Belegost (video game)

Belegost
Title screen of the game, which includes the three developers that make up the Golden Triangle collective.
Programmer(s)	František Fuka
Platform(s)	ZX Spectrum
Release	1989
Genre(s)	Text adventure

Belegost is a 1989 Czech text-based video game for the Sinclair ZX spectrum and Atari ST. The game was authored by Golden Triangle, a development trio made up of Franz Fuk (Fuxoft), Miroslav Fideller (Cybexlab) and Tomáš Rylka (TRC), who would later go on to make Jet-Story and Tetris 2. The music was composed by František Fuka.^[1] English versions were later made for the NeXTSTEP and Psion, while in 2010 a remixed version was created for iOS devices in both Czech and English, featuring the original music.^[1][2] The game is in the public domain.^[3]

Plot and gameplay

The game is a manifestation of the motifs of JRR Tolkien's novels; the title comes from one of the underground dwarf towns in Lord of the Rings, which is also where the game is set. Within the narrative, the town has been plundered by the Orcs, while the Alqualamir stone remained in the city. The task of the player is to find the stone and escape the city.

Critical reception

Freegames.cz commented that the "hilarous" Czech game had a simple yet visually pleasing atmosphere.^[4] In 2002, FreeHry.cz said that while the game was over a decade old it was still quite good-quality.^[5] Historie a kontext produkce počítačových her žánru adventure v České republice notes that Tolkien's works were a popular subject for video games in the 1980s, and that Belegost fits into that trend alongside Melbourne House's The Hobbit (1982), and Addison Wesley Publishing Company's trio of games The Fellowship of the Ring (1986), The Shadows of Mordor (1987), and The Crack Of Doom (1989).^[6]

References