RIGEL'S REVENGE
The definitive historical reference for Mastertronic's 1987 text adventure, reconstructed from its binary through complete reverse engineering of the SMART EGG engine.
The Game
Rigel's Revenge is a two-part text adventure published by Mastertronic in 1987 for 1.99 GBP. You play as Harper, a newsman stranded on a war-torn alien planet, racing to find and disarm a Rigellian Doomsday Device before it destroys everything. The game was developed by a three-person team at Smart Egg Software: Ron Harris (design and writing), Nigel Brooks (implementation), and Said Hassan (engine programming).
This website is the result of a complete binary-level reverse engineering of both the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum versions. Every piece of text, every room connection, every item, every easter egg, and every bug was extracted directly from the original binaries, not from memory or secondary sources. The SMART EGG text adventure engine was fully disassembled and its three-tier compression scheme decoded, allowing complete reconstruction of the game's content.
Explore
Story and Game Flow
The complete narrative arc from Harper's awakening in darkness through to the Doomsday Device. Characters, death sequences, puzzles, and the distinctly British humor that made this budget title memorable.
ArchiveComplete Game Text
Every line of text extracted from both Part 1 and Part 2: 230+ action texts, 35 room descriptions, system messages, dialogue, death sequences, and parser responses.
CartographyGame Map and Architecture
ASCII room maps for both parts, item dependency chains, the critical path walkthrough, and the complete scoring table from 0 to 100 points.
TechnicalSMART EGG Engine
Deep technical analysis of the text adventure engine: three-tier text compression, memory layout, parser architecture, the Part 2 overlay system, and 6502 disassembly.
HistoryHow They Built It
A reconstructed step-by-step account of how three developers in 1987 designed, wrote, compressed, assembled, and shipped a two-part adventure game on cassette tape for under 2 pounds.
ForensicsHidden Features and Bugs
Easter eggs, deleted content, the "SMART EGG!" watermark, the sentiment-detecting profanity handler, the "What a Mega programmer!" response, typos, and 7 gap action IDs representing cut content.
ProcessReverse Engineering
How we went from a T64 tape image to complete game reconstruction: Madsquad cruncher emulation, LZ77 decompression, 6502 CPU simulation, and SMART EGG engine tracing.
VisualImage Gallery
Screenshots from both C64 and ZX Spectrum versions: title screens, character sets, and in-game screens extracted from binary dumps and .z80 snapshots.
Credits
Smart Egg Software (1987)
| Game design and scenario | Ron Harris |
| Implementation and development | Nigel Brooks |
| Programming and system | Said Hassan |
Published by Mastertronic. Price: 1.99 GBP. Distributed on cassette tape (Side A: Part 1, Side B: Part 2).
Key Numbers
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Part 1 action texts | 223 non-empty entries |
| Part 2 text segments | 140 entries |
| Compressed text bytes | 10,279 |
| Decoded characters | 16,145 |
| Compression ratio | 36.3% savings (1.57x expansion) |
| Death sequences | 14+ unique ways to die |
| Easter eggs found | 6 |
| Bugs found | 4 typos, 8 missing spaces, 1 color code error |
| Deleted content | 7 gap action IDs |
| Dictionary words | 16 (WERE, WAS, WITH, AND, AS, THE, THAT, TO, FOR, OF, IN, HARPER, NORTH, SOUTH, EAST, WEST) |
| Digram characters | 12 (SPACE, E, A, I, S, R, T, N, O, L, D, C) |
| Stage 1 decrunch cycles | Part 1: 477,072 / Part 2: 3,502,232 |
| Stage 2 decrunch cycles | Part 1: 2,625,620 / Part 2: 1,028,117 |