Introduction

Destiny Hunter (DH) is a story-adventure game developed to honor the original 8-bit Personal Computer: the Commodore PET.  The story is told through a sequence of STAGES that contain CHALLENGES.  The theme of the story involves hunting with a bow within a dream.  In being a dream-story, the CHALLENGES take on the form of mythical creatures.  

In tribute to 8-bit computing, you will see “8” in various places: eight stages, eight chimes, eight directions of firing, the 8×8 perfect-taijitu in STAGE 4, the 8 CHALLENGES in STAGE 6, etc. DH demonstrate the capability that these early Personal Computer devices had “out of the box” relative to that year of release: 1977, marking the beginnings of a home-entertainment experience that did not exist prior to that time. 

The primary technical constraints for DH were decided to be as follows:

(1) be loadable from a tape cassette,
(2) use no more than 32K RAM,
(3) operate at 40×25 resolution, and
(4) require no specialized socket ROM or external support

DH has met all of these constraints, so that it can function in the online Commodore PET 2001 emulator, or also be experienced in the authentic original 1977 fashion: loaded from a cassette tape on a physical Commodore PET machine.

DH is an “interactive experience” that the new media of software introduced to the world. Nothing like this experience existed Before Computers, it was genuinely a new kind of media (with the 1962 Spacewar program being a the original Proof of Concept, then needing about another 15 years to become “domesticated” into the home/office environment at a practical consumer price below $1000).

---

NEXT: Character Creation