Parker Brothers planned to release a range of ROM cartridge titles for the ZX Interface 2. These were:
- Popeye
- Q*Bert
- Gyruss
- Star Wars - The Arcade Game
- Return of the Jedi - Death Star Battle
- Loco Motion
- Montezuma's Revenge
The release of the games was planned for the middle of 1984 with a price tag rumoured to be around £19.95.
To promote the games, a machine called a Comparitor was planned to be used in stores. The machine was to
contain copies of all the games and by simple selection of a number, potential buyers would be able to try any of
them out. Unfortunately, Parker Brothers decided to pull out of the video games market and therefore the releases never happened.
However, the games Panama Joe (renamed from Montezuma's Revenge for copyright reasons) and Return of the Jedi - Death Star Battle
did get released in cassette format on the Sinclair label in 1984 (reference numbers 4038 and 4039 respectively).
All of the games were being created for Parker Brothers by developer
Amazon Systems.
The games were developed using ICL PCs running the CP/M operating system and outputting via RS232 to an in-house built Interface 2 emulator.
Out of all the games, Amazon Systems owns the copyright for the game Loco Motion.
The magazine Your Spectrum twice reported the planned release of five of the Parker Brothers ROM cartridge games.
First in issue 4 (June 1984) stating a provisional release date of June/July 1984, and then in issue 7 (September 1984) stating a planned release date of October 1984.
The five games named were Popeye, Q*Bert, Gyruss, Star Wars - The Arcade Game and Return of the Jedi - Death Star Battle.
Prototype versions of the Parker Brothers titles were first made available on website
TZX Vault. They can also be downloaded below.
The games Popeye, Q*Bert, Return of the Jedi - Death Star Battle and Montezuma's Revenge fit within just 8K ROM, where as the other games occupy 16K ROM. All of the games require 48K of RAM.
The TZX Vault website lists two prototype versions for both Montezuma's Revenge and Star Wars - The Arcade Game. A comparison of the two versions of Montezuma's Revenge show that there are significant
differences. However, a comparion of the two versions of Star Wars - The Arcade Game show that they differ only by the last 990 bytes in prototype 1 (addresses $3C22-$3FFF). These bytes are identical to those
situated at $2C22 and are redundant remains from a previous build. The two versions of therefore technically equivalent and so only the cleaner build is presented below for download.
The games require 48K of RAM.
Screenshots from the games are shown below.
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| Popeye - Title Screen | | Popeye - Game Screen |
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| Q*Bert - Title Screen | | Q*Bert - Game Screen |
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| Gyruss - Title Screen | | Gyruss - Game Screen |
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| Star Wars - Title Screen | | Star Wars - Game Screen |
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| Return of the Jedi: Death Star Battle - Title Screen | | Return of the Jedi: Death Star Battle - Game Screen |
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| Loco Motion - Title Screen | | Loco Motion - Game Screen |
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| Montezuma's Revenge - Title Screen | | Montezuma's Revenge - Game Screen |
| Downloads |
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