| Level 9 Computing |
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Level 9 was a British computer Adventure Game company who produced some of the most advanced games of the 1980s. Founded in 1981 by Michael, Nicholas and Pete Austin, the company produced about 20 games for BBC Micro , Nascom , ZX Spectrum , Commodore 64 , Oric , Atari , Lynx 48k , RML 380Z , Amstrad CPC , MSX , Amiga , Apple II , Memotech MTX , and Enterprise until the commercial declining market of the text adventure genre forced their closure in June 1991 . Level 9's first program was an extension to Nascom BASIC called ''Extension Basic''. The first game, also for the Nascom, was called ''Fantasy'' and was similar to '' Valhalla '', but with no graphics. Other products from that era was ''Missile Defence'', ''Bomber'' and ''Space Invasion'' — all for the Nascom. The tapes were duplicated and sent out by mail order by the brothers based on orders generated by the Classified Advertisements they ran in the '' Computing Today '' magazine. They were based at Hughenden Road, High Wycombe, Bucks. HP13 5PG before moving to the West Country. A-CODE Level 9 devised their own Interpretation Language , A-code, around 1979. It was very memory efficient, mainly due to the advanced text Compression routines which could compress texts to about 50%. The game data, which were identical for all platforms, were incorporated into the executable file for specific machines, together with the interpreter part. A-code underwent a couple of revisions: there are three distinct versions in all, plus a couple of extensions which form new A-code versions of their own. The first game to use this system was '' Colossal Adventure '', a faithful conversion of ''Adventure'' by Will Crowther and Don Woods , yet with an added 70 extra locations to the end game. This game was followed up by two sequels, ''Adventure Quest'' and ''Dungeon Adventure'', both of which featured the Demon Lord Agaliarept . The three titles became known as the ''Middle-earth'' trilogy, with a reference in the instructions to ''Dungeon Adventure'' to the city of Minas Tirith , which features in J. R. R. Tolkien 's '' The Lord Of The Rings ''. When enhanced versions of the three games were published by Rainbird Software , the reference to Middle-earth was quietly deleted; the series became known as ''Jewels of Darkness''; and Minas Tirith became Valaii. '' Snowball '' was the first adventure in the ''Silicon Dreams'' trilogy, followed by '' Return To Eden '' and '' The Worm In Paradise ''. ''Red Moon'' and its sequel ''The Price of Magik'' were bundled together with ''Lords of Time'' by Mandarin Software to create yet another trilogy: ''Time and Magik''. SOFTOGRAPHY
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