Four Minutes to Midnight

[Andre Leao]

Some variants...



https://planetasinclair.blogspot.com/20 ... es-to.html

[RWAC]

Do we know what's different about this version? Extra locations?
Or bug fixes?

[Andre Leao]

Let´s wait for our detective

[RWAC]

Good plan

[8BitAG]

I'll have a nose a little bit later.

In general, there doesn't tend to be much variation between the different 8th Day re-releases. It's mainly a case of upgrading to the new version of the Quill, compressing the text, adding a custom font, adding STORE/RECALL, tweaking the text etc now that there's a bit of extra memory available. Bug fixes are fairly few.

Of course, several of the 8th Day games did get graphical versions in the re-releases. Four Minutes to Midnight was one of the titles that had graphics added; the later versions had a text version on one side of the tape and text/graphics on the other.

[8BitAG]

Release 2 seems to have the graphics version of Midnight on the A-side and... Earthshock on the B-side. (The response to VERSION in Earthshock gives A02 which was the text/graphics version)

[Andre Leao]

I guess it was a nice find, wasn't it?

[8BitAG]

I feel like we've probably got most of these versions captured already. But it's so difficult to tell with the archive currently arranged at it is.

The Spectrum archive is a wonderful, collaborative effort that is pretty much unmatched by other 8-bits. However, it is a shame that, because of the way it organically grew over a long period of time, things like inlays/tape photos became disconnected from the actual game files. Without a link between a game file and its source, it's really difficult to make sense of the releases and re-releases of games.

[Gilby]

Unfortunately, a lot of the games weren't preserved from original tapes, so there was no inlay to link them too..

I do plan on scanning in the inlays for my adventures at some point, once I get a few other bits and pieces out of the way.

Steve