THE HOBBIT / ST

Melbourne House · 1982 · reborn on the Atari ST

The Hobbita native Atari ST port

The text adventure that talked back — its full Inglish parser and restless, living world, rebuilt as a real ST program, now with its own 16-bit Atari ST artwork alongside the faithful Spectrum look.

Get the release See what's inside

A single GEM .PRG. Real TOS or EmuTOS. Floppy or hard drive.

The Hobbit on the Atari ST in ZX Spectrum mode: location 1, a comfortable tunnel-like hall — a line-drawn perspective of the round green door and hall with a wooden chest on a magenta floor, the room text and command console below.

ZX Spectrum mode — location 1, a comfortable tunnel-like hall

Type a command

Faithful to 1982, at the byte.

The world data is extracted from the original v1.2 tape; the engine — parser and character simulation — is reimplemented in portable C. Not a tribute to how it felt. How it actually ran.

> ASK GANDALF ABOUT THE MAP

The whole Inglish parser

Verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, AND / THEN chains, pronouns, and "say to" character orders — reimplemented, not faked.

> WAIT

A world with its own mind

Thorin sings about gold, Gandalf wanders off, the trolls argue. Characters act on their own, turn after turn — the feature that made the game famous.

> LOOK

Drawn the way it was drawn

Each illustration rendered from the original vector display list — line by line, fill by fill, ZX attribute clash and all.

> SAVE

Pick up where you left off

Save and restore to disk — the original's own feature, now a GEMDOS file. Every object, timer and character exactly as you left it.

The Atari ST chapter

Two looks. One game. Both playable now.

Pick your presentation from the Options page — the faithful 1982 Spectrum look, or a full-colour Atari ST mode with new 16-bit artwork for every room. The engine underneath is identical.

The forest path with troll footprints on the Atari ST in ZX Spectrum mode: a green scene of tangled trees with red troll footprints leading up the path, the room text and command console below.
Game mode: ZX Spectrum

The faithful Spectrum look

Exactly as the 1982 game presented itself, running natively on the ST.

  • 256×192 picture, the true ZX bright palette
  • Per-cell attribute clash, faithfully kept
  • The game's own proportional font
  • Rendered from the original vector display lists
The same forest path on the Atari ST in 16-bit art mode: a dark, atmospheric full-colour scene of gnarled trees with firelight glowing through them ahead.
Game mode: Atari ST

Full-colour 16-bit artwork

A hand-made 16-colour illustration for all 79 locations, plus a title screen faithful to the Melbourne House loader.

  • Full-width 16-colour art, drawn for the ST palette
  • An ornate parchment description window in the game's own font
  • Collapse the window to admire the whole picture (Alt+W)
  • Switched live from the Options page — no restart

Where it's going

Playable, faithful, and now in colour.

The engine, the faithful Spectrum experience, and the full-colour Atari ST art mode are all shipping. From here the presentation keeps deepening.

01

Faithful engine & v1.2 world

Parser, living world, puzzles, deaths, scoring, save/restore.

shipping
02

Atari ST 16-bit art mode

Full-colour artwork for all 79 rooms, a parchment description window, and a title screen faithful to the original loader — toggled in Options.

shipping
03

Atari ST system font

An optional native ST font, tighter and sharper across the whole screen.

planned

How to play

Drop it on a drive and go.

A single GEM program with a folder of artwork beside it — on real TOS, EmuTOS, or an emulator such as Hatari or Steem.

The Options page on the Atari ST: Game mode set to Atari ST, with Display mode and Location artwork fixed for that mode, plus Endgame and Text speed settings, and the up/down, left/right and ENTER/ESC key hints.

The Options page — press O on the title, or F12 while playing

Install

Running the game

  • Copy the HOBBIT folder to any TOS drive (floppy or hard disk).
  • It holds HOBBIT.PRG and an IMAGES folder — keep the two together, in any location.
  • Open HOBBIT.PRG from the GEM desktop.
  • On the title screen: ENTER starts, O opens Options, E exits to the desktop.

The IMAGES folder holds the 16-bit artwork; without it the game still runs in ZX Spectrum mode.

Controls

Playing & switching looks

  • Type Inglish commands and press ENTER — e.g. OPEN THE DOOR, ASK GANDALF ABOUT THE MAP.
  • Options — O on the title, or F12 in play. Choose Game mode: ZX Spectrum / Atari ST, text speed, and more.
  • Hide / show the picture window — Alt+W or Ctrl+W (or type WINDOW), in Atari ST mode.
  • SAVE / LOAD to disk; QUIT returns to the title so you can change modes; EXIT leaves to the desktop.

Get it

Version 0.1 is out now.

Grab a ready-to-run bundle from the Releases page — a hard-disk ZIP with all 79 rooms of artwork, or the double-density floppy set for a Gotek or real disks.

Download v0.1 How to play

This is the first public release (v0.1) — expect a few rough edges, and please report anything you hit.