Treasure Hunter

News

The fourth letter (Portuguese) from EBdT’s author Tadeu Curinga da Silva is available at the History section. This letter is answer to the entusiast Matusalém, from Angra dos Reis (RJ), who provided the images and authorized their publication here.
The third letter (Portuguese) from EBdT’s author Tadeu Curinga da Silva is available at the History section, with many curious news about the game development.
EBdT’s website appeared on an article in Electronic Gaming Monthly Brasil (EGM Brasil), Brazil’s leading videogame magazine! Issue 63, on newstands in April 13th, has a special article about the 25th anniversary of Pitfall!, with an exclusive interview with the author David Crane and a link to the website for Treasure Hunter! The article was written by Marcus Garrett and André Forte.
This page was featured on no mínimo Jogatina, by Daniel Galera, one of the top game blogs in Brazil.
The post O Poder da Sugestão, at the Benzaiten blog discusses the simple and intriguing aesthetics in ZX-81 games and EBdT is one of the examples used.
Issue 4 of the electronic magazine Jogos 80, dedicated to classic videogames, published a review of Treasure Hunter written by Murilo Queiroz.

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.

(2002) 16 KB de Alegria, by Murilo Queiroz (Portuguese)
(April 2006) First letter (Portuguese), by Murilo Queiroz
(May 2006) Second Letter (Portuguese), by Tadeu Curinga da Silva
(September 2006) Third letter (Portuguese), by Tadeu Curinga da Silva

Coming soon, more articles about the history of EBdT!

Play the game:

Visit the pages below to see more screenshots!
EightyOne is an extremely accurate ZX-81 emulator, totally free (under GPL). Developed for Windows, is also works in Linux through wine. The emulator can be found here
z81 is an excellent, free emulator for Linux. RPM and DEB package and binary can be found here
PSPZX81 is a ZX-81 emulator for the PSP (PlayStation Portable), also available here.
P file with the original game, for emulators, here.
.P for the version with infinite lives, created by Cleber J. Barranco, inspired by an earlier version by Murilo Queiroz, here.
Original game instructions, as published in Micro Sistemas and recovered by Kelly A. Murta and Eduardo Luccas, here.

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"!