Mountain Valley Software — Australian made text adventure 1981–1987 — tribute site

Store demo

The demonstration disk Mountain Valley supplied to Australian computer shops to show its adventures, run in the shop and left to loop.

What it is

On 12 September 1984 Mountain Valley wrote to dealers about its October campaign. Along with a free wall banner, it offered “a demonstration tape or disk showing excerpts from several of the games for in-store and window display”, at $5. This is that disk. Its one program is called DEMO, and the unused disk label that survives in the archive reads LOAD"DEMO",8. Scott recalls that it also reached users, not only shops.

It fits the campaign closely. It promises to “explore eight worlds of mystery and imagination”, as the October 1984 advert promised “eight magical worlds”, and names the eight adventures then on sale. Two of the four games it shows are Himalayan Odyssey and The Volcano of Raka-Tua, the new releases the campaign launched. The Gambler, a card game, is left out, and nothing from 1985 appears. The program carries no date and no credit.

The letters, the label and the October advert are in the archive.

What it shows

About two minutes, then it starts again. Every line is typed out a letter at a time, with sound effects:

  1. “Welcome to the magical world of Mountain Valley Software — text and graphic adventures”.
  2. “Explore eight worlds of mystery and imagination”, and the eight titles: The Oasis of Shalimar, Castle of Mydor, Mystery Island, King Solomon’s Mines, The Lost City, The Scroll of Akbar Khan, Himalayan Odyssey and The Volcano of Raka-Tua.
  3. Four games, each as a room drawn in the games’ own style with a line of sales copy under it: a narrow mountain valley in Himalayan Odyssey, a cave full of huge spiders in The Scroll of Akbar Khan, the town square in The Volcano of Raka-Tua, and the jungle in The Lost City.
  4. “The exciting range of Mountain Valley Software adventures is available now in this store”.
Demo title screen: Welcome to the magical world of Mountain Valley Software, text and graphic adventures
The opening screen
Demo screen for Himalayan Odyssey: a narrow mountain valley with a temple and a cottage, and the sales copy beneath
Himalayan Odyssey, then a new release
Demo closing screen: The exciting range of Mountain Valley Software adventures is available now in this store
The close, meant for a shop window

How it was planned

One of Betts’s graph-paper sheets, filed with The Lost City, has two blocks of room text pencilled on it: “In a cave full of huge spider[s] … I see: spiders. Boulder”, and “In the jungle. I see: statue. Broken columns”. Both are screens in this demo, down to the exits. So the sheet looks like planning for the demo, which would explain why its margin notes come from several games.

Run it

A plain BASIC program on an unprotected disk, so it runs in any C64 emulator. Load it with LOAD"DEMO",8, then RUN, and leave it: it loops until it is stopped. See Playing the games for what to do with a .d64.