87 replies to this topic

[CV Gus]

You've heard of it- and there are some who think it's just a myth...but here are actual photos of the battery-backed 1983 CV cartridge!

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[newcoleco]

CV Gus, on Wed Sep 30, 2009 1:47 PM, said:

You've heard of it- and there are some who think it's just a myth...but here are actual photos of the battery-backed 1983 CV cartridge!

Lord of the Dungeon, it was published by DigitalPress, with all the hardwork done by Sean Kelly. I bought my cartridge from him during a PhillyClassic, it was one of the only time visiting US for a gaming expo. I did bought also some game.com games.

[CV Gus]

Yes, it was a 1983 NAP (War Room) game, by a Mr. Battenberg. It was mentioned in one of my old magazines- Video games Player/Computer Games magazine- as "Caverns," or "Creatures and Caverns."

But there are people who do not believe that there was such a game for a CV, or any old system, from those days (most people believe it started with the NES era). These photos should help prove it, as well as showing others what the game actually looks like.

I also promised o2williams some images a while back, but the C-64 had broken down. I'd like for him to have some images for his website.


Have you ever managed to defeat the Titans? So far, they wiped me out every time.

Edited by CV Gus, Wed Sep 30, 2009 2:13 PM.

[newcoleco]

CV Gus, on Wed Sep 30, 2009 2:12 PM, said:

Have you ever managed to defeat the Titans? So far, they wiped me out every time.

I've tried once to play this game, but without the instructions and indications to what I should do in the first place, or any clue, I didn't play much. Each time I did reach a space where I had to fight, I did have to escape or reset to starting point... well, based on what I remember of th game.

[thegoldenband]

Very interesting. According to another poster, the first commercially released game with a battery backup was Dragon Slayer for the Epoch Super Cassette Vision. I found a page with a screenshot of the title screen, dated © 1986.

So it looks like Lord Of The Dungeon, though unreleased, beats Dragon Slayer out by three years. It seems that systems with the initials "CV" were in the vanguard of battery backups!

Edited by thegoldenband, Sat Oct 3, 2009 5:27 PM.

[Bruce Tomlin]

Is there a dump of this thing somewhere? It might be interesting to disassemble to see what's inside it.

[CARTRIDGE STEALER]

are there anymore screen shots? it doesnt look too exciting and if the text remains on the screen at all times, it sorta makes it look less enjoyable.

[newcoleco]

Bruce Tomlin, on Sun Oct 4, 2009 4:50 AM, said:

Is there a dump of this thing somewhere? It might be interesting to disassemble to see what's inside it.

I have opened my cartridge, now the label looks like shit. I hope you guys will appreciate the sacrifice I've done.

A friend of mine did a schematic drawing and dumped also the rom for me by first getting the eprom out of the circuit board. So yes there is a dump but it's totally unplayable with emulators because you need to simulate the special hardware cartridge part.

The only way I know to play the game, is by getting a cartridge.

From what I understand of this game, depending on the address you access, you can read or write the save game part or continue to read or execute parts of the game. It's not easy to understand but the high-address simulator hardware part allow to access all the 32K ROM, but the game itself have to deal with it in its code to avoid using the high-addresses directly. So, the game itself is made in a way that the higher addresses means something else than accessing these higher addresses.


 LOD.txt   1.62K   179 downloads
 LOD.zip   22.89K   201 downloads

Edited by newcoleco, Sun Oct 4, 2009 11:35 AM.

[ladybugz]

newcoleco, on Sun Oct 4, 2009 11:29 AM, said:

Bruce Tomlin, on Sun Oct 4, 2009 4:50 AM, said:

Is there a dump of this thing somewhere? It might be interesting to disassemble to see what's inside it.

I have opened my cartridge, now the label looks like shit. I hope you guys will appreciate the sacrifice I've done.

A friend of mine did a schematic drawing and dumped also the rom for me by first getting the eprom out of the circuit board. So yes there is a dump but it's totally unplayable with emulators because you need to simulate the special hardware cartridge part.

The only way I know to play the game, is by getting a cartridge.

From what I understand of this game, depending on the address you access, you can read or write the save game part or continue to read or execute parts of the game. It's not easy to understand but the high-address simulator hardware part allow to access all the 32K ROM, but the game itself have to deal with it in its code to avoid using the high-addresses directly. So, the game itself is made in a way that the higher addresses means something else than accessing these higher addresses.


 LOD.txt   1.62K   179 downloads
 LOD.zip   22.89K   201 downloads

The rom for this game has been publically available for many years. It ISis possible to play this on blueMSX with the save function working. The AtariAge member who told me how to do it wants to release the details when his CV website is up and running. I'll see if he is willing to disclose the details sooner - it is very simple to do.

[Ikrananka]

CARTRIDGE STEALER, on Sun Oct 4, 2009 6:03 AM, said:

are there anymore screen shots? it doesnt look too exciting and if the text remains on the screen at all times, it sorta makes it look less enjoyable.

The text does remain on screen all the time.

[Bruce Tomlin]

Quick update about the ROM:

* First of all, the game is only 24K. The lack of bank select is obvious to me from looking at the chips used.

* RAM write is E000-E7FF, RAM read is E800-EFFF, and F000-FFFF is unused. I have no idea what's in the last 16K of this particular ROM dump, but Exxx wants to be at Axxx.

* To run this in an environment with 2K of RAM at some address, one or both sets of RAM addresses will have to be changed. But I've already got it disassembled far enough that this is easy to do.

[retroillucid]

Hi,
I though you might like to know how to play LotD with BlueMSX


If you want to try it, download BlueMSX, go to Tools->Machine Editor. Select "COL - ColecoVision".

Go to the memory tab, click 'Add'. Leave 'File' blank, select Type as "2kb Mirrored RAM". Leave Slot to 0. Set Address as E000-FFFF. Leave size to 8kb (even though it's physically 2). Click OK.

Click "Save As..." (so you don't overwrite the original Coleco config"), and type COL - ColecoVision LOTD.

Finally, click Run. At this time you can successfully load and run the game


Enjoy!

[remowilliams]

Thanks everyone for the work/info, looking forward to trying this out! Though I'd really like to try it on the real thing.

[Tempest]

Any chance of this ever being hacked to work on the Coleco Multi-cart? I suppose even if it could be made to work you'd lose the battery back up. Maybe it can be converted to an ADAM title?

Tempest

[5-11under]

Is it a fun game, worthy of a re-release?
5-11under

[Tempest]

5-11under, on Wed Oct 7, 2009 12:29 PM, said:

Is it a fun game, worthy of a re-release?
5-11under

I thought so when I owned a copy. It reminded me of Wizardry on my Apple II.

Tempest

[Ikrananka]

retroillucid, on Wed Oct 7, 2009 11:33 AM, said:

Hi,
I though you might like to know how to play LotD with BlueMSX


If you want to try it, download BlueMSX, go to Tools->Machine Editor. Select "COL - ColecoVision".

Go to the memory tab, click 'Add'. Leave 'File' blank, select Type as "2kb Mirrored RAM". Leave Slot to 0. Set Address as E000-FFFF. Leave size to 8kb (even though it's physically 2). Click OK.

Click "Save As..." (so you don't overwrite the original Coleco config"), and type COL - ColecoVision LOTD.

Finally, click Run. At this time you can successfully load and run the game


Enjoy!

For this to work you must use the 24k rom of this game and not the full 32k dump provided by Daniel above. You can either delete the last 8k of Daniel's file or use the 24k rom I have attached (as dumped from my LOTD cart).

Attached Files

•  Lord of the Dungeon (1983) (Probe 2000).zip   17.95K   206 downloads

Edited by Ikrananka, Wed Oct 7, 2009 12:46 PM.

[newcoleco]

Bruce Tomlin, on Tue Oct 6, 2009 10:32 PM, said:

Quick update about the ROM:

* First of all, the game is only 24K. The lack of bank select is obvious to me from looking at the chips used.

* RAM write is E000-E7FF, RAM read is E800-EFFF, and F000-FFFF is unused. I have no idea what's in the last 16K of this particular ROM dump, but Exxx wants to be at Axxx.

* To run this in an environment with 2K of RAM at some address, one or both sets of RAM addresses will have to be changed. But I've already got it disassembled far enough that this is easy to do.

I'm pretty sure that Sean Kelly will not make such of special pcbs with addresses simulation if the game was really a 24K. If you look at the pcb itself, and my remark about simulated addresses, your point about the Exxx acting as Axxx makes sense, because it's executed as Axxx but it's from Exxx in the eprom.

The rom file I'm giving here is the data you get by dumping the eprom directly by unsoldering it first from the circuit board, not a dump made with a cart reader or a copy cart program for the Coleco Adam computer... which I'm guessing it's the 24k version you got here.

[williamc]

Ahh, Lord of the Dungeon. Possibly my most wanted game.

I had a small role in discovering it. The person who owned the proto contacted me because of my Odyssey2 site (Probe 2000 was an offshoot of Odyssey after all). He also owned an Odyssey3 console, Flash Point prototype, O3 modem and other major rarities. I put him in touch with Sean Kelly to get the cart dumped. You can read our (abridged) original email exchange here.

Sean was going to give me a cart at CGE 2000 but only had the bare circuit boards available. He promised to give me one one in a cart shell but it never happened. It's as much my fault as his though -- he had CGE on his mind, the carts were a PITA to make and I didn't remind him as much as I should have.

I've also been trying to get screenshots and pics of the cart for my site's game database. CV Gus's screenshots are the first I've ever seen.

newcoleco, can I use your circuit board pics? Anybody have a better scan of the cart label?

Can't wait to try this on an emu!

[Tempest]

I'm pretty sure that if someone went through the hassle of making another run of these hopefully improving on the design) that they would have no trouble finding buyers. I know I sold mine a year or two ago for an insanely high amount because everybody wants a copy.

Tempest

[newcoleco]

you can use these pictures, no problem.

[JamesD]

Lord of the Dance... er... Dungeon.
Looks like a port of an early D&D type text based game with graphics tacked on.
I guess bars showing energy and such weren't used yet.
It looks a lot like stripped down Wizardry clone.

[Ikrananka]

williamc, on Fri Oct 9, 2009 12:42 AM, said:

I've also been trying to get screenshots and pics of the cart for my site's game database. CV Gus's screenshots are the first I've ever seen.

Here are scans of my cart that you can use if you want.

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[remowilliams]

Tried both dumps in BlueMSX with the instructions in the thread - the 32K one is all messed up, while the 24K one seems to work... ?

[Ikrananka]

remowilliams, on Fri Oct 9, 2009 12:13 PM, said:

Tried both dumps in BlueMSX with the instructions in the thread - the 32K one is all messed up, while the 24K one seems to work... ?

The 24k one does indeed work - however to save your progress in the game requires the use of blueMSX's "Save CPU State" function.