Knightmare on Teletext - Recoveries!

[NeilJones]

Hello to the three of four people still here who know who I am.

As you may be aware there were a few Knightmare games on some old medium called Teletext, which was all the rage in the 1980s and 1990s, sort of like retro one-way internet if you like.

Anyway all your old TV recordings harbour a secret - Oracle/Teletext and Ceefax. Because this was transmitted as part of the picture your video will have recorded this without you even knowing about it. If you watch an old TV recording on a teletext capable TV (via coaxial cable or SCART, not HDMI) and press the text button, you may (TV permitting) be able to see a jumble of data depending on the quality of the recording, the original TV signal and what state the tape/video player is now in.

Recent advances in computer power, technology and software now make it possible to recover this data and rebuild the bulk of the pages, even from standard play VHS tapes. Not 100% perfect but its usable and you get the idea.

The Teletext Knightmare game that was "on air" in December 1993 is archived (probably incompletely) here:
http://al.robotfuzz.com/~al/teletext/c4 ... 22-0042.5/

This is simply nothing more than a page dump if you like - just click a page to open it. The Hex pages (with a letter in the page numbers - 10A for example and 1FF) have the fragments of this particular game. The running order of how this was supposed to flow I don't know, but it started on page 459 and temporarily replaced the Bamboozle game. There was obviously more than one game - page 458 suggests a new game was going to replace this one.

Check out the retro Treguard picture on page 15C

[avenueroad]

Yes, I was the first who made a mentioning of Knightmare on Teletext some time ago. I remember that Mr Bamboozle was 'taking a break' over the 1993 Christmas period.

[Drassil]

Hi, Neil. I thought of you yesterday upon learning that Sir Patrick Stewart once appeared in a film called Joby.

Thank you so much for letting us know about this. My first contact with Knightmare.com was an email exchange with Nic/Illusion about the Knightmare Teletext games. I knew there were skilled people doing recovery work but I didn't want to get my hopes up about the Knightmare adventures. This really is a dream come true. If you'd like to submit this news as an article to go on the website, please do. It'll reach a wider audience that way.

It's good to have confirmation that at least one of the adventures was written by Michael Cule a.k.a. Brother Mace.

[Canadanne]

Fantastic! I've been following Jason Robertson's Teletext recoveries, but he has yet to find anything from '93. I vaguely remember these Knightmare-themed Bamboozle replacements but not in any detail, so it's great to see one again after all this time!

[Pooka]

Great find, Neil! And yes, I love the retro Treguard pic - there's a bald Hordriss one lurking around too!

Now to try and play through these...

[Canadanne]

Now to try and play through these...

I don't know whether there are any pages missing and I'm only guessing at the order, but the quest seems to work pretty well if you try it like this:

Start at page 459

From page 459, 'Next' (red button) takes you to page 10A

From page 10A, 'Next' (red button) takes you to page 10B

From page 10B,
-- 'Bunwit' (red button) takes you to page 10C
-- 'Titbit' (green button) takes you to page 10C
-- 'Innuit' (yellow button) takes you to page 10F
-- 'Chuzzlewit' (blue button) takes you to page 10C

From page 10C, 'Next' (red button) takes you to page 10D

From page 10D, 'Next' (red button) takes you to page 10E

From page 10F, 'Next' (red button) takes you to page 11A

From page 11A,
-- 'Go in' (red button) takes you to page 11C
-- 'Keep moving' (green button) takes you to page 14B

From page 11B, 'Next' (red button) takes you to page 10E

From page 11C,
-- 'The Sack' (red button) takes you to page 12A
-- 'Showshoes' (green button) takes you to page 11F
-- 'Fur Coat' (yellow button) takes you to page 11D

From page 11D,
-- 'The High Road' (red button) takes you to page 11E
-- 'The Low Road' (green button) takes you to page 11B

From page 11E, 'Next' (red button) takes you to page 10E

From page 11F,
-- 'The High Road' (red button) takes you to page 12B
-- 'The Low Road' (green button) takes you to page 12C

From page 12A,
-- 'The High Road' (red button) takes you to page 12D
-- 'The Low Road' (green button) takes you to page 12E

From page 12B,
-- 'Run Away' (red button) takes you to page 12F
-- 'Fight the Bear' (green button) takes you to page 12F

From page 12C, 'Next' (red button) takes you to page 13A

From page 12D, 'Next' (red button) takes you to page 13A

From page 12E, 'Next' (red button) takes you to page 10E

From page 12F, 'Next' (red button) takes you to page 10E

From page 13A,
-- 'Turn Back' (red button) takes you to page 10D
-- 'Press on' (green button) takes you to page 13B
-- 'Cast the HEAT spell' (yellow button) takes you to page 13C

From page 13B, 'Next' (red button) takes you to page 13D

From page 13C, 'Next' (red button) takes you to page 13F

From page 13D,
-- 'Cast your Spell' (red button) takes you to page 14C
-- 'Run Away' (green button) takes you to page 14A
-- 'Attack' (yellow button) takes you to page 14A

From page 13F,
-- 'Cast your own Spell' (red button) takes you to page 13E
-- 'Run Away' (green button) takes you to page 14A
-- 'Attack' (yellow button) takes you to page 14A

From page 14A, 'Next' (red button) takes you to page 14E

From page 14B,
-- 'All Fools' (red button) takes you to page 10E
-- 'Halloween' (green button) takes you to page 10E
-- 'Mid-Winter' (yellow button) takes you to page 10E
-- 'Thursday' (blue button) takes you to page 13A

From page 14C,
-- 'Sorceress' (red button) takes you to page 14D
-- 'Frozen Captive' (green button) takes you to page 15A
-- 'Ice Chandelier' (yellow button) takes you to page 14F

From page 14D, 'Next' (red button) takes you to page 14E

From page 14E, 'Next' (red button) takes you to page 10E

From page 14F, 'Next' (red button) takes you to page 10E

From page 15A, 'Next' (red button) takes you to page 15B

From page 15B, 'Next' (red button) takes you to page 15C

[Picklemyfav]

cccccooooooooooooooooooooolllllllllll

that is awesome.......... >

you could make a knightmare dvd game like what they did with raven..................

.............just an idea

[DuxBellorum]

Yes, I remember this from the time!

Really great to see it again.

I was such a fan of Bamboozle, but to have it replaced with Knightmare was a fantastic thing!

I miss Teletext...

[Drassil]

I'm still hoping that another Knightmare Teletext adventure will be recovered. In the meantime, for anyone who missed it, To The Ice Palace Of Aesandre was recreated as a playable adventure by Paul Kelly at http://www.castleteletext.com/pages/Page%20458.htm

[Canadanne]

Three random pages from a different Knightmare Teletext adventure (January 1994) have been recovered:
http://twitter.com/grim_fandango/status ... 3824464898

[Drassil]

The Teletext Archive (which I know about thanks to Canadanne/Annie) has a recovered Channel 4 page from 25/12/88 promoting the Knightmare Teletext adventure that was to run from 26/12/88 to 2/1/89, based on the first (and back then only) Knightmare gamebook.

Searches of the archive for other relevant words (Treguard, Hordriss) appear to bring up various pages of the Knightmare adventures. However, when I click on them, I get Bamboozle pages instead.

[Canadanne]

I don't remember seeing this page before! (Recovered from 28th May and 12th July 1994.)

[HStorm]

Teletext is being revived online.

https://www.nathanmediaservices.co.uk/teletext-viewer/

Some of it is new, some of it old. I haven't found any of the old KM pages on it so far, but I'm keeping an eye on it.

[Drassil]

I'm still hoping that another Knightmare Teletext adventure will be recovered.

It's happened! There are now two restored (i.e. playable) Knightmare Teletext adventures online:

• To the Ice Palace of Aesandre

• Journey through the Lairsdale

You can play both on Andrew Nile's website here.

[s4t8brett]

That's really incredible, Drassil; thank you for sharing the news!