Level 9 Computing

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the TV series named Level 9, see Level 9 (TV series)
 This article does not cite any references or sources. (February 2008)
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

Level 9 was a British computer adventure game company which produced some of the most advanced games of the 1980s. Founded in 1981 by Michael, Nicholas and Pete Austin, the company produced about 20 games for BBC Micro, Nascom, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Oric, Atari, Lynx 48k, RML 380Z, Amstrad CPC, MSX, Amiga, Apple II, Memotech MTX, and Enterprise until the commercial declining market of the text adventure genre forced their closure in June 1991.

Level 9's first program was an extension to Nascom BASIC called Extension Basic. The first game, also for the Nascom, was called Fantasy and was similar to Valhalla, but with no graphics. Other products from that era were Missile Defence, Bomber and Space Invasion — all for the Nascom. The tapes were duplicated and sent out by mail order by the brothers based on orders generated by the classified advertisements they ran in the Computing Today magazine. They were based at Hughenden Road, High Wycombe, Bucks. HP13 5PG before moving to the West Country.

[edit] A-code

Level 9 devised their own interpretation language, A-code, around 1979. It was very memory efficient, mainly due to the advanced text compression routines which could compress texts to about 50%. The game data, which were identical for all platforms, were incorporated into the executable file for specific machines, together with the interpreter part. A-code underwent a couple of revisions: there are three distinct versions in all, plus a couple of extensions which form new A-code versions of their own.

Andrew Deeley, who worked for Level 9 on Software Development, recalls how the use of the A-Code interpreter enabled L9 to produce 100's of cross platform versions of their entire catalogue in the space of 18 months, "with so many 8 bit computers on the markets and the introduction of Mac's, Amiga's and Atari ST's, developing for cross platform versions of a game was becoming prohibitive in cost back in the late 80's / early 90's. Level 9 were able to hold their own as a small developer because they were able to optimise cross platform production of their games"

The first game to use this system was Colossal Adventure, a faithful conversion of Adventure by Will Crowther and Don Woods, yet with an added 70 extra locations to the end game. This game was followed up by two sequels, Adventure Quest and Dungeon Adventure, both of which featured the Demon Lord Agaliarept. The three titles became known as the Middle-earth trilogy, with a reference in the instructions to Dungeon Adventure to the city of Minas Tirith, which features in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. When enhanced versions of the three games were published by Rainbird Software, the reference to Middle-earth was quietly deleted; the series became known as Jewels of Darkness; and Minas Tirith became Valaii.

Snowball was the first adventure in the Silicon Dreams trilogy, followed by Return to Eden and The Worm in Paradise. Red Moon and its sequel The Price of Magik were bundled together with Lords of Time by Mandarin Software to create yet another trilogy: Time and Magik.

[edit] List of games

[edit] External links

Languages