Moonstone!!!!!!!

[Harrison]

Here is something you never see! A complete boxed copy of Monestone: A Hard Days Knight.

It shows how rare this is because the auction is already up to £66 and it still has 3 days to go!

amiga game MOONSTONE a hard days knight plus POSTER

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...m=160175385360

This is the first time I've seen the complete package including the map. One picture shows 3 floppy disks with the game, but I'm sure the game only comes on one disk. Anyone got any ideas what is on the other two?

[Teho]

No, the game definitely came on three disks. The intro was on the first and the game was on the remaining two. I still remember when you could switch the first disk for one of the others, pre-empting the game asking you to if you only had two drives. Which most did at the time I think. Shows how much I used to play this. Would love to have the original, but not for that price!

[Harrison]

Same here. It's one Amiga game I would definitely like to own the original of, but that price is way too high. However, it is good to see some Amiga items actually commanding a good price and lots of interest.

Oh and I just checked. My pirate copy of the game is only on one disk. Some sort of packer must have been used. I remember that being the case with a lot of games, where the cracking groups would squeeze a game down to a single disk release. And many even had more than one game on a single disk, which was always a great discovery when you booted up the game disk and discovered more games included. That was always great.

[Teho]

Maybe, there were many such "one-disk" versions of games coming from the cracking groups. Handy for the mail-swappers, but usually not so good for the game's quality. They sometimes removed a lot from the games in order to fit the games on one disk, the intro normally being the first thing to go. If that wasn't enough, the larger audio-tracks went, and the bigger audio-samples such as the few speech-samples some games contained. They would also take away the bigger graphics, such as game over and loading-screens. Anything to make it fit on one disk and actually run. Personally I was annoyed when I came across these versions, I'd rather have the full game myself. Even though it was usually just the intro that was missing.

But often you didn't even know that you weren't seeing the complete game as the clue telling you would be far into the crack-intro's scrolltext, which went unread by most. There were several such games I played that I've only learned was incomplete much later, such as Nuclear Wars for example. Never knew that one had an intro before seeing it had several disks in the tosec set a few years back. Same with Superfrog. Though I learned that an intro existed fairly early, I never actually got to see it before coming across the tosec set for the first time.

[Harrison]

Very true, but I remember the one disk version of MoonStone I have does play the intro. So either something else is missing/ripped, or they did a great job squeezing the files down.

[Cortona]

Moonstone complete original just went for £95.00 on ebay. As the kids say these days: WTF???

I never had (or knew about) this game, so don't know what all the fuss is about. Is it by MicroIllusions? Why is it so rare?

[Harrison]

If you haven't ever played Moonstone then nearly ever Amiga fan will highly recommend it to you. It's one of the best Amiga games ever released and is a must play.

The thing with Moonstone is that hardly anyone ever saw an original copy. Instead everyone seems to somehow of got hold of a pirate copy. The problem with that was that it was buggy and would normally crash right at the end of the game before you could complete it.

To see what the game is all about take a look at the entry in our games database at http://www.classicamiga.com/content/view/2944/62/

We have screenshots and a longplay video showing the whole game from beginning to end. But if you haven't ever played it please don't watch the video before you do, as it would be ruining a great experience.