TWO-FER #26: Datamost Double-Feature

1. Monster Mash / Monster Smash! (The Software Farm/Datamost, 1982-1984)

Written by David Eisler for the Apple II computers, and originally published by The Software Farm in 1982.

Converted for the Atari 8-bit computers by David Eisler, and published by Datamost, Inc. in 1983.

Converted for the Commodore 64 by David Eisler and Mark Riley, and published by Datamost, Inc. in 1984.

2. Mr. Robot and his Robot Factory (Datamost/Comptiq, 1983-1984)

Atari 8-bit version written by Ron Rosen with music by Gary Gilbertson.
Commodore 64 version written by Ron Rosen.
Both the Atari and C64 versions released by Datamost, Inc. in 1983.

Apple II version written by Ron Rosen with Robert "Wolf" McNally, and released by Datamost, Inc. in 1984.

NEC PC-88 conversion by Programmers-3, with title by M. Katuka, and released by Comptiq in 1984.

Fujitsu FM-7 conversion by Programmers-3, and released by Comptiq in 1984.

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INTRODUCTION AND GAME STATUS, PLURAL

Datamost was one of the earlier game publishers that focused on the Apple II, Commodore 64 and Atari 8-bit computers for about four years before going belly-up, and they were based in Chatsworth, California, United States. Although they did produce some rather well-known games for their time, such as the Bilestoad, Ardy the Aardvark, Cohen's Towers, Cosmic Tunnels, Ankh and Polar Pierre, they haven't had their turn properly in the comparison blog so far. So, after my summer holiday and the recent Updates entry, I decided to take two of Datamost's classic games and deal with them in the same entry, since I talked about the possibility of a comparison of Monster Smash in my most recent C64 episode of My Nostalgia Trip Games on FRGCB's YouTube channel. Unfortunately, we're already in a bit of trouble, since there seems to be no readily available image file of the Fujitsu FM-7 version of Mr. Robot and his Robot Factory, and the only gameplay video I found of it anywhere was from twitch.tv, which has been deleted since starting to write this comparison. Hence, the FM-7 version is missing from the accompanying video until I can properly update both this comparison and the video, if I can ever bother to do so.

UPDATES.. not again? (These go to eleven.)

Unfortunately, that seems to be the case once more. Since the last Updates post, which goes all the way back to July 2021, a good deal of new versions for games previously featured on the blog have been released for various platforms. I have been spotting and collecting these items for a few months now, most of them through the irreplaceable Indie Retro News blog, so I thought it a good time to release this entry after getting back from my summer holiday, to have a relatively gentle landing back to reality while starting the blog's eleventh year.