
- Donat Kiss, Ian Livingstone, Katalin Matsa, Zoltan Horvat
- Platforms:
- C64/128
, Spectrum - Genres:
- Medieval, Prehistoric, Real-time, Time travel, War
- Entered by:
- Alastair, dave, Gunness
- Added:
- 10-05-2010
- Edited:
- 04-03-2019
Synopsis
Plot
Designed by Fighting Fantasy author Ian Livingstone, Eureka! sees you travelling through five time periods to locate the pieces of the so-called Temporal Talisman. If you fail, the Moon will disintegrate and destroy life on Earth in the process!The time periods are:
- Prehistoric Europe
- Roman Italy
- Arthurian Britain
- WW2 Germany
- Modern Caribbean (this part only being accessible after solving parts 1-4)
Notes
All parts are preceded by a very simple, Pacman-esque arcade game. This can be used to earn further energy points for the adventure games. However, all games can be solved with the initial number of energy points.At the time of release, a prize of £25,000 was offered to the first to solve all five parts and figure out a secret phone number. The lucky winner was 15-year old schoolboy Matthew Woodley, who later revealed the fairly complex method of figuring out the phone number. He was also interviewed in Commodore User magazine, issue 11, 1985, p.15.
A sequel was planned but never materialized.
Big K magazine ran a feature on the Hungarian programmers responsible for the game.
The third part was initially intended as the introductory one, hence it is slightly easier than the other ones.
Resources (Upload file)
- Solution
- by Gunness
- Solution (C64/128)
- by Dorothy
- Map
- by Exemptus
- Hints
- by ?
- Review
- by Gunness
- Further Info:
- Search at Gamebase64
- Search at Museum of Computer Adventure Game History
- Search at Spectrum Computing
- Search at The Tipshop
- Search at World of Spectrum
[+] Users who have solved this game
[+] Users currently playing this game
One of the very first games I ever bought - man, I spent a huge number of hours making embarassing little progress. Part two remains my favourite.
There is so much wrong with Eureka. The pointless arcade game, the timed sequences, the arbitrary death by combat, the inconsistent parser, the mediocre puzzle design. And yet, its ambition is commendable, with all the fuss that surrounded the game about the competition and the linked riddles, which made for a unique experience - once you had overcome the implementation quirks. It's the nearest to a meta-game the genre had got for 1984; Pimania had the right ideas first, but it was much less developed. It takes time and patience, but you can really get yourself involved in the game and its ambience, and that is a rare quality. In the end, Eureka made IF history for both the right and the wrong reasons.