Lords of Magic & Alien Planet

[Andre Leao]

A different variant of Lords of Magic & Alien Planet.





https://planetasinclair.blogspot.com/20 ... nture.html

[8BitAG]

The existing entries for Lords of Magic and Alien Planet are a bit messed up, as well.

They're currently dated 1990 which would pre-date the formation of The Guild.
https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/1 ... s_of_Magic
https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/1 ... s_of_Magic
https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/1 ... ien_Planet

The games were ported from the original Amstrad CPC releases.

Like many of the other "cheap and cheerful" ports Tony did, they were available on The Guild's Pic'n'mix tapes which offer almost endless combinations to drive any collector mad.

Nice to see the later Adventure Workshop release preserved. Will do a side-by-side of the code to check for changes. Philip did do some bug-fixes and corrections before re-releasing some of The Guild stuff, particular the Simon Avery games. (Alien Planet does have a different font to the version currently archived)

[8BitAG]

There are a surprising number of differences between The Guild and The Adventure Workshop versions of Alien Planet.

Strangely, it seems like The Adventure Workshop version has more errors, in things like spelling and even a few bugs in the game. It looks like, although it was released later, it was actually an "earlier development version" of the game, potentially pre-playtesting. So The Guild release is actually the better version in this case. It also has some extra QoL tweaks (such as adding G as a shortcut for GET)

Some examples... The Guild version is on the left, the "later" (but actually earlier) Adventure Workshop is on the right.

[8BitAG]

The opposite is true for Lords of Magic, where it's the later Adventure Workshop that is the more polished version.

Over twice as many differences this time around. Examples,