Fantasia Diamond (Dutch) - Hewson

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Frankie
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Fantasia Diamond (Dutch) - Hewson

Post by Frankie »

Full Title: Fantasia Diamond (Dutch version)
Year: 1984
Company: Hewson
Author(s): Kim W. Topley
Type: Game (Adventure)
Message Language: Dutch
Upload includes: Perfect TZX file of game and picture of tape label
Source: From original tape
Filetype: TZX and JPEG
Reason for Upload: MIA
Note: The inlay and instructions are online, but not the TZX itself of the game. No matter why, here it is if needed. Also include picture of tape label, something that I think should have been added on WOS from the beginning :-)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/88qfarmcuz37l ... 9.zip?dl=0
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8BitAG
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Re: Fantasia Diamond (Dutch) - Hewson

Post by 8BitAG »

Excellent, thanks. We don't currently have the Dutch-language version listed on CASA, so I've added it to that database.
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Frankie
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Re: Fantasia Diamond (Dutch) - Hewson

Post by Frankie »

8BitAG wrote: Wed Mar 13, 2019 9:16 am Excellent, thanks. We don't currently have the Dutch-language version listed on CASA, so I've added it to that database.
Happy to help out :)
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Re: Fantasia Diamond (Dutch) - Hewson

Post by Juan F. Ramirez »

A curious thing about the Dutch version is that it has a different inlay (artwork):

Image

I don't know the reason why it's different.
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8BitAG
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Re: Fantasia Diamond (Dutch) - Hewson

Post by 8BitAG »

The Dutch release would've been a decent amount of time later if the comment in the DB about: "Fantasia Diamond won Le prix du Meilleur Scenario for the best game scenario in the prestigious Grand Prix Internationale du Logiciel d'Adventure. Because of this, it was to be released in French as well as Dutch and German." is correct.

Perhaps, they thought the redrawn cover would be more appealing to an international audience? (I would've personally thought it would've been the other way around!) It's interesting how they've kept all the elements the same, but just redrawn them in a less stylised way.

I love the original inlay, but it is very 1970s children's storybook in design.
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8BitAG
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Re: Fantasia Diamond (Dutch) - Hewson

Post by 8BitAG »

The English-language BBC Micro version shares the same cover art as the Dutch Spectrum version, so perhaps its more to do with Hewson changing their cover design for later releases.

Kim later ported the game to Electron and Amstrad.

See....
http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/ ... 20Diamond/
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8BitAG
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Re: Fantasia Diamond (Dutch) - Hewson

Post by 8BitAG »

The Enterprise version has a completely different inlay!
http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/ ... a-Diamond/
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Re: Fantasia Diamond (Dutch) - Hewson

Post by 8BitAG »

The English Amstrad version has the "newer" inlay too. So just down to those versions being released later, when the Hewson packaging had changed, I think...
https://cpcrulez.fr/GamesTest/fantasia_diamond.htm
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Re: Fantasia Diamond (Dutch) - Hewson

Post by Joefish »

You know, the more I look at these vector-drawn scenes from adventure games:

Image

The more I think, surely the Speccy is capable of doing that in real-time..? :geek: :mrgreen:
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Re: Fantasia Diamond (Dutch) - Hewson

Post by 8BitAG »

Joefish wrote: Wed Mar 13, 2019 11:20 am You know, the more I look at these vector-drawn scenes from adventure games: The more I think, surely the Speccy is capable of doing that in real-time..? :geek: :mrgreen:
It's not necessarily a case of the Spectrum being able to do it quicker... there are obviously much quicker ways of putting graphics on the screen... it's more a result of the compression technique in that the graphics are stored as a serious of draw-instructions which can take up less space.

Yes, these early games are very slow. There have been quicker engines that use that same technique. And there have also been other interesting variations, such as more of a stamping technique, rather than a line-and-fill.

But yeah, you do wonder why they bothered with the graphics in some of these early games when the graphics are so bad. (Yet, there are some early games like the Interceptor titles, which use a similar technique, where the graphics make the games what they are.)
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Re: Fantasia Diamond (Dutch) - Hewson

Post by Joefish »

What I mean is, you could move around in real-time, or at least have a pan-around view of your current location like Myst III. It would be a much more complex renderer, but it wouldn't take much more data to define the scene in 3D compared to 2D vectors.
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Re: Fantasia Diamond (Dutch) - Hewson

Post by 8BitAG »

Joefish wrote: Wed Mar 13, 2019 1:46 pm What I mean is, you could move around in real-time, or at least have a pan-around view of your current location like Myst III. It would be a much more complex renderer, but it wouldn't take much more data to define the scene in 3D compared to 2D vectors.
Well, you know more about programming than me, but these games didn't generally have much space left for graphics. Maybe if there had been someone back then like you, pushing every single boundary of the hardware, then things would've been different.
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Re: Fantasia Diamond (Dutch) - Hewson

Post by Audionautas »

8BitAG wrote: Wed Mar 13, 2019 11:00 am The English Amstrad version has the "newer" inlay too. So just down to those versions being released later, when the Hewson packaging had changed, I think...
https://cpcrulez.fr/GamesTest/fantasia_diamond.htm
Yes exactly. The Spectrum original version of Fantasia Diamond was released around May 1984. The CPC port was released in September 1984, and later conversions were released in 1985. Hewson was growing fast at that time so according to trends in the videogame market, they were evolving from the way too amateurish covers of their beginnings (1981-1984) to more professional ones since 1984 onwards.

On this Paradroid Diary on Zzap64! Commodore magazine (http://www.zzap64.co.uk/zzap6/para_birth04.html), Gordon Hewson (Andrew's brother and software manager at the time at Hewson Consultants), comments that the cover artwork was done by an advertising agency in Brighton. If you look closely, the drawing style of Fantasia Diamond (Dutch) cover is very similar to other games Hewson released in that period. The name of that artist is unknown, but I would say it's the same artist who did covers for Technician Ted, Gribbly's Day Out, Paradroid, Astroclone and City Slicker (probably Southern Belle too). From 1986 onwards other artists would do covers for Hewson, especially the great Steve Weston.
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