— On 11/10/06 11:16 PM, space aliens may have forced Steve M. to write:
Hi Chris,
I wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed Wrath of Denethenor. It was my favorite game for the Apple IIe. I got the IIe when I was in 7th grade, more than 18 years ago. I played it for hours (until the wee hours) and eventually finished it. I really had a lot of fun with it.
I have a few confessions to make though….I remember figuring out that I could cheat the towns by using a “anger management disk” when leaving a town or social area after attacking and robbing them. If I swapped the floppy right before exiting the town, the disk would store their anger and tempers towards my character and when re-entering the town, I would insert my all is good “clean” disk…and they would be happy to see me. Invariably I would just rob them again, which didn’t always seem fair…and they would be none the wiser the next time. I racked up a lot of resources that way. I felt pretty proud of myself that I’d figured that one out.
One more thing, I didn’t pay for the game L I downloaded it from some AE/Elite board on my 1200 baud modem at midnight some school night no doubt when it was late enough that I could use the phone like for multiple hours for downloading. Squinty O’ Toole’s Elite BBS, or something similar. How times have changed with the Internet. I was in 7th grade I think… How much was the game in the store? I’d like to pay you for it now. Let me know and I’ll paypal you the cost. Seriously J
It was cool to find you on the internet as the creator, and learn that you were just out of high school programming the game. I guess I assumed it was created by a big team of programmers from Sierra J I got into programming the IIe in high school, and eventually it led me into the IT industry. Now I operate a data recovery lab in the Bay Area. But, my initial passion and technology origins came from those days in the 80’s working and playing with the IIe. A lot of those hours were spent playing Wrath.
A few years back I downloaded an emulator for my PC so I could load up some of those games. Wrath was one of then. It’s funny that so many of the games you can find to download are the cracked versions with the pirates’ logos on the opening screens. Probably less funny to you now, especially being the creator on the other side back then. But, it was cool nonetheless to take a trip down memory lane. It’s just one of those core, favorite adventure gaming memories that I have.
Anyway,
Just wanted to say a big THANK YOU! to the guy who wrote Wrath of Denethenor!
Take care,
Steve
Hi Steve,
Thanks for writing and I’m happy to hear how much you enjoyed the Wrath. Yeah, it was just me and a friend who created and implemented the entire game, though I got a few other friends to playtest it.
Heh, if you *had* bought the game, you would’ve seen a little message from me talking about the high purchase price of games (at least for those of us still going to school). I talked about how Sierra was willing to try a little experiment with my game by selling it for half the usual price without any copy protection and I of course was asking people not to copy it. Oh well. Yeah, I heard it was scattered over the usual bulletin boards. It was irritating that these guys put the usual “cracked by so-and-so” on it even though it was never protected. Of course, I wonder now what Sierra’s real motives were — they barely did anything to promote the game. It was cool to see it on the shelf of a local game store though!
Anyway, thanks again and don’t worry about paying for it now. That water has long gone under the bridge! Besides, I had a number of games that I copied in high school too before I started expecting people to buy my software. If you’re feeling guilty, just make sure you’ve paid for the music and software you use today! (Heh, especially if it’s FileMaker — what I’ve been working on since I graduated from school!)
Cheers,
Chris
Hi Chris,
Sorry to hear Sierra didn’t promote it much. That’s interesting as I remember that I sort of stumbled upon it at the time as a bit of an obscurity, not having heard of it before, and DL’d it and ended up really digging it a lot. Not that I was the gaming aficionado at the time, but there wasn’t a lot out there so it was easier to stay up on most of the latest offerings. I can also remember that not many of my friends knew about it. It was probably the first graphic RPG I can remember really getting into. Good story and style. Low and behold, a quick search reveals that I am not the only reminiscing fan. This copy is going for more than Sierra was selling it for, I bet. Looks like a collectors item being bid on by hardcore “wrath-heads” — hehe
So can I ask what your influences were for the creation of the storyline? Were you a Tolkien fan?
Congrats on being with Filemaker for such a long time, that is quite an accomplishment these days. You must seriously know your databases Chris.
Take care,
Steve