Lost for 45 years: Catacombs and Goblin Towers recovered
The original Commodore PET releases of two pioneering Supersoft adventures have been found, preserved and released.
July 4, 2026 · commodoregames.net
Two of the earliest British text adventures ever sold – Catacombs and Goblin Towers, both written by Brian Cotton and published by Supersoft in 1981 – have been recovered in their original Commodore PET form. Until now, only later Commodore 64 releases were known to survive: the 1983 and 1987 versions of Goblin Towers, and the 1986 "Classic Quests" reissue of Catacombs. The PET originals were considered lost.
That changed when Colin Haynes came forward with his original copies of both games and offered them for preservation.
The recovery
The 45-year-old disks were read on a Commodore 4040 dual drive – the same class of hardware they were written on – and imaged track by track to SD card, producing faithful copies of the original media. From there, one obstacle remained: Cotton had built a surprisingly clever protection scheme into the game – not to stop copying, but to stop players from listing the BASIC program and cheating their way through the adventure. As part of the documentation process, it was examined and removed.
The full story – the discovery, the disk imaging, and a breakdown of how the protection worked and how it was defeated – is told in the video documentary below.
About the games
Both games were published by Supersoft, the Harrow software house founded in 1978 by Pearl Wellard and Peter Calver, and both were written by Brian Cotton.
Catacombs (1981)
One of the earliest commercially published text adventures in the UK. Players explore a maze of underground passages hunting for treasure. Notably for a 1981 PET release, it shipped with a protection scheme designed to stop players peeking at the program to cheat.
Known facts
- The adventure centres on an old Gothic church with a forgotten labyrinth of passages beneath it, with the hunt eventually reaching Hell and Elysium.
- The earliest known advertising for it appeared in March 1981, placing it among the very first British adventure games sold commercially.
- It was the first of five Cotton adventures for Supersoft, followed by Witch Hunt, Cornucopia, Forestland and Goblin Towers.
- A 1981 Supersoft advert listed it at £27 – nearly twice the price of Goblin Towers.
- The 1986 "Classic Quests" remake was released across C64, Plus/4, Amstrad CPC/PCW and DOS; the DOS version was recovered from a collector in 2021, but until now no earlier version had survived.
Goblin Towers (1981)
Cotton's second game. You start at an abandoned cottage in a forest, near a castle said to hold treasure guarded by goblins. Loot brought back to the cottage scores points, up to a maximum of 160.
Known facts
- Listed at £14 in Supersoft's November 1981 advertising, making it the cheapest of the Cotton adventures.
- It's noticeably simpler than Catacombs – simple enough that it has been suggested it may actually have been written first.
- Unlike Catacombs, it survived in later Commodore 64 form, with both Supersoft and Classic Quests releases known to exist.
Preservation notice
Catacombs and Goblin Towers remain the copyright of their respective rights holders. These files are made available strictly for historical preservation, research and archival purposes. The original commercial releases have been unavailable for over four decades and the software is preserved here so it is not lost to history. No profit is made from this distribution. If you are a rights holder and would like this material removed, please contact us and it will be taken down promptly.