Flood 2 (Bullfrog) – so close, yet so far…

1992 Bullfrog

ST, Amiga, PC, SNES, Mega Drive

Code – Paul (Paulie) Hughes
Graphics – Mark R Jones
Music – N/A

Ah “Flood”, the memories had with this awesome Amiga game back in the day. With it’s groundbreaking speech effects throughout, Flood proved to be a huge hit on the ST/Amiga back in 1990, and so it was inevitable that a sequel would follow. This time the main character, Quiffy, would also look to make an appearance on 16-bit consoles which were starting to take a hold on the gaming public alongside home computers.

The game was being developed by non other than ex-Ocean coder Paul Hughes with graphics by Mark R Jones (Who also worked at Ocean).

Flood 2 promised more of the same of the first game, with a multitude of additional features and bits to improve further on the original (Which sadly and undeservidly never had the full spotlight treatment on its original release).

Paul and Mark wanted to recreate the feel and playability of classic games they loved as teenagers. Their idea was to mix “great graphics” with “old school” playability. Games such as Starquake, Dynamite Dan and Wizards Lair were just some more their many inspirations for the sequel.

One of many map designs by Mark, see the full gallery of items below!

Designs emerged featuring various pick-ups and intriguing ideas such as ‘The Vacuum Cleaner of Ole Ole Kumquat’, brought on by two cherubs who would then suck you up and deposit you on a higher level. There was also a ‘pumpkin mask’ that Quiffy would pick up and use as a smart bomb, shouting “Boo!” at baddies and scaring them to death. Even a bar of soap was to act as an invincibility pick-up covering Quiffy in soap bubbles to make him unreocnizable to enemies. These were just a few of the many crazy ideas that were planned.

Flood 2 originally started life on the ST, showing off a decent pre-shift scroll and loads of sprites running around. However, due to “wondering wisdom of marketing”, it was decided that the ST marked was dying, so the game was moved to the Amiga and PC platforms and scrapped for the poor ST.

Development had been ongoing for a full six months and yet the plug was pulled just days before the contract was to be signed. Development of all versions basically ceased when Paul and Mark were told they had to move in-house to continue the project. They refused and so the game was canned as a result with no-one else taking over.

Before this tragic end, Paul created a few early test demos which showed lots of promise, and described the game by saying: “It was as playable as any collect-em-up scrolling platform game of the early 90s!”. ST and Amiga versions were fully playable, PC almost playable and console versions were only in the planning stages. So a huge shame that things fell a little sour. Could this have been another Superfrog or better?… We may never know…

Fortunately, all of Mark’s design sketches survived, and can be found here with the review (Thanks Mark!). Mark and Paul also found a few screenshots and sprite shots of the game, but the hunt is still on for a running version of the game, which continues to elude us after quite a few years now of the search beginning.

Paul Hughes still has disks of the game, but sadly the disks (typically the case with 3 1/2″ disks) have gone to the disk heavens in the sky. Mark had similiar issues with a few of his disks, which may just have something playable on them… but Mark refuses to give up and at present there is a possibility of someone else taking a look at trying to salvage/scrape what they can of the game for preservation.

And so the hunt goes on for playable remains of this intriguing game. Can anything be found, or has the quality of 3 1/2″ disks let us down yet again?…

Also in April 2010, Jim Bagley rescued all of Mark Jones’ Flood 2 materials, and produced the YouTube video of things below (Sadly no demos, but animations at the very least! )

Also, see below in the source materials for the actual animation and map files and the in-house Ocean sprite and map editor (written by John Brandwood and used for all of the in-house animations and maps on the ST and Amiga). The editor is known as ‘Fudd-Ed’ (Fudd as in Elmer Fudd with was Brandwood’s nickname at Ocean!) It can be run on an St Emulator. ‘EdSpr’ is for sprites and ‘EdMap’ for maps. It’s pretty easy to use according to Mark. You load WORKSPACES in ‘EdSpr’ for animations. For maps you load the BLOCKS then the MAP in ‘EdMap’. Enjoy!, and thanks to Mark and Jim for digging all of this material out!!