A hitherto unknown port of the 1988 adventure game The Manhole has been discovered and preserved, we can report.
Created by Cyan, the company established by siblings Rand and Robyn Miller, the game was initially released on floppy discs before being published on CD-ROM in 1989 – the first home computer game to adopt the format.
The game was ported to the PC Engine and FM Towns in Japan, and we now know that a conversion was made for the Japan-only TeraDrive personal computer, an IBM PC-compatible system which came with a built-in Mega Drive console.
Unlike Amstrad's similar Mega PC in Europe, the TeraDrive actually permitted the PC and Mega Drive to work in tandem, paving the way for unique games which utlised the strengths of both pieces of hardware.
Sadly, the commercial failure of the product meant that we never really got to see what it was capable of; only one game seems to have been made – entitled Puzzle Construction – but the discovery of The Manhole doubles this total.
Rand and Robyn Miller would later create Myst, one of the best-selling games of all time.