FFPlaza.com Multimedia: Questprobe

Multimedia: Questprobe

Scott Adams (the programmer, not the cartoonist) helped develop the adventure game market in the late 1970s. His company, Adventure International, produced several text-based games that were widely popular on several computer platforms. Marvel eventually licensed Spider-Man, Hulk, Human Torch, and Thing to AI for series of games collectively called Questprobe. Number 3 featured Ben and Johnny. Although most systems today will not normally run these older games, some people have developed emulators to work on different systems.

Macintosh Directions: Load MacSpectacle. The file is a self-extracting archive that includes the data file as well as the emulator. Simply double-click on "q3human.z80" to launch the game.

JPP Directions (There may be a simpler way to do this; I'm not a Windows expert by any stretch of the imagination.): Unzip and load the data file and JPP onto your root directory. Open "jpp.cfg" using any text editor and add "c:" (minus the quotes) immediately before every instance you see "\jpp". Exit Windows to the DOS shell and open the JPP directory. Type "SPCONV Q3HUMAN.Z80 .SNA" to convert the data file. Return to Windows and launch the Program Manager. Drag "q3human.sna" onto "jpp.exe" to launch the program.

Sinclair ZX (Again, there may be a simpler way to do this.): After unzipping all the files, open "z80.ini" to reconfigure the emulator for your specific machine. For the PC I used to test this, I had to use the codes -xs, -xa, -xt, and -xu. You may also to change the memory allocation for "z80.pif" using your PIF Editor. I still didn't have enough memory to run the program until I quit to the DOS shell where I typed "Z80 Q3QSTPRB.Z80" to launch the program.

Data File - This is the raw data file of the game itself. You'll need a copy of this in order to play.
Mac Spectacle 1.5.5 - This ZX Spectrum emulator was written by Guenter Woigk. It requires System 7, a 68020+ or PowerPC, Color QuickDraw, and QuickTime. It includes the games Questprobe #3, Zythum and Tetris.
JPP 1.0 - This emulates a Sinclair Spectrum 48k Z80-based computer on any PC with at least a 386 processor and VGA graphics. It was written by Arnt Gulbrandsen. (14 other games are included.)
Sinclair ZX Spectrum Emulator 3.05 - This emulates a ZX Spectrum 48k model 2 or 3 and Spectrum 128k on any PC with 640k base memory or EMS. Written by Gerton A. Lunter.
Game Hints - These are game hints written by David Lodge. They are coded with Javascript so you cannot accidentally read all of the hints at once.