The Amazing Amateur Amiga Adventure Quest

A Brief History

In the 1990s, the Amiga was king of the home computer market, and one of it's strengths was the wealth of freely available software written by bedroom programmers, distributed throughout the Public Domain. Amiga users would request a catalogue disk from any of the hundreds of Public Domain software libraries, which contained updated listings of the software they carried. Anyone could submit to the Public Domain, and the houses were all non-profit set-ups. The price per disk was typically £2 in the early days, then £1 as standard, and by 1995 several large set-ups would offer for as little as 50p.

In the early '90s, Steve Bye set up F1 Licenceware to allow the more talented to publish their semi-commercial grade software for a nominal fee. Software would often span multiple disks and would typically cost between £3.99 and £6.99 depending on the number of disks (1-4).

In 1999, Andy Kellett (owner of Mushroom PD) bought out F1 Licenceware and 5th Dimension Licenceware to create F1 Software. F1 Licenceware titles are still owned by Andy, but distribution ceased shortly after the buy-out.

A number of high-quality amateur graphic adventures were exclusively released through F1 Licenceware, most notably the "Relics of Deldroneye" series by Lee Bamber. As the F1 Licenceware titles were still copyrighted and had associated legal rights, they were not legally available from anyone other than F1.

The quest of burns flipper

An Amiga enthusiast since I got my first A1200 in 1993, the first games I played were Monkey Island 2 and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. I instantly found the 'graphic adventure' genre was for me, and over the next few years bought and collected every graphic adventure I could find. I first started collecting PD in 1995, and soon discovered F1 and the first "Relics of Deldroneye" game. When I started University in 1997 I took my Amiga with me, and now had access to the Aminet - the largest collection of free software in the world - and with it, a host of new graphic adventures.

Since my Amiga went into the attic in 2000, I've been using an Amiga emulator on my PC. In 2001 I discovered the forums of adventuregamers.com, a community of people who shared my passion for adventure games, and in 2004 I started visiting the 'Underground' section of the site, dedicated to amateur adventures.

adventuregamers.com is predominantly PC-based - who owns an Amiga nowadays? - so I decided to give back to the community by going on a quest to track down the old F1 Licenceware titles, and make them legally and freely available for all. It involved tracing the authors of games 10 years old, many e-mails and hunting around obscure corners of the internet, but finally...

I found Lee Bamber at thegamecreators.com, now a professional game creator.

I found Ben Bosco, thanks to the Internet Way Back Machine.

I found Arron Hawke, using good old pen and paper.

I found Andy Kellett, now living in the US.

I found Jasper Byrne thanks to Google, now the professional musician "Sonic".

The final results

• • 12 March 2005: Lee Bamber revokes copyright and gives me permission to freely distribute the "Relics of Deldroneye" series.

  • 15 March 2005: Ben Bosco revokes copyright and gives me permission to freely distribute the "World of Magic" series.

  • 26 March 2005: Arron Hawke revokes copyright and gives me permission to freely distribute "The Eire Raising Adventures of Seamus O'Mally".

  • 07 April 2005: Andy Kellett, owner of F1 Software, gives me permission to freely distribute the games free from copyright, as long as I have permission from the games' authors.

  • 21 January 2007: Jasper Byrne revokes copyright and gives me permission to freely distribute "Keith's Quest".

In September 2005 (and the last in January 2007), the games were uploaded onto the Aminet for the world to enjoy.

In May 2009, I contacted Andy again to get the original master disk versions for Relics 1.5 and 2 for the aminet...and he kindly scanned a PDF of the full F1 Licenceware catalogue for me, as well as starting a project to upload the entire F1 Licenceware collection disks to his site!

Mission accomplished!

Download the games

Download the F1 Licenceware graphic adventures

...and you'll need...

WinUAE - the Amiga Emulator

AIAB - Amiga In A Box - a pre-configured Amiga!