Oil's Well - IBM PCjr. True Version Real Hardware Playthrough
11Oil's Well is a clone of Anteater released by Sierra On-line in 1983. The game was originally developed by Thomas J. Mitchell for the Atari 8-bit computers and Commodore 64. John Rink ported the game to the IBM PC and IBM PCjr. The game uses CGA composite artifact color if a PC is detected (on a CGA with RGBI monitor, you will get 640x200 B&W graphics) and PCjr. 160x200 16-color graphics on the PCjr. All sound is provided by the PC speaker, even on a PCjr. The game does not take advantage of the PCjr's 4-voice Programmable Sound Generator.
The floppy disk of Oil's Well for the IBM PC was imaged a long time ago, but there was a problem with the data. The disk was damaged in those sectors which defined the PCjr. graphical patterns and colors, so the game was unplayable on the PCjr. Only the PCjr. title screen could be displayed and the game itself could only be played in the PC composite CGA mode.
Fortunately a new disk was very recently dumped from a sealed copy auctioned off on eBay. I was asked to record a playthrough on the my IBM PCjr. to show the game with its best graphical mode and at its proper speed. Because an unexpanded PCjr. runs slower than a PC, the game takes account of the speed difference when run on the PCjr. Here is that playthrough, all eight levels of the game and the "winning" screen are shown. I used a cheat version which game me 99 lives so I could finish the game and show it all off.
I found that using an analog joystick was essential to beating the game, especially when the game starts using multiple tight corners. The analog stick allows for more finer control of the pipe extension and the joystick button allows for slower pipe retraction compared to the joystick. Here are timestamps for the start of each level.
Level 1 - 1:28
Level 2 - 2:56
Level 3 - 4:32
Level 4 - 6:40
Level 5 - 10:18
Level 6 - 15:59
Level 7 - 21:29
Level 8 - 24:50
The game will loop from Level 8 back to Level 1 and I decided to end the video instead of waiting until all my remaining lives were lost. The game only displays symbols (those blue Cs) up to 10 lives. It is just as well, as I was so frustrated trying to play the game with a keyboard that I had lost all 99 lives by level 6 and what I typed in as a name on the high score screen was not fit for young people and those of sensitive dispositions.
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