Question clarification by bigbrother on Fri 25 Dec 2009 - 5:53 pm UTC:

David, fair point- my eventual goal, as with my commercial question, is to
actually obtain a copy of it.  Whether that be by the uclue researchers or
with my own detective work once I have the name I left sort of vague, since
I wasn't sure how far you guys would be able to get.

Now, with the Apple game, there are many archives and user groups I can
appeal to for a copy or rom once I have a name.  But we are in a bit of a
Catch 22 - I can't close the question until I verify it is indeed the game
(i.e., you post the name, I pursue it, find it, verify it), but your fear I
assume is that I could do all of those steps and then claim it's not
correct, then close the question!  Well, I have no idea how uclue usually
works, and if my digital "word of honor" is worth anything :), but I assure
you if you post the name here and I can verify with a rom or something
similar, you'd obviously get it marked Answered.

So we have a couple of options:

1. You feel comfortable posting the name and advertisement, I go pursuing
it (or we both do,) and confirm it once a rom is tracked down.

2. You post a version of the ad here with the name itself blurred out, so I
can see the screenshots and description and judge from that.  Then we'd be
in the same conundrum, but at least I'd have more data to go on.

3. I can give you a very in depth description here of one specific creature
I made, and perhaps it'll be enough to help you resolve if your located
program is right or not.  Here goes:  the creature I remember making was
definitely an alien- I want to say it had multiple arms.  Here are some of
the key details: I believe it only had one eye, sort of like the classic
Simpson's aliens: http://www.geekwear.biz/Kodosorkane.jpg, and also like
them, it was wearing a transparent helmet.  In fact, it looked an awful lot
like that one, except with a more oblong head than a tall one.

The landscape was a rocky moon surface, definitely with lots of craters,
with a planet or two up on the sky.  There may have been a moon rover on
there too, not sure.

Ok, that's it.  So tell me what you're comfortable with.  Obviously #1
above would be fastest and most useful, but I understand I have to work
within the confines of what you're comfortable with!

Thanks a lot,
BB

Question clarification by bigbrother on Fri 25 Dec 2009 - 6:33 pm UTC:

David, firstly, thank you very much!  Secondly, I applaud your research
skills for even tracking this down, quite impressive.

Thirdly, I'll go pursue this and report back- to be honest it's the closest
thing I've seen to date, so we may be onto something!  If you really are
bored on this Christmas day and feel like aiding the search, I'd need to
locate a .dsk rom for the Apple II to test it out.  I'm off for the hunt,
but feel free to join in!

-BB

Question clarification by bigbrother on Fri 25 Dec 2009 - 6:48 pm UTC:

By the way, it appears it was released for Atari as well.  If we can find a
ROM for that, it's just as good- I'm platform agnostic with this :)

Question clarification by bigbrother on Sun 27 Dec 2009 - 5:21 am UTC:

I have tracked down a person who has the disk, am waiting for next week to
hear their results from trying it out.  I've also cast out some feelers on
some usenet groups.  I have a feeling it should eventually come up.  I also
haven't had any time to pursue the Atari route (this was all Apple, above),
so if you have some free cycles, maybe that will pan out.

Lastly, have we considered that it might not be it?  Or in your experience,
is it better to pursue this path to its end before we go trying others?

Question clarification by bigbrother on Sun 27 Dec 2009 - 8:02 pm UTC:

Thank you David, to you too!

Question clarification by bigbrother on Mon 28 Dec 2009 - 6:43 am UTC:

Bluelightnin, in addition to not being helpful in the least, your comment
is uninformed for so many reasons.  Firstly, you only finally pay with this
service when the question is answered, so nothing has been paid.  Secondly,
the question has yet to be resolved, so clearly, I couldn't have done this
"something" by myself or it would have been closed already, and thirdly,
David tracked down the name Jeepers Creatures for me and possibly others,
none of which I was able to get on my own.  So please, hush.

Question clarification by bigbrother on Mon 28 Dec 2009 - 6:55 pm UTC:

David, believe me, I know!  PS Companion was always a top candidate when I
first started out.  But I can show you something: check out the Asimov
archive here:

ftp://ftp.apple.asimov.net/pub/apple_II/images/graphics/printshop/

There are multiple copies of it, and I've tried them all- they have a very
limited selection of creature parts (none of the ones I remember), and no
real way to use backgrounds.  If you need a good emulator to run these, try
this:

http://applewin.berlios.de/

Close, but no cigar.  The only small option we may have is, there's a print
shop companion disk 2 in there, which I haven't been able to figure out how
to load using AppleWin- it's definitely meant to be run with a disk in
drive 1, and it in drive 2, but I haven't gotten it going yet.  So that's
one more avenue to pursue.

Question clarification by bigbrother on Mon 28 Dec 2009 - 7:47 pm UTC:

I hear you.  At first glance, it does seem like there are a dizzying array,
but when you drill down, you realize there aren't that many options:

1. Almost 100% certain it could not have been released after 1987.
2. Was for the original Apple II, not the II GS or any later models.
3. That asimov archive seems to have nearly all the ones that fall under
these criteria.  And when you check them out, you realize almost none had
anything approaching a creature creator, and the only one that did I've
tried extensively.
4. If you google or just research on creature creation and print shop,
companion is the only one that comes up.

Anyway, don't mean to dissuade you, just indicating it's not as wide an
option as might appear!!

Question clarification by bigbrother on Mon 28 Dec 2009 - 7:52 pm UTC:

Also, though I haven't tried this yet, a friendly call to Broderbund (or
whoever owns them now) and trying to drill down to someone with a sense of
history for their products might yield something (?)