Treasure Hunter ("Em Busca dos Tesouros")

Title Screen
Instructions
Vines!
Elevator
Crocodiles!

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Introduction

Treasure Hunter ("Em Busca dos Tesouros", "Searching for Treasures" or "In Search of the Treasures" in a literal translation) is a game developed in Brazil, released in 1986 for the Sinclair ZX-81 and its Brazilian clones (TK-82C, TK-83, TK-85 and CP-200S). Inspired by the success of David Crane’s Pitfall, developed for Activision in 1982 and released for the Atari 2600 and other classic videogame consoles and microcomputers, EBdT was written in two years by then teenager Tadeu Curinga da Silva and sold by mail (in either cassette tape format or as printed assembly source code ready to be typed) by the first Brazilian microcomputer magazine, Micro Sistemas.

The game in cassette tape format cost Cz$ 120, equivalent to R$ 40 (approximately $22) when updated to today’s currency. The printed list cost Cz$ 50, which is about R$ 18 ($10) (values updated with the IPC-A index).

EBdT amazes for its graphics (taking into account the huge restrictions of the platform for which it was developed), by its size (the game has 313 different screens and 15 enemies with many movement patterns) and for its ruthless difficulty – which encouraged people to create a version with infinite lives, also available here. Few games on the platform have such a variety of action screens together with such a tight playability and control!

After disappearing for 15 years, a cassette tape with the game was recovered by classic computer collector Kelly A. Murta. The game’s author, Tadeu Curinga da Silva, was located in 2006, and kindly allowed the game to be distributed through the Internet. He also donated the original notebook containing his complete hand-written original assembly code and annotations. The notebook is being scanned in order to be preserved and distributed through this website.

This website will soon feature more details about the game, including letters from the author, instructions for extending the game with new stages and much more! If you want more information, please contact us.

History

Finding "Em Busca dos Tesouros" took many years. Everything started in 2002 when Murilo Queiroz, then living in Europe, wrote a short story about his longing for home, nostalgia, old TV shows and EBdT! This story was published in "Plano-B", a bulletin board for GRUDE, a information service at the Brazilian UFMG (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais). After that the author and Murilo exchanged a few letters which will be published here.

Coming soon, more articles about the history of EBdT!

Play the game:

About the Authors

Tadeu Curinga da Silva, EBdT’s creator, became a Merchant Navy officer and lives in Rio de Janeiro. Besides donating the game source code and allowing its distribution, he also provided a enormous amount of information about the game development, this information will soon be published here.

Murilo Saraiva de Queiroz, a.k.a. muriloq, the author of this website, has a BSc in Computer Science and a MSc in Electrical Engineering and is fascinated by electronic entertainment ever since he was a child. He lives in Belo Horizonte with his wife Cyntia, three cats and a huge pile of videogames and computers, and he spent the last twenty years trying to find the author of "Treasure Hunter"!

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