Ravenskull is a British computer game, of the graphic adventure genre, originally developed by Martin Edmondson & Nicholas Chamberlain for the BBC Micro

BBC Micro

The BBC Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, was a series of microcomputers and associated peripherals designed and built by Acorn Computers for the BBC Computer Literacy Project, operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation...

 and Acorn Electron

Acorn Electron

The Acorn Electron is a budget version of the BBC Micro educational/home computer made by Acorn Computers Ltd. It has 32 kilobytes of RAM, and its ROM includes BBC BASIC along with its operating system....

 and released by Superior Software

Superior Software

Superior Software is a video game publisher. It was established in 1982 by Richard Hanson and John Dyson, two graduates of the University of Leeds, England...

 in 1986. The player may choose from one of four character types - an Adventurer, a Wizard, a Warrior or an Elf - a choice which defines both the graphics for the character's player and the treasure pieces to be collected. The player is tasked with entering Baron Strieg's Castle Ravenskull in order to defend the village of Austberg and retrieve a stolen silver crucifix, which has been split into quarters and found on four different levels of the castle. The game was originally conceived after the authors created a new routine for hardware scrolling - when the player uses a speed scroll, the routine can be seen at full speed. Due to lower hardware specifications, the Acorn Electron version used a much smaller playing window and the speed scrolls were omitted.

Superior released a faithful 32-bit port for the Acorn Archimedes

Acorn Archimedes

The Acorn Archimedes was Acorn Computers Ltd's first general purpose home computer to be based on their own ARM architecture.Using a RISC design with a 32-bit CPU, at its launch in June 1987, the Archimedes was stated as running at 4 MIPS, with a claim of 18 MIPS during tests.The name is commonly...

 on their Play It Again Sam 4 compilation in 1994. This version was not compatible with the Risc PC so a new version was released by ProAction in 1997 on their issue of PIAS 4. A fully revamped PC version was released in 2003 by Superior Interactive

Superior Software

Superior Software is a video game publisher. It was established in 1982 by Richard Hanson and John Dyson, two graduates of the University of Leeds, England...

, the modern publishing label of Superior Software, with new graphics and a significantly larger second set of levels known as Castle Danube. The possibility of a mobile phone port from Masabi was circulated in late May 2002, but it never appeared. More recently, David Bradforth - of ProAction / Alligata - has claimed that a port to Mac OS X is coming soon.

External links

• Ravenskull at Superior Interactive
• See a video of the BBC Micro version of Ravenskull at YouTube