Kors-Elf (Shawn Blevins)

Title – Kors-Elf
System – Commodore 64
Author – Shawn Blevins
Publication – Home Computer Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January 1985
Page Scans – 1 2 3 4 5
Preserved by – eboy71
Recommended Emulator – VICE

Download ROM

Loading the Game –

Mount the disk image (Kors-Elf-HCM-Jan-85-Vol5-01.d64) in your emulator. In VICE, this is done by selecting File → Attach Disk Image
Load the app by typing LOAD”KORS-ELF”,8
Once loaded, type RUN to start

Article Text

Hail to you, mighty hero of the Kors-Elfs! Only you can save us—and our fallen friends, the Letters— from the spell of the evil Overlord! Our fate is placed in your nimble fingers as you attempt to end the Overlord ‘s domination of our people.

Hordes of letters with glazed alphabet eyes suddenly advance single-file upon you. They’ve been drained of their will to spell because the evil Overlord has broken their syntactic order. As defender of the elfen race, you must act quickly, or else the wicked prince of letter darkness will ex-spell all words— and eventually elfs— from the land of Kor.

You are the new leader of the Kor-Elfs (not Kors-Elves, this is before the modern plural of the word elf), a race of creatures in a fantasy land whose survival is threatened by the cruel Overlord of Kor. He rules this land from his castle with the aid of a mystic sword. With this sword, the Overlord has hypnotized and enslaved the long-time friends of the Kors-Elfs, the Letters, and now uses them as guards in his castle. His dispatchers stand ready to release the Letters to attack anyone who invades the castle.

Break the Spell

You have only one weapon— a spell you learned from another race of small, blue creatures (to remain unnamed) many years ago. This spell will awaken the Letters and send them to another world from which you can bring them back once your mission is accomplished. As you might have guessed by now, that mission entails entering the castle, fighting the Letters all the way, in order to steal the mystic sword. Once the sword is stolen, you can use its powers to defeat the Overlord, thereby freeing the Letters and saving your people.

You can stop this character assault if you can type, even if you’re a “hunt-n-peck” keyboard whiz. When you correctly type the randomly-displayed Letters that march two-by-two across the screen toward you, you can accomplish your worthy task— awaken the letters from their trance and gain entrance to the inner chamber where the mystic sword is hidden. You, the Kors-Elf, advance from the right side of the screen; and the letters (coming in pairs) advance from the left side. As you get closer to the entrance of the castle, the letters have less distance to travel— which makes it more difficult to type them before they make contact with you. But beware: if you are not fast enough at typing the right letter before it touches you, it will zap you, and you will have to start all over again.

An Eight-Fingered Success Story

Kors-Elf is not just an adventure game, it is a true test of your keyboard mastery —an exciting typing tutor for young children and on the upper levels, a challenging keyboard drill for the experienced typist. There are three levels of difficulty: beginner, intermediate, and expert. On the beginner level, you have five chances to get past the letter guards and find the sword. The two upper levels allow you only three tries, and each one requires considerably more typing speed: the letters are cast upon the walkway more quickly, and typing them to squelch them is more difficult. Once you successfully get past the letter guards and steal the sword, you are given the option to continue on at the same level, or begin again and change the level of difficulty.

Commodore 64 Notes

In the Commodore version of Kors-Elf, the letters are placed on the screen with character graphics, and the elf is a sprite. The C-64 uses coincidence checking to determine whether the elf is touched by one of the advancing letters. This is done by checking the sprite-to-foreground collision register at memory location 53279 in line 370. If a blank is the only character in contact with the elf, the coincidence flag is not set and the elf continues advancing on the castle. But if the elf comes in contact with one of the letters, he is sent back to the beginning and the number of tries is incremented by 1. When the number of tries completed equals the number of tries for that level, then the game is over.

Commodore 64 – Explanation of the Program

Line No’s
100-190 Program header
200 Jump title screen and initialize
210-430 Main control loop
440-470 End of a round
720 Player is out of lives
730-1170 Music routines
1180-1690 Title screen and initialization
1700-2080 Program data
2090-2380 Screen-setup routine
2390-2670 Program setup
2680-2730 Set-and-clear-bits routine

Editor’s Notes:

This appears to be the only game credited to Shawn Blevins.
The game itself is a great example of the types of quirky games that would show up in these early days of computing. It’s charming, easy to play, and has an absolutely crazy premise.