Four New (or Newly Available) Eamon Adventures!

Between Keith Dechant's last blog post and its subsequent comments, there was a suggestion of an incoming tidal wave of good news for Eamon in 2020. Well, that wave has made landfall, leading to the announcement of four new (or heretofore unannounced) Eamon adventures across three platforms.

All of the adventures represent the best of what Eamon can be: Each includes fantastic writing and storytelling; several are wide in scope and leverage lots of special modifications to the basic Eamon routine.


Malleus Maleficarum: The first original adventure written for the Eamon Remastered system, Keith Dechant's Malleus Maleficarum sees the adventurer's friend Maya draw the player to the far-away land of Virrat. From Dechant's description, the adventurer travels

to a nearby land that has outlawed magic and is conducting a witch hunt against all magic users. Your quest is to rescue a friend's grandmother and investigate a militant anti-magic organization called the Cobalt Front... The Cobalt Front is a very lawful organization, at least when it comes to magic and magic weapons, and you can easily find yourself getting into trouble with the law if you're not careful.

There are other things happening in the land of Virrat, too, and you'll find yourself battling some bizarre creatures as you learn what's really going on.

Malleus Maleficarum relies heavily on interaction with non-player characters, as well, which helps develops the storyline. For playing the adventure and getting more information about it, the reader can consult the following links:

• Malleus Maleficarum can be played at Eamon Remastered.
• The Malleus Maleficarum page at the Eamon Wiki will undoubtedly be updated with further information on the adventure.

Land of the Mountain King: Several years ago, Kenneth Pedersen released Land of the Mountain King as an ADRIFT adventure and has now ported it to Michael Penner's Eamon CS system.

While the adventure's scope is more constrained than the others described in this post, its writing and story are solid. From its introduction:

You are walking in the woods looking for prey when you are suddenly shrouded in a cloud of white smoke. The smoke is too dense to see through, but eventually, the smoke clears and you find yourself on a barren plain.

As you turn around, you see an old witch stand before you. "Listen carefully!" the witch whispers with a hoarse voice.

"I have summoned you here to help me clear this land from the evil mountain king, who lives in his castle up north. The mountain king terrorizes this land and must die so that peace can be restored around here. If you succeed you will be significantly rewarded.

Land of the Mountain King is the first original adventure for Penner's Eamon CS, and the reader can use the following links for more information:

• Land of the Mountain King can be downloaded and played by installing Eamon CS.
• The Land of the Mountain King page at the Eamon Wiki includes discussion, a detailed walkthrough, and maps for the adventure.

The Treachery of Zorag: Derek Jeter's follow-up to the excellent Stronghold of Kahr-Dur for Eamon Deluxe, The Treachery of Zorag was nearing completion just as Frank Black was shelving development of the platform. Consequently, Zorag failed to receive a formal release or widespread acknowledgement (I hadn't even realized that it had been completed until last month). Undaunted, Jeter has made some modifications to the adventure and is hosting an online, playable Zorag.

Like Malleus Maleficarum, interaction with non-player characters plays an equal role to combat, making for an engrossing adventure. From the introduction:

A knight from the nearby city of Behlos arrives at the Main Hall to announce that the king is assembling a party of the land's greatest heroes to investigate the possible return of Zorag, an evil wizard imprisoned for many years and now feared to be free. The knight asks for the Guild's greatest warrior to join the party, and when your comrades all point to you, you accept the errand. The knight orders you to appear at the King's Hall in Behlos at sunrise on the second day to begin the mission.

Long ago, I was blown away by an incomplete version of Zorag and it's fantastic that the full adventure can finally reach a broader audience. More can be found at the following links:

• Derek Jeter's playable online version of The Treachery of Zorag is at http://www.dcsoftsys.com/eamon/toz/.
• The Treachery of Zorag page at the Eamon Wiki includes background, walkthroughs, and a map for the adventure.

Assault on the Clone Master Remake: Forty years after its release, Donald Brown's Assault on the Clone Master has been reborn with a superbly-written, steampunk-infused remake courtesy of Keith Dechant. While nominally a remake, the adventure has been so deeply reworked as to warrant its being described as an all-new adventure.

By way of illustration, check out the introductory text of the original Clone Master, and compare with the introduction of the remake:

You were traveling in the far-away land of Knieriem, a land with technology far beyond your own. You marveled at the towering cities and majestic arches and goggled at the wondrous metal vehicles and flying machines powered by the most exquisite clockwork.

But, all was not well in Knieriem. A day before you were to leave for home on a massive, steam-powered ship, word came that the harbor was being blockaded by the dreaded fire fleets of the infamous Clone Master!

The Clone Master was known all over Knieriem and the surrounding kingdoms, feared for his vast armies made up of human clones!

Dechant's Assault on the Clone Master is worth checking out; more information can be found at the following links: 

• Dechant's remake of Assault on the Clone Master can be played at Eamon Remastered.
• The remake's page at the Eamon Wiki includes background information and a detailed walkthrough.

Eamon is turning 40!

We don't know the exact date the first version of the Main Hall and Beginner's Cave were created. This is largely thanks to the fact that Apple II's DOS 3.3 didn't keep timestamps on files, and authors didn't always record the dates in their file comments. Some knowledgeable people have done some research, and estimated that development on the first Eamon adventures must have begun in 1979. The first specific date we know for sure is January 30, 1980, the publication date of Adventure #3, Cave of the Mind, which is now 40 years ago!

In honor of the occasion, I thought I would take a look back at the history and how things have changed over the years.

The Apple II Era

1979-80: The first DOS 3.3 version of Eamon is released for the Apple II Plus. It supports 40-column text, all uppercase, and is designed to work on machines with 48k of RAM.

1984-1989: Eamon sees widespread distribution and over 150 adventures are published during this time.

1985: The Graphics Main Hall is released, providing a richer experience and several additional shops.

1985: Thror's Ring is the first adventure released with support for 80-column text.

1988: Tom Zuchowski releases v7.0 of the Main Program. This includes a small compiled program that drastically sped up monster and artifact search routines. It also introduces group monsters and revised combat logic that emphasizes Agility as a primary combat stat.

1990: Zuchowski begins converting several adventures to Prodos, intending to make them easier to play on the Apple //gs.

Mid-1990s: Authors continue submitting new adventures, even though the Apple II as a platform is in decline. Zuchowski also manages to locate a number of older adventures that had either languished on floppies since the 1980s, or had been started and never finished.

1999-2013 - Eamon Deluxe

This is a port of Eamon to MS-DOS by adventure author Frank Black. It has gone through several revisions over the years, and about 200 adventures have been ported. Frank upgraded most of the adventures, fixing bugs and broken room connections, as well as updating the command parser and some of the combat logic.

Frank also wrote some new content for several adventures, intending to make them a more unified storyline. Several NPCs could now appear in multiple adventures, if they survived the adventure where you first met them.

2017-present - Eamon Remastered

I had always dreamed of making an updated version of Eamon that could run in a web browser. In the 21st century, this seemed to be a good way to bring new players to Eamon and to keep alive all the hard work done by dozens of adventure authors.

The original Eamon was written in Applesoft BASIC, being a common, low-barrier-to-entry programming language in its time. So, it only made sense to use today's common, widely known language, JavaScript, for the rewrite. Data and file storage have also come a long way since the 1980s, and Eamon adventure data seemed a good fit for a relational database.

So, in December 2015, I started planning the rewrite of the game engine. This meant a major update in game features for some of the older adventures, which now all have the updated commands and combat logic that the newer Apple-based adventures and Eamon Deluxe had.

Since the official release of Eamon Remastered in February 2017, 34 adventures have been ported to Eamon Remastered. There is still a long way to go; there are currently about 275 total adventures, of which about 180 are actually playable on the original systems (a prerequisite to porting them) and are of good enough quality to be interesting.

The Future

There are still many things in store for 2020. I am currently working on a brand-new adventure titled Malleus Maleficarum. In this one, the adventurer joins a friend from the Guild to save her homeland from fanatics who are persecuting magic users.

Even more new content will be coming soon as well. The next project will be a port of Derek Jeter's unpublished adventure, The Treachery of Zorag, which Derek developed for Eamon Deluxe but which was never included in any of the Eamon Deluxe 5.0 releases. This is a large, complex adventure with lots of special effects and puzzles. It will be a great addition to the catalog.

Until next time, happy adventuring!

Eamon Mystery - William Trent and the "Search for the Key"

It's Groundhog Day! To celebrate, let's look back at a letter that Dr. William Trent wrote to the EAG way back in March of 1991:

Dear Tom,

One of my favorite games is a short game (only 20 rooms) called "Search for the Key" (#80) by Donald Brown.  For the casual player this game probably doesn't do much for them.  You cannot enter this game with a powerful character but as a beginner.  I note that it is rated as a 2.  My rating for it since it is such a challenge would be about 7.  I have played it at least 200 times and have lost only about 5 times in the last 150 times.  I would say that I know more about this little game than the author.  Usually I lost because of broken weapons so that I had no way to eliminate the black panther.  I usually finish up with $80,000 to $100,000 and four of the best weapons that money can buy.  I don't know anyone who ever was able to get more than two weapons.  At one time I was running it as the Eamon Challenge on our BBS offering anyone who could come out of the game with $40,000 a $25 prize.  No one solved the mystery so I have not revealed it.  I doubt if the author even realized the quirk in the game which allowed me to win this way.  I wonder if you or any of the other adventurers can 
figure out how I do it.   -  Wm. Trent

Wow. How do you do it, Bill?   - Tom 

Well, I've looked at the program myself and couldn't find out what he was talking about either. So, back in 2003, I wrote him a letter to ask for the solution. He responded in December 2003 as follows:

In 1983 I had an Apple computer which had very few capabilities but it did have Eamon games which I played a lot.  After a couple of years the Apple changed to Macintosh and upgraded to a format which was not compatible to the Apple.  As a result I became disgusted with them and switched to an IBM computer and did not play Eamon games any longer.

 At that time you had to write almost any program yourself as there were very few except Appleworks typing programs.  I wrote one Eamon game myself "A Trip to Fort Scott" which was my home town in Kansas before I joined the navy.  (I'm a Pearl Harbor Survivor)

 That has been too long ago for me to remember anything about my early computer years.  I am sorry but at age 84 I can't remember anything about the Eamon games.  In fact one of the things that happens to you when you get old is your memory goes.

 I can go to a movie and a year later my wife will say, "We saw that movie".

 I will say, "I never saw that movie."

 I am on the computer quite a bit but have to keep reviewing to be able to remember the programs I use most of the time.  I "bookmark"  anything which I wish to find on line with the computer and keep most of the program icons on my desktop so they are easy to find.

 I keep a very descriptive index of all the files I have on the hard disk.

 I am very sorry but I do not remember anything about any of the Eamon Games.

 Dr. William H. Trent, DDS (retired for 18 years)

So, my question for the Eamon community is, what was he talking about? The data file doesn't indicate that it's possible to have that many weapons or to earn that much money. The MAIN PGM is likewise rather mundane. Was it possible that he got some customized version from a non-EAG source?

Eamon Remastered

Keith Dechant has done a great job porting Eamon to run on a web based platform with no need for emulators or other softwares. He has already ported 15 adventures from the EDX platform.

Check it out at https://eamon-remastered.com/

Eamon database

Derek C. Jeter scoured the Eamon database and came up with this handy way to examine all of the Eamon Deluxe adventures. You can inspect each adventure's rooms, artifacts, monsters and effects. If you get stuck in an adventure, this is great place to find all the hidden doors and embedded artifacts.

Check it out at http://dcsoftsys.com/eab/

Two Eamon-Related AGT Adventures

Recently, Michael Detlefsen, one of two individuals who ported Eamon to the Atari ST, has posted two Eamon-related items for the PC to the Internet Archive. Each is an AGT (Adventure Game Toolkit)-authored adventure game, playable on MS-DOS and hence (presumably) Windows. Detlefsen shepherded his Atari port by hosting it on GEnie, writing the single Eamon newsletter, and manually translating several adventures to the platform. However, Detlefsen at some point abandoned Eamon development and embraced the AGT platform.

The first is an expanded version of Evan Hodson's Quest for the Holy Grail, a riff of the Monty Python film. Holy Grail was one of the Eamons Detlefsen ported to the Atari ST; after adopting the AGT platform, he made additional enhancements to the game by adding puzzles, rewriting descriptions, and making further changes. The Misadventure of the Holy Grail, the enhanced version of Quest for the Holy Grail, can be downloaded here.

The second is a port of Detlefsen's aborted Eamon adventure The Star Portal. Detlefsen made a report on his progress in the Atari Eamon newsletter, mentioning that he has "blocked out" sixty rooms for the map, but never completed the Eamon version. After abandoning Eamon and adopting AGT, Detlefsen resumed work on Star Portal, winning an honorable mention in the Second AGT Game Contest. A review can be found here and the game itself can be downloaded here.

Eamon Mapper at HackFest

KansasFest, the venerable Apple II gathering running for a quarter of a century, hosts a recurring contest called "HackFest." The winner this year was none other than Margaret Anderson, the author of four Eamons (Peg's Place, The Beginner's Forest, Treasure Island, and The Pirate's Cave), who submitted an "Eamon mapper" as her entry. While the site is not presently hosting a disk image of her winning entry, it appears that disk images of entries are posted from time to time at http://www.kansasfest.org/hackfest/. 

Margaret Anderson also wrote an article "Mapping the Unknown: An Adventure in Eamon" about her entry in the September 2013 issue of Juiced.GS. I don't have a subscription to Juiced.GS, so I'm unable to describe the contents of the article. But I'd love to hear a synopsis in the comments (or see a disk image of Ms. Anderson's entry!).

Pat Hurst's Eamon Gazetteer

Pat Hurst, over the course of his universally highly regarded Eamon adventures, attempted to unify the details of the fictional planet Eamon, providing an coherent story concerning Eamon's geography, politics, and pantheon. The Main Hall, according to Hurst's continuity, lies in the city of Evenhold, on the coast of the Malphigian sea. Beyond his four adventures—The Pyramid of Anharos, Buccaneer!, Grunewalde, and The Dark Brotherhood—Hurst's ideas informed Mike Ellis' Well of the Great Ones (as well as A Runcible Cargo). Hurst's portrait of Eamon was made concrete by a sort of "series bible," the Eamon Gazetteer, mentioned several times in the EAG Newsletter. 

Huw Williams—super sleuth that he is—was able to not only track down Pat Hurst, but also coaxed him into scanning a copy of the fabled Gazetteer, a copy of which may be found at www.eamononline.com. Both scanned and transcribed versions are posted. It's a very entertaining read and a very rich component of Eamon history, so make sure to check it out.

Discovering Eamon for the first time

What's it like for someone to discover Eamon for the first time? Jalen Wanderer over at http://comparativecreation.blogspot.com/ has come across Eamon and is considering writing a new adventure for the system. It's an interesting read for those of you who have known Eamon for years and years!

SwordThrust Walkthrough

Chester Bolingbroke, author of the excellent blog The CRPG Addict found at crpgaddict.blogspot.com, has written a couple of posts on Donald Brown's SwordThrust, the commercial successor to Eamon. The first post details the game and Bolingbroke's thoughts on it, while the second post is more detailed, and even contains some insight by the only non-Don-Brown author of SwordThrust, Peter Wityk

 

Bolingbroke has also written an in-depth FAQ/Walkthrough of SwordThrust. The document is very thorough, documenting the history and gameplay of the system, as well as walkthroughs and maps for all seven adventures written for it.

 

The document has been posted here or may be found at:.

 

 http://www.gamefaqs.com/appleii/739435-swordthrust/faqs/68230

 



Also, I remind the reader that in general, crpgaddict.blogspot.com is worth the time of any Eamon enthusiast.

 

More news to come. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

The Conclusion of the Dr. Evil Laboratories Saga

Readers will recall a pair of posts concerning one of Eamon's cousins, the Commodore 64 text adventure system Imagery!. For those not recalling them, part one and part two will direct you to the blog of our comrades at Doctor Evil Laboratories, featuring a wonderfully written retrospective of the rise and fall of the company.

 

Well, I sadly missed it this last month, but the concluding chapter of our friend Kent Sullivan's history of Dr. Evil Labs went up in September. You needn't be familiar with C64 jargon to enjoy the blog posts; Kent's writing really outlines a coming of age story that only incidentally contains C64 jargon.

 

There isn't a concise web address for the Dr. Evil Labs blog, but you can get to the blog by clicking here and you can read the last installment here.

 

Eamon and the Xbox Crowd

One individual's discovery of the Beginners Cave recently led to quite a bit of amusement on Reddit a couple of days ago, making its way to the front of r/gaming and grabbing nearly a thousand comments. 

 

While there's a bit of salty language, it's interesting to see the Xbox generation try to get their collective head around the notion of a text adventure. I certainly enjoyed reading the comments.

IF Comp 2013

Eamon lovers might be interested in the Interactive Fiction Competition, running until November 15th, 2013. Should be worth your time...

http://ifcomp.org/comp13/index.php

Another Curiosity, the "Creative Adventure Disk"

This is just a short post to throw something out in hopes that some reader or other will have information.

 

I stumbled upon some unusual Eamoniana (I'm coining a term here) today while going through WorldCat: the "Creative Adventure Disk," Apple II software published in 1986 by an Australian company called Select Software. It is described as:

Create your own dungeons and dragons adventure game. Compatible with Eamon series. Suitable as an educational aid.

Select Software, it appears, distributed Eamon proper before releasing this, so this is presumably not Eamon. Moreover, the system spans four disks, so it's clearly robust.

 

The reference can be found at WorldCat with OCLC number 225973575. No libraries seem to have a copy. If you've encountered this software, I'd love to learn more about it.

"Lair of the Minotaur" for Jon Walker's Eamon

A further Eamon for Jon Walker's PC Eamon has been found lurking in the internets. While PC-SIG supported Walker's ports of The Beginner's Cave, The Ice Cave, Assault on the Clone Master, and Quest for Trezore---and released Cronum's Castle and Lord of the Underland independently---it never released his port of Lair of the Minotaur. Walker's port of Lair was distributed by his "Wisconsin Software Systems"; why it wasn't picked up by PC-SIG is unknown.

 

David Kinder at www.ifarchive.org was generous enough to fix the compressed files---updating them for modern systems---and to host this port of Lair of the Minotaur on the site as well here. He has posted Cronum and Underland to the archive as well. Hence, the Walker PC Eamon library stands at:

 

1. The Main Hall/ Beginner's Cave by Donald Brown (ported by Jon Walker)
2. The Ice Cave by Jon Walker
3. Assault on the Clone Master  by Donald Brown (ported by Jon Walker)
4. Quest for Trezore by Jim Jacobson (ported by Jon Walker)
5. Cronum's Castle by Matt Ashcraft and Richard Tonsing
6. Lord of the Underland by Justin Langseth
7. Lair of the Minotaur by Donald Brown (ported by Jon Walker)
8. Dungeon Designer

All of these files can be conveniently found at at the PC Eamon page. Many thanks to David Kinder for his help.

 

There will soon be some announcements concerning the Micro-Adventure Contest. If you haven't submitted something yet, we still welcome contributions, though the competition itself has closed.

Eamon Revolutions, Database Editor for Windows, and Contest Reminder

So Huw Williams isn't the only one making sweeping contributions to the Wonderful World of Eamon. Derek Jeter, author of the exceedingly well-crafted Stronghold of Kahr-Dur, has recently released (in alpha in one case) some great Eamon-related software.

First off is the very promising Eamon Revolutions, a web-based update of Eamon. A number of enhancements have been made by Jeter, details of which can be found at the Wonderful Wiki of Eamon entry. It is presently in alpha and The Beginner's Cave is the only adventure thus far ported but it looks to be a lot of fun, as well as a good way to introduce folks to the joy of Eamon from any web browser.

But there's more... Jeter has also put together a Windows-based GUI dedicated to editing Eamon Deluxe databases, the EDX Adventure Database Editor. For aspiring Eamon authors with a Windows machine, this software appears to make the editing of an Eamon Deluxe adventure a smoother process.

With that being said, I'll remind readers of the blog that the deadline for the Eamon Micro-Adventure Contest is fast approaching. With the EDX Adventurer Editor, there's really no excuse not to secure for yourself the eternal glory and esteem that comes with writing an Eamon adventure. So put together a few rooms and send them to us by June 1st at tfeamon[at]gmail.com or eamondeluxe[at]gmail.com.

Announcing the Wonderful Wiki of Eamon

Over the past year, the intrepid Huw Williams has worked tirelessly--though quietly--to lay the foundations for an extraordinarily comprehensive, online Eamon encyclopedia. Recently, this work has become open to the public.

The Wonderful Wiki of Eamon, which can be found at www.eamononline.com, is a wiki edited and curated by members of the extended Eamon community. Anyone can log in and begin lending a hand, whether it's by creating a page for an missing topic or by adding material on an existing one. Every area of the Eamon universe is touched on and what Huw has put together is nothing short of phenomenal.

As a great example of the potential of Huw's project, check out the page for The Lair of the Minotaur. Included are summaries of the plot, reviews, and a section detailing how its characters and geography relate to the larger Eamon universe. Even the original MAINPGM in BASIC has been included. While not all Eamon adventures have received this exhaustive a treatment, you're invited to pick your favorite Eamon adventure and assist in giving it the same treatment.

So head over to the Wonderful Wiki of Eamon, whether it's to check out the content or to contribute to the project.

Eamon Adventure Nominated for Interactive Fiction Award (and other news).

Our very own Thomas Ferguson has had his debut Eamon adventure, A Runcible Cargo, nominated for the XYZZY IF Games award(s). If you haven't played Runcible, you should. And if you have a spare moment, you can show your support by voting for it at the XYZZY Awards page. Voting ends on April 15th.

A Runcible Cargo is included with the Eamon Deluxe 5.0 package and also available in a stand alone format for Windows users.


In other Eamon news...

Work is nearly finished on an old French Eamon that was unearthed (as a very damaged Apple II disk image) last fall. Originally a version 6 Eamon, "Le H.L.M. Maudit" (or "Tenement of the Damned") has been translated into English, converted to Eamon Deluxe, and is now being backported (as a version 7 style Eamon) to a new Apple II disk image. The salvaged adventure is a short, but well executed (and rather humorous), hack'n'slash romp that was recently reviewed in the March 2013 Eamon Deluxe Newsletter. Both the Eamon Deluxe version and the Apple II disk image backport will offer the option of being played in either English or French.

A new adventure is currently being tested and debugged: Eamon Deluxe #25 - The Treachery of Zorag by Derek C. Jeter includes active monsters that players can talk to, ask questions of, and otherwise interact with on a much more advanced level than that found in standard adventures. Among other special features, it also has a very large map which includes over three hundred rooms that cover multiple different settings and types of terrain. Derek is the very skilled Eamon author who's debut adventure, "Stronghold of Kahr-Dur", was released to favorable reviews last fall and "The Treachery of Zorag" is going to be one that Eamon fans will not want to miss. Its predicted public release date is late April or early May of 2013.

It has come to my attention that the "plain text" editions of the Eamon Deluxe Newsletter are not easily readable on non-Windows computers, nor can they be displayed without plugin workarounds on any web browser except Internet Explorer. With the release of Eamon Deluxe 5.0, a primary focus of modern Eamon development is accessibility. This means that new material should designed for cross platform flexibility and 100% compatible with the screen reading software used by vision impaired fans. The plain text newsletter editions, which are currently available as Rich Text Format documents, are soon going to be replaced with simple HTML versions.

Likewise, this blog itself has been reported to have compatibility issues with screen readers and, among other problems, doesn't allow vision impaired readers to post comments. Currently I'm considering the option of re-posting all blogs on a more compatible mirror site, but if anyone has an easier solution or any suggestions as to possible workarounds for this problem please contact me. In the meantime, vision impaired users can email their comments to either Matt Clark (eamonag [at] gmail.com), Thomas Ferguson (tfeamon [at] gmail.com), or myself (eamondeluxe [at] gmail.com) for posting.

Two previously unavailable newsletters have been added to the Guild archive page. Both originally published in 1987, the new additions to the archive include a newsletter by Kent Sullivan regarding the C64 Eamon cousin, Imagery! and a loosely written publication describing an Atari ST port of the original Eamon system.

There is quite a bit more Eamon-related material currently in development or awaiting final polish. Among the copious collection lingering about the Guild workspace like a mimic in the Beginners Cave: a set of working, fully playable Apple II disk images containing the short lived "Eamon Pro" system; updates to the Guild's classic Eamon disk image library which will once again be bootable (via emulator) and patched with fixes from the EAG's list of known bugs/issues; new additions to the Eamon Deluxe adventure pack, "The Lost Treasures of Eamon", which include "Beneath Mount Imagery" (converted from the C64 Imagery! system) and "Crypt Crashers-- The Tomb of Horrors" (from an excellent Atari ST Eamon port); additional Eamon Deluxe adventure packs updated and made available for the new 5.0 system, including "The Donald Brown Adventures", "The Roger Pender Adventures", "The Robert Parker Adventures" and "Classic Eamon Adventures Volume One"; and... many more items of interest to Eamon fans.

A Trifecta of Eamon News

Three things which will surely interest readers of the blog:

1. Bill Martens' website www.callapple.org put up a post yesterday detailing a completely painless way to play Apple II Eamon online---no emulators, no hassle. Frank Black's Eamon hard drive has been adapted at the Virtual Apple ][ and it runs a host of ProDos Eamons flawlessly. To try it out, go to www.virtualapple.org/eamonfkdisk.html.
2. Chester Bolingbroke has written a piece detailing Eamon in his awesome blog, The CRPG Addict. The blog is fascinating and well-written and features a very lively (and equally fascinating) comments section. The relevant post can be read at www.crpgaddict.blogspot.com.
3. The March 2013 issue of the Eamon Deluxe Newsletter has been posted, filled with all sorts of reviews and articles. The .rtf version has been produced and will be posted alongside the .pdf version soon. 

The Eamon Deluxe Newsletter, by the way, isn't necessarily devoted to merely Eamon Deluxe. All platforms, past and present, of Eamon are dealt with and represented. (Indeed, in the present issue, we feature reviews of adventures and systems for the Commodore 64, Apple II, Atari ST, and Eamon Deluxe!) We also welcome any contributions you may have, whether they be letters, comments, reviews, articles, or otherwise.

Catching up

Finally tackling some of my Eamon to-do list...

I've added two reviews to the website that Thomas Ferguson sent me way back in January of 2011... Yes, over two years later, although in my defense, I was just starting my MBA back then. Anyway, mosey on over to http://www.eamonag.org/columns/Reviews251-300.htm to read his reviews of Eamon #253 The Prism of Shadows by Wade Clarke and James Anderson and Eamon #254 Dawn of the Warlock by Wade Clarke.

Uploaded a fixed version of #144 Gartin Manor that Wade Clarke sent me back in December of 2011.

Posted the review from Dark@xgam.org, only two years later.

Sigh.