Trolley Follies Gets Physical!

Trolley Follies Gets Physical!

A home-brew style physical release

Backstory

Two years ago when I first put out Trolley Follies I had thought that maybe I could put out a physical release at some point.  What I wanted was a nice box, a floppy disk with the game on both sides (write-protected reverse side for backup and not write-protected front side for the high scores writing and adding new levels) and a color manual.

At first I looked into pricing on boxes.  The first hurtle was just finding a supplier that even had boxes the right size, then there’s the custom prints, and add on top of that minimum orders and I was looking at an investment of at least $500 just to “test the water”.

So, being a “screw it I’ll do it myself” kind of guy I worked on creating some boxes but I wasn’t really very successful.  I did manage to make two boxes that don’t totally suck, one sits on my shelf and I’m keeping it and the other I donated to a local thrift store (with a copy of the game and a manual inside) so technically a boxed version does exist, one on my shelf and the other ??? somewhere around Cleveland I guess.

So I gave up on the idea of a physical release and Trolley Follies started to drift into the back of my mind as I moved on to other things. 

Sell'n Floppies

One day a coworker and I were reminiscing about old computers and he mentioned that he had a Compaq luggable at home but couldn’t use it because he couldn’t find any of his disks.  I said I’d make him a disk.  After that I got the idea to make floppy disks for people and sell them on EBay.  These are DOS utility disks, shareware disks, disks with terminal emulation software etc.…

As I was making these shareware game disks available and making trips to the corner mail box to send them off I started thinking again about floppies for Trolley Follies.  After all shareware is easily downloaded as is Trolley Follies but people like having the physical media (as do I).

Home-Brew

The thing is, Trolley Follies isn’t a production from a development team or a company.  It’s a home-brew bedroom coder (well okay home office) game.  In the 80’s home-brew games like this would often be put into plastic bags, maybe have a manual, and sold at user groups, BBS meetups, or maybe the local computer shop. 

Testing the Waters

So I decided I’m going to do just that with Trolley Follies, except online.  But I’m starting small; I made a run of five copies only. 

So this is sort of a “testing the waters” release.  I’m putting out five copies and depending on how quickly they sell I’ll either continue to make copies as needed (and as long as my 1541 holds out) or I’ll give up on the endeavor.

So where do you get it?  Well I’m not selling the copies on Itch only on EBay.  There are a couple of reasons for this but mainly it comes down to making sure I don’t sell more copies than I have and EBay makes it very easy to control that.

What's Included?

So what do you get?  Well you get a floppy disk with the latest version of the game on both sides (the back is write-protected and the front isn’t). 

The disk has a custom laminated label (a lot going into this release relies on my color laser printer) and is put into a custom card-stock sleeve.  This sleeve has the artwork I made for the box on the front and the blurb I made for the box on the back.

You get a color printed manual with 8 pages total; this is the same manual available for download as a PDF on BlackCastleSoftware.com.  This is put into a protective plastic bag and for shipping the whole thing wrapped in bubble wrap and sandwiched between two sheets of cardboard and then put into a bubble mailer.

If shipped to the US then I’ll use media mail postage so it’s pretty cheap (about $3).  Outside of the US I can’t use media mail.

How do I get it?

Okay where is it?  Well I haven’t actually started the EBay listing yet.  The reason is that I wanted this announcement to get some eyes on it first.  You see, it occurs to me that there are people who have EBay alerts for terms like “commodore” and “floppy disk” and I don’t want the few copies that exist being snatched up by someone who’s just looking to resell (let’s face it you stamp a C= logo on a banana peel these days and it’s worth gold).  

Of course a sale is a sale but obviously this isn’t about the money for me.  Certainly there are better ways to make money.  I’m doing this just to put physical copies of my game into existence and the $15 I’m going to ask is just to cover expenses, wear and tear on my 1541, and toner for my printer.

So I will be making another announcement in a few days with a link to the listing and my hope is the copies will end up in the hands of those that will appreciate it.