Sunday, October 14, 2012

Apple II Eamon "Le HLM Maudit" ("The Tenement of the Damned")

So in my first post for this blog, I described what I knew about the French conversion of Eamon for the Apple II and immediately began seeking disk images. While I was hoping that they'd be out there, I suspected that what would turn up was a run-of-the-mill Main Hall with a Beginner's Cave merely translated into French. (Did you know that "pirate" is French for pirate?)

But what we got was something entirely different: "Le HLM Maudit," or (with some license in translation), "The Tenement of the Damned," written by J.M. Menassanch. ("HLM" denotes a particular type of subsidized housing and "Maudit" as an adjective means "cursed" or "damned.") It appears to be a short, twenty room romp through the banlieues, with a handful of monsters and written for beginners.

In full disclosure, two points ought to be mentioned. For one, well, it's in French. Moreover, there is a bit of corruption in the disk image that must be sorted out. While the data is all intact, the Main Program has taken a beating. With only one effect, though, I imagine that this obstacle can be overcome relatively easily with some backwards engineering. Stay tuned as I hope to have a translated, working .DSK available soon.

I'm very grateful to Jean-Marc Boutillon of boutillon.free.fr and Arnaud Brossard of apple-iigs.info, both of whom put up with my much-atrophied French and provided much help in securing the disk images.

An additional expression of gratitude is in order. If the reader looks over to the side bar, the reader will notice that this is the thirty fifth post this year. Applying a bit of arithmetic, the reader will also note that were precisely thirty five posts from the site's conception in 2004 through 2011. There's now been as much activity this year as the previous seven years combined. To everyone who has contributed and made this such a good year for Eamon, you all have my gratitude as well.

Updated to reflect the name of the adventure's author.

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