Conan and the Magic Diamond!

Crom! reader and our good pal Marek sent me this link to a computer game from 1991 by the name of Conan I – Conan a Magicke Diamanty (Conan and the Magic Diamond).  Since I had never heard of it, I simply had to investigate further!

Turns out that it was pubished by UV Software in Slovakia, and built to run on the ZX Spectrum 48K.  Wait...what exactly is a ZX Spectrum?

We’ll I’m pretty old school when it comes to PC’s and even I have never seen one of these beasts first hand, although it’s a hell of a lot more powerful than my first computer.

The Spectrum is a home computer first released in 1982 by Sinclair Research Ltd, with origins in the UK.  I’m not going to go into all the gory details…if you’re interested you can figure that out for yourself.

Back to the Conan game.  Hmm…a text adventure…Zork flashback, Slovak style!

So I download the game (one Conan1.tap.zip), unzip it, and I’ve got myself a .tap file.  At the same time, I follow the link over to the “Tipshop” and download a recording of the game being completed (since my Slovakian is not so good),  and discover that this recording is viewable on an RZX-capable emulator!?  

OK, I’ve got me a .tap file and a .rzx file, now what in Crom’s name am I supposed to do with these?

Well apparently I’ll be needing an emulator to to care of this monkey business, which leads me to Spectaculator 8.0, one of many readily available ZX Spectrum emulators. Download. Installed.  Check and mate.

File – Open – Conan.tap (the tap is short for tape by the way – surely you remember what a cassette tape looks like) and voila, it’s loading!

To share what I experienced (hell yeah I played this bad boy), I made a low grade video and upped it to youtube…mostly what's in the video is the recording of the game being completed by someone else, as I didn't want to embarrass myself as I floundered around heading východ and západ, and followed that up with a pre truhlu and the occasional zob krabicu!

I know...nothing special for you whippersnappers but for an old school gamer like myself, it was a blast from the past!  All of Cimmeria bows down to you Marek!