How the Wavemakers "Masters" Update Come About
By Paul Thacker
March 10, 2007

I suppose [that the archiving of the Wavemakers "Masters"] actually all started 
when Adam Trionfo first interviewed Mike Peace for Bally Alley, and Mike 
released his programs to the public domain and mentioned still having the master 
tapes.  Over the next few years various programs were archived, including many 
games by WaveMakers.  Then I got involved with sorting through previously 
recorded tapes and archiving new tapes as well.  At this point, we had a pretty 
good WaveMakers collection, but there were still a lot of gaps, with no obvious 
way to get the missing tapes.

Then in March 2006, Adam took the initiative of e-mailing Mike again to point 
out some recently uploaded material and ask about borrowing the master tapes for 
archiving, and suggested that I talk to Mike about making arrangements.  There 
was some difficulty with Mike not getting our e-mails, but with the help of 
contact information on his music site I eventually got a dialog going and he 
agreed to loan me the tapes.

So, in July 2006 I got a box of 20 cassettes, mostly labeled by tape number.  By 
this point I was well acquainted with the ways of Astrocade tape archiving, but 
it was still a lot to deal with.  And even though we already had some programs, 
I decided to go ahead and archive everything since some programs have multiple 
versions.

So, over the next few months I worked a bit at a time on archiving all the 
tapes.  First, I would record a tape onto my computer as a .wav file.  Then, by 
listening and looking at the waveform, I could tell a bit about the 
organization, such as what parts were 2000 baud and 300 baud.  The 2000 baud 
sections I processed with Ballybin and then tested on my Astrocade.  The 300 
baud sections I loaded directly from the raw data.  Sometimes, something didn't 
quite work and I'd make another recording and try again.

For the most part, this worked well, but the biggest frustrations were of course 
when I couldn't get something to work correctly.  We still don't have a working 
300 baud version of Flying Ace, for instance, and while the 300 and 2000 baud 
versions of programs tend to play the same, they aren't always identical.  In 
particular, the BASIC code for the 300 baud Flying Ace isn't the same.  I also 
had trouble with the programs with huge numbers of loads--Whiz Quiz and 
Character Analysis.  I started to process and test the 2000 baud version of Whiz 
Quiz one load at a time, but was almost glad to realize that some just didn't 
work, and decided that the data we'd previously gotten from Mike White would 
have to suffice.  I did test every question from Mike White's version to ensure 
it had been archived correctly, and rearranged the data into its original 
format.  This got somewhat annoying after awhile, but did undoubtedly increase 
my knowledge of 1970's TV shows. :-)

It was already largely known what WaveMakers programs had been made.  I was 
hoping I might find some previously unknown prototype game or something, but 
that didn't happen.  Really the only unexpected program was a promotion for 
Castle Of Horror found on the Obstacle Course Tournament tape.  I also hadn't 
realized that the 300 baud version of Whiz Quiz had different questions than the 
2000 baud version.  Normally there isn't much reason to play the 300 baud 
version of program available in 2000 baud format (though it's good to archive 
for completeness), but this is an exception.  This process also answered my 
questions about the different versions of Lookout For The Bull!  It turns out 
that Lookout For The Bull! II is essentially the same game, but with simpler 
graphics and presumably more difficult.  I actually couldn't tell much 
difference, but maybe you need to advance to the later levels.

I've sent Mike Peace a few notes to keep track of my progress, but that's really 
been our only interaction.  I have asked about any instructions and such he 
might have, so maybe there will be more archiving to come.  Already we have 
quite a good WaveMakers collection ready to go on-line.  I'm always glad to see 
tape archiving get to the point where the programs for a company are thoroughly 
archived, rather than just a few scattered games being saved.  This happened 
previously with Esoterica, and I hope it will happen again in the future. (Any 
more L&M games out there?)

While archiving these programs was definitely a lot of work, I'm glad I did it.  
Not only have I helped preserve a part of videogame history, I got to play some 
cool games along the way.  As simple as it is, I got lots of practice on 
Obstacle Course Tournament, in addition to getting more experience with the 
games that had already been archived.  I hope that once everything's on-line, 
everyone tries out some programs.  What's your favorite WaveMakers game?  I say 
of the newly archived ones, Obstacle Course Tournament, and overall, Tomb 
Pirates.

END OF ARTICLE