Dunjunz

Dunjunz intro screen #1 Dunjunz intro screen #2
Dunjunz intro screens #1 & 2
Dunjunz intro screen #3 Dunjunz intro screen #4
Dunjunz intro screens #3 & 4
Dunjunz (2018) intro screen #5 Dunjunz (2018) intro screen #6
Dunjunz (2018) intro screens #5 & 6
Dunjunz (2018) intro screen #7

Dunjunz (2018) intro screen #7
Dunjunz game screen #1 Dunjunz game screen #2
Dunjunz game screens #1 & 2
Dunjunz game screen #3 Dunjunz Coco 3 GMC version game screen
Dunjunz game screen # 3& Coco 3 GMC version

Dunjunz is port of a 1987 game originally done by Julian Avis for the BBC Micro computer in the UK. Ciaran Anscomb, the author of the Dragon 32/64 and Coco 1/2 emulator XRoar ported this over to both of those computers in 2017. It is a graphical dungeon crawl for 1 to 4 players simultaneously (the only such game for the Coco 1/2 and Dragon that I know of; the Coco 3 did have Gantelet II), using joysticks and/or keyboard controls. While at first glance it does appear to be based on the arcade smash Gauntlet (with wandering the dungeons, collecting potions, attacking monsters, etc.), unlike Gauntlet, it gives each player their own small view of the dungeon, allowing the players to move independently (Gauntlet requires all players to be on the same screen at all times). The main goal of the game is to recover the Chalice of Binding, while battling monsters, getting treasures, finding keys to open doors, etc. One cool feature in a multi-player scenario is when one of the players dies, they can be resurrected if one of the surviving players finds a cross of resurrection. Keys and doors appear in several colours; it should be noted that keys open very specific doors, so it is possible to have a blue key that for a different blue door than you are trying to open, for example.
The game also features a nice title screen with well done 4-voice music, even including volume swell, vibrato and other effects. It also has user settable difficulty levels, and if you have less than 4 players, you can select which character(s) to play, from Ranger, Magic User, Barbarian and Fighter. Only the two keyboard based characters (Ranger and Magic User) can use the magic potions (partly because Coco 1/2 and Dragons only have 1 joystick button to work with, and it is already used to shoot). A very well done game.

It should be mentioned that an updated version was released a year later (2018) that added a better instruction screen and credits (see intro screenshots 5 to 7 above). If one has 64K, it added the multi-voice title music as well. There was yet a further update from Ciaran for running it on a Coco 3 from a GMC (Game Master Cartridge - which contains a sound chip) (see the last screenshot on the right), which allowed the title music to play with just 32K. This version can be burned onto an EPROM and placed in the Game Master Cartridge. The details, and ROM image to download can be found here. To contact John Linville in order to get a GMC board, you can email him here.

Title: Dunjunz

Author: Ciaran Anscomb (based on BBC Micro original version by Julian Avis)

Publisher: Ciaran Anscomb

Released: 2017

Requires: Color Computer 1/2/3, 32K RAM, cassette or disk, joystick(s) optional.

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