Swords and Sorcery
Swords and Sorcery is a compilation of four fantasy-themed video games published by Keypunch Software for MS-DOS on 1987-06-10, and again in 1993. The games included in the package were very dated, and the packaging was very low-quality. Rather than have disks made for the product, Keypunch bought 5.25" floppies in bulk and stuck on a poorly-printed dot matrix white adhesive label. They didn't remove the manufacturer's label which can be seen behind their label. The disks weren't even placed in paper sleeves, they were just tossed in the box! The file system was also a mess featuring unfinished batch files that give errors and and a menu written in BASIC.
Contents
Games
This compilation contains four games. Because Keypunch was essentially a pirate organization, they sourced the games from free sources like magazines and BBSes and stripped the names of the developers. Any unnecessary documentation or credits were removed. Prior to shipping, the games were re-titled, both to prevent the developers from finding out their programs were stolen, and also to make the buyers think they were buying something more impressive than what the box contained.
| Title | Notes |
|---|---|
| Swords of Glass | A wire-frame dungeon crawler with some unique features. I haven't been able to find the developer. |
| Amulet of Yendor | This is the 1980 BASIC game The Wizard's Castle slightly updated and renamed to resemble Nethack. The name change was clearly the result of a find and replace. |
| The Golden Wombat | This is just the 1984 BASIC game Castle Adventure, but advertised as The Golden Wombat of Destiny. |
| NYC Adventure | Survival in New York City with a shorter name. It's a text adventure that doesn't fit with the theme. I haven't been able to find the original game. |
Personal
My cousin had this and several other Keypunch titles for his Tandy 1000 in the late 1980s, and we used to play them all the time. This collection was my favorite as I was very much interested in swords and sorcery style fantasy during this time in my life. Most of our time was spent playing The Golden Wombat and Swords of Glass. NYC Adventure, is interesting, but only a text adventure. We never found Amulet of Yendor to be very compelling, but, many years later, I did end up playing and beating the original version, The Wizard's Castle.
Status
I do not own this game, but I have beaten Golden Wombat.
Media
Box Art
The art has nothing to do with any of the games in the collection, but it looks nice enough. However, considering Keypunch's reputation, it wouldn't surprise me if this were stolen too.
The back of the box has dishonest descriptions of the game, and uses a screenshot of The Golden Wombat of Destiny, even though it's not included in the package.
Download
Since Keypunch probably never secured the rights to these game in the first place, and has long since gone out of business, I'm making the software available here. The two-disk package is combined here in a single archive.
Links
- mocagh.org/loadpage.php?getgame=swordssorcery - Museum of Computer Adventure Game History.
