Scout Search - ROME.RO Mega Photo Gallerytron

1984 Apple II game

My first published game, it was printed in inCider magazine in June 1984.
It's in lo-res so it's no awesome feat of coding. But the program listing is on one page and shows a nice blend of AppleSoft BASIC and machine language for a small type-in size.
My favorite part? The little screams, of course!

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Romero > Here's the cover of the June 1984 inCider magazine where my first published game appeared - Scout Search. You can tell how long ago 1984 was - there's an Ultima III character editor and an interview with Tom Snyder (a big cheese back then).

Romero > Here's the Table of Contents of the issue. A quick look at it will reveal just how boring most of the old magazines were to normal people - but geeks like me ate em up! So yeah, my first published game was about a grizzly bear tearing up Boy Scouts and they scream when they're eaten. Typical.

Romero > This is a short article - it's only 2 pages. I laughed when I read this again because I can't believe I wrote "when I wrote this game I didn't know how to make a shape editor" LOLZ! Hilarious. Also, the address is an overseas address because I was living in England at the time and going to high school.

Romero > Here's the entire tiny game. The first half is in BASIC, the second half is in 6502 machine language and is really the actual game code. Back then, you could only make fast games if they were in assembler/machine language. With Scout Search, I discovered that the secret to getting my games published was to have a bit of BASIC and a bit of 6502 assembler - a nice mix that actually made the code smaller because all the text printing and mundane code was kept short in BASIC and the exciting, fun game code was in 6502.

Romero > Here's the notice inCider sent me when they got Scout Search in the mail. I sent them 5 adventure games too. Text adventures, mind you. Two of those adventures were The Unknown and Mystery Mountain. I can't even remember what the other 3 could have been.Lost in the mists of time! Wh0000!!

Romero > I actually wrote Scout Search in 1983 soon after learning 6502 assembler. It was originally titled Ricochet but I came up with a little story and changed the name. You can see a little of the source code here with my handwritten comments about each line.

Romero > This is the instruction screen and first thing you see before jumping into the game. As you can see, the game was made in 1983.

Romero > Here's the 3rd level of the game and several scouts have been demolished.AS THEY SHOULD BE!

Here's the cover of the June 1984 inCider magazine where my first published game appeared - Scout Search. You can tell how long ago 1984 was - there's an Ultima III character editor and an interview with Tom Snyder (a big cheese back then).