Text source of Original 'POKES' to fix JSW ?

[Spider]

This text is or very similar is often quoted in various articles regarding the infamous 'Attic Bug'

 

This was caused by an error in the path of an arrow in The Attic, resulting in the sprite traveling past the end of the Spectrum's video memory and overwriting crucial game data instead. Initially Software Projects attempted to pass this bug off as an intentional feature to make the game more difficult,[4] claiming that the rooms in question were filled with poison gas. However, they later rescinded this claim and issued a set of POKEs to correct the flaws.

 

Question here is, I've never seen anything "official" from Software Projects about this, only a couple of listings in Magazines which were from.

 

If as stated in many places...

 

... issued a set of POKEs ...

 

... Where is or was the official announcement / article / text on this ?

 

The nearest I could find to anything vaguely official were these and I do not recall seeing anything else back in the day either.

 

Your Spectrum - August 1984

 

Personal Computer Games - July 1984

 

However, I sort of half expected something from S.P directly perhaps, not necessarily a half page ad :D , but something maybe with their logo or suchlike on it. Perhaps I am over-thinking this. :)

 

 

Incidentally although I cannot be sure I think this might be the first time a software house released a public patch to an 8bit home computer game too.

[jetsetdanny]

Interesting, Andy! :)

 

There must have been some kind of announcement from Software Projects. I suspect it may have been both about the winners of the competition and the POKES they had come up with at the same time.

 

I don't know how they announced things back in those days. Today there would be info on their website and social media accounts, I am sure. Back then perhaps they wrote an announcement and sent it to various editorial offices of magazines related to computing, and the magazines published the content of the announcement, but in their own way, without citing it. 

 

It's an interesting question whether the original text of the announcement survives in some archive...

Edited January 11, 2020 by jetsetdanny

[Spider]

Thanks.

 

I'd expect you are correct in that it was send to their offices and each magazine just published it in a way they felt appropriate (similar to those two examples) , they were actually a couple of months before I got my first Speccy although if memory serves correctly I had played JSW previously on someone else's machine a few weeks before then. I got my ZX in Oct-84

 

What is slightly odd is I know we (friends) referred to it as a "bad program bug" and the easy way to tell it was going pear-shaped was the fact Chapel was vacant. We did not realise the trigger/cause for a long time.

 

 

In regard to the S.P notification, it would be very helpful and interesting to see the letter*** they sent to each magazine. Although some publishers (obviously the magazines) are no longer with us or perhaps subject to a take-over or two, given it was probably sent to at a guess half a dozen of them at the time it would seem likely that in some deep dusty dungeon paperwork archive at least one publisher still has a copy of the letter.

 

*** I say letter as I do not think they would telephone this information over, fax is a good option I suppose too but in that case it would be similar to a letter, ie: a bit of paper "somewhere"

 

Perhaps this ought to be considered a missing piece of the puzzle ? :)

[Spider]

I think this might be worth a little bit of digging, perhaps consider it something to "look at" this year. I would be very surprised if the original bit of paper/fax did not still exist somewhere or failing that a scanned digital copy of it for archival purposes.

[andrewbroad]

Who's going to do the digging? Miner Willy?

[Spider]

Who's going to do the digging? Miner Willy?

:lol: