Mark Szeliga Szolkowski's Blog

I loved Bored of the Rings when I was at school - and it is one of the few games I have ever completed, especially when it comes to adventure games.

I probably stuck at it so long not just because J.R.R. Tolkien's works were very popular at my school at the time, but also because I found the game very funny.

I bought the game, but my Mum chucked all my stuff out years ago so today I had to resort to getting the TZX file from World of Spectrum and trying to get the three parts of the adventure and the bonus "Telextext"-style program out of it. This led to a bug being identified in fuse-util's tape2wav program.

ANYWAY - got it downloaded from my Mac to my "new" Spectrum+ and finished the game with help from The TipShop - sending save games every so often back to my Mac.

The end screen of the game mentions phoning the software house Delta 4, so out of curiosity I found Fergus McNeill's email address and cheekily asked him if there was an automated message! Here is his reply:

I'd forgotten about that. No, not an automated message - in the 1980s that number would have got you through to my desk whereupon I could have lavished congratulatory words upon the caller "live from Delta 4 HQ". Don't recall many people calling though... ;-)

Labels: Bored of the Rings, Fergus McNeill, TipShop, World of Spectrum, WoS