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Commodore 8 Bits • C128 Game: Iowa Jack and the Crystals of Chaos

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This morning I was delighted to discover a really cool game that had been released for the Commodore 128 (you read that right) called Iowa Jack and the Crystals of Chaos.

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From the description by the creator Ricky Derocher on itch.io:
Take on the role of Iowa Jack - adventurer, tomb raider and pilot for hire - and head off in search of a legendary treasure in this old school text adventure game.

This C128 version is for 80 columns. Full 64K VDC RAM is needed to fully show bitmaps (they will be partially shown if you have a stock 16K VDC).

Use simple two word commands like “GET SHOVEL” or “USE WHIP”. Type HELP at any time for a list of verbs.

This is a nice adventure in that there are no deaths or dead ends (soft locks). This is an easy game overall, so it’s perfect for newcomers to the genre, or advanced players who want a quick adventure break.
I quickly fired up my PayPal, sent the dev some financial appreciation and downloaded the D64. But I didn't want to deal with a D64 file. I wanted a D81 version so I could run the game off my CMD GFD-2000.

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I pulled out my trusty Thinkpad T60 that runs Windows XP and fired up DirMaster. This very cool program will allow us to load any D64 file, create a new D81 next to it, select all the files from the D64 and literally drag-and-drop them into the D81's window. Save that sucker off and you've got a brand new D81 "disk".

Then, copy that file to my GFD-2000's thumb drive and I was off to text adventuring in style in 80 columns.

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I shared these photos with Ricky Derocher soon after taking them.

Derocher:
Great to see running on real hardware! It uses a routine from RUN magazine for the bitmaps called Switch that copies the contents of the 40 column screen to the 80 column screen.
Pretty cool!

(There is also a C64 version.)

Statistics: Posted by intric8 — Sat Feb 08, 2025 2:32 pm — Replies 1 — Views 645



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