Magic Chris' ASYLUM Pages

Version 0.97 (Dec 09, 2002)
These pages are dedicated to the old computer adventure game ASYLUM and the games related with it.

History

In the year 1980 the software company Med Systems released a game called "Rat's Revenge" for the TRS-80. This game was written entirely in BASIC. The player was a rat and had to find a piece of cheese in a maze before starving. It was one of the first commercial games which used a 3D-graphics of a maze (a long, long time before DOOM! ). Although the maze graphics was drawn "only" with characters, it was really kind of cool in those days. The instructions in the game even explained the more difficult views of the maze for beginners.

In the same year they brought out the two predecessors of Asylum:
"Deathmaze 5000" (by Frank Corr, Jr.) and
"Labyrinth" (by Frank Corr and William Denman).

Both games used almost the same graphics as "Ratīs Revenge" but they had actually items and puzzles (?).
While the only goal of "Deathmaze 5000" was to survive and to get out of the maze, in "Labyrinth" there also was the quest to kill the Minotaur.

In 1981 the first Asylum game (curiosly enough called "Asylum" ;-)) was released for the TRS-80. This Frank Corr / William Denman production had again the 3D-graphics, but there now were lots of items, puzzles and persons to interact with.

The follow-up "Asylum II" (A William Denman production) came out 1982 also for the TRS-80.

In 1985 Asylum II was released as "Asylum" for the Atari 800 and the C64. The mazes and the puzzles were almost identically, but these versions used a scrolling bitmap 3D-graphics for the maze and bitmap graphics for the inmates. These programs were again written by William F. Denman, Jr. and the art was by Michael O. Haire.

Rats Revenge

Some info on this pre-predecessor of ASYLUM will come really soon!

Deathmaze 5000

Labyrinth

This great stuff is from Eric J. Francois (thanks!)

ASYLUM

I finished this game on the Model 1 emulator from Jeff V.

ASYLUM II

I finished this game on the Model 1 emulator from Jeff V.

Since this game is basically the same as the C64 version (which was my first Asylum-experience) the maps and the walkthrough are the same.

ASYLUM (C64)

I finished this game on the Commodore C64 emulator (PC64) from Wolfgang Lorenz.

The author of ASYLUM: William F. Denman, Jr.

a picture of Bill
According to the Giant List of Classic Game Programmers he wrote:
  • ASYLUM (1980???, TRS-80, Med Systems/Screenplay)
  • ASYLUM II (1980???, TRS-80, Med Systems/Screenplay) released in 1984??? for Atari-800 and C64 as ASYLUM
  • Deathmaze 2000 (Apple II)
  • Pogo Joe, with Steven Baumrucker (1984?, C64, Screenplay) Q*Bert-like
  • AcroJet (C64)
  • The Playful Professor

Trivia

Did you know that ...

Credits

Many thanks for their help and infos to Cord Coslor, Matthew Reed, Patrick Kellog and Mike Cross (in order of reply to my request).
Special thanks to Eric J. Francois for his Labyrinth stuff!

These pages were written by Magic Chris (Christian Swoboda) with Homesite 4.0.
If you have anything to contribute to these pages, or some feedback, please mail me at

e9025902@stud2.tuwien.ac.at