It Came From The Desert (1 & 2, Cinemaware)

[carlo_bramini]

"It Came From The Desert" is an adventure game released into the 1989 by Cinemaware:
https://web.archive.org/web/20070408150 ... itcame.asp

Later, "Antheads: It Came From The Desert 2" had been released as an expansion for the first game.
https://web.archive.org/web/20070409141 ... theads.asp

These games has been released as freeware.

On the (defunct) site of the Cinemaware, "It Came From The Desert" was made freely available for Amiga, MSDOS PC and Sega Genesis.
"Antheads: It Came From The Desert 2" had been released for Amiga only.

I was wondering if the genre of these games is something that could be accepted into SCUMMVM.
If the reply is "yes", perhaps it would be worth to start by adding them into the wiki, at the page listing the unsupported games:
https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?titl ... rted_Games

Unfortunately, it seems that the mirror at web.archive.org just saved the pages of the site and not the downloads.
However, since they are freeware and while waiting to have an engine for them in the future, perhaps these files may be also saved somewhere for presevation.
In case it could be helpful, I had these original files downloaded from Cinemaware site:

"It Came From The Desert", Amiga disk images
CW_Itcame_Amiga.zip

"It Came From The Desert", PC EXE
CW_Itcame_PC.zip

But unfortunately I'm missing all others.

Finally, the last words on the site are:

Cinemaware bears no responsibility to any data loss or technical problems as a result of running the Cinemaware classics under emulation or through MS-DOS. Cinemaware will not provide technical support as a result of any problems you may encounter. Please use at your own risk.

Cinemaware bears no responsibility to any data loss or technical problems as a result of running the file you are about to download. Cinemaware provides this file on an AS IS basis and will not provide technical support as a result of any problems you may encounter. We recommend that you backup any important data/files before running this software, as different machine configurations will yield different results, etc. Please use at your own risk.

I hope that you will find this report useful.

[eriktorbjorn]

I could be misremembering, but I seem to recall that you would get access to a lot of their games back then if you registered an account with them back in the day. The terms of use page seems to confirm that. I don't remember if they imposed any restrictions on redistributing them, but it wouldn't surprise me. And since whatever rights they retained has changed hands since then the situation is probably even less clear now.

There is a Cinemaware Anthology: 1986-1991 on Steam, but I don't know any details beyond what's on the store page. From reading the forum it's even unclear to me if the individual games can be extracted to run in other emulators or not.

[Raziel]

@eriktorbjorn

I did register back when they were still alive (and lying about everything they were doing) and got all available Amiga versions.

I still have them, but only installed (so, i do have the data files, but not the .zip/.lha packages...if that helps).

And while i looked at all the games, "King of Chicago" would also be a nice addition, if the Cinemaware engine ever gets supported

Code: Select all

DefenderOfTheCrown        Dir ----rwed 22-Nov-14 23:00:00
DefenderOfTheCrown2CD32   Dir ----rwed 22-Nov-14 23:00:00
DefenderOfTheCrownCDTV    Dir ----rwed 22-Nov-14 23:00:00
ItCameFromDesert2Antheads Dir ----rwed 22-Nov-14 23:00:00
ItCameFromTheDesert       Dir ----rwed 22-Nov-14 23:00:00
KingOfChicago             Dir ----rwed 22-Nov-14 23:00:00
LordsOfTheRisingSun       Dir ----rwed 22-Nov-14 23:00:00
RocketRanger              Dir ----rwed 22-Nov-14 23:00:00
RocketRangerGermany       Dir ----rwed 22-Nov-14 23:00:00
SDI                       Dir ----rwed 22-Nov-14 23:00:00
Sinbad                    Dir ----rwed 22-Nov-14 23:00:00
ThreeStooges              Dir ----rwed 22-Nov-14 23:00:00
TVSportsBaseball          Dir ----rwed 22-Nov-14 23:00:00
TVSportsBasketball        Dir ----rwed 22-Nov-14 23:00:00
TVSportsFootball          Dir ----rwed 22-Nov-14 23:00:00
Wings                     Dir ----rwed 22-Nov-14 23:00:00