Looking for DOS game 2d helicopter (1991) - Skyrider

[8bitsten]

Hello everyone,

I’m looking for two old DOS Turbo Pascal games written by Simon Zillich in 1991: Skyrider and UPPO (United Peace Protection Organisation).

On his old personal website (archived in the Wayback Machine https://web.archive.org/web/20080403190 ... illich.de/) he wrote:

"... My father worked in the IT industry, and sure enough, after a few months of complaining, I had an Intel 80286 PC with 512KB RAM and an EGA™ graphics card in my study. And with a lot of enthusiasm and patience, I wrote my first two computer games in 1991 using Turbo Pascal: Skyrider and UPPO (United Peace Protection Organisation), which I was able to sell for good money during the PC boom at the time. This financed an Intel 80486™ system, and things continued from there..."

Skyrider is also listed on the DOSBox compatibility list: https://www.dosbox.com/comp_list.php?sh ... 5&letter=S

Note that 486 in 1991 cost around 10.000 DM, so it was pretty success and that means his games weren’t just little freeware uploads — he was really selling them, like proper shareware

His wording: "… die ich … für gutes Geld verkaufen konnte." ("… which I was able to sell for good money …") fits shareware/PD-Verlag business perfectly. In Germany there was a whole network of PD distributors / shareware vendors around 1990–93 (like C’t PD-Service, Markt & Technik, PD-Verlage, Mail-order catalogues).

I personally played Skyrider around 1992-93 on a 5.25″ floppy that contained a collection of many small games. You control tiny sideview helicopter that fled the 2D maze with PC speaker sound.
My memory is that it might have been a CHIP magazine floppy (with a cartoon green frog and red triangle on the cover sleeve???), but it could also have been a DOS-Trend or Disc-EDV-Report (D.E.R.) disk magazine. Possibly something like a “50 Spiele” compilation.

What is known so far:
- Author: Simon Zillich (confirmed via archived website)
- Skyrider confirmed as a DOS game (DOSBox list)
- No download found yet on MyAbandonware, Internet Archive, cd.textfiles, etc.
- Memory: 5.25″ disk full of small games, possibly numbered “50” or with “50 Spiele” on the packaging, green frog picture on the sleeve
- It was programmed in Turbo Pascal with I guess EGAVGA.BGI driver and run most probably in EGA 640x350x16 and was named SKY.EXE or SKYRIDER.EXE.

What I’m looking for:

Anyone who can HELP me find the game.

Has anyone ever come across Skyrider.EXE, SKY.EXE, or UPPO.EXE in their disk collections? Any help would be amazing!

Thanks a lot,
Petr

[mirozoo]

Hi Petr,

it seems that the developer's website is still available.

I couldn't find any download links for the mentioned games spontaneously, but you could simply try to access the following URLs directly:

http://zillich.de/UPPO.zip
http://zillich.de/SKYRIDER.ZIP

Maybe that works...