Supermassive Black Hole A Star

Author notes

Ep. 43, Page 31

smbhax

on Sept. 30, 2021

Finally figured out that the dungeon crawler I played on the family Commodore 64 computer as a kid was 1983's Gateway to Apshai—took me this long to figure that out because it was a bootleg version my dad came home with (along with a bunch of other suspicious games! no idea where he got them) that called itself "Temple of Apshai"—but Gateway was actually a prequel follow-up to the much more well-known Temple; Temple had come out in 1979, but didn't hit the C64 until the same year as Gateway.

Gateway was blocky and garish, but solid, and you could clunk around and bash things with a sword, what more did one want? Might have been my most played C64 game (and we had "just" that C64 for years while other kids in middle school were getting that hot new NES ; ).

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The original 16" x 6.75" watercolor art for today's new A* page is up for auction on eBay. : )