Yet another title which suffered from the death of the C64 in the early 90’s.
Monster Business was a promising mixture of Bubble Bobble and Dig Dug combined with modern day game elements to bring it into the 90’s.
Two months into the game, and already the game was playable with the main character moving around and being able to play the game. According to Oliver, the character still needed work and the character could not run on slopes and levels were missing.
Sadly, the crew’s publisher wholesaler denied any royalties, which downheartened the teams will to carry on with the title, and so it was cancelled.
Music was fully composed by Markus Schneider, and was re-used in a game called Turn It 2 by Ascon/Tale, and another of the tunes was used elsewhere. Both files can be downloaded above.
The game is available in its final form, and has not been completely lost. However, Markus does not wish for the game to be released in any form, so all we will be able to see for the foreseeable future is the set of graphics which Oliver drew for the game. This gives us a glimpse of what might of been.
No searching as such, but hopefully more information in the near future, maybe from Markus himself…
An interesting idea which sadly never fully made it…
Contributions: Oliver Lindau, Marco
Supporting content
Available downloads
Gallery
Creator speaks
Oliver Lindau speaks to GTW about work on Monster Business…
“http://vetodrom.com/classics/treasure/monster_business
This would have been a mixture of Bubble Bobble and Dig Dug and has been developed by Markus Schneider.
Our publisher wholesaler denied any royalties after two months of work. And this means nothing but: Maybe we’ll get money, maybe nothing”¦
The game is playable, but the main character cannot run on slopes and many levels were missing. The music has been used in the game Turn it 2 by Ascon/Tale.”
Mario Knezovic speaks to GTW about Monster Business…
“I just browsed your site a bit and just checked another game I was involved in: “Monster Business”. I was kinda technical director for Eclipse Software Design’s C64 and DOS developmentsback then and decided to cancel the project together with the owner of the company, Marc Rosocha. Oliver probably did not have the full info, so I will provide you with a bit more infos.
What he said about the royalties is true but not the main reason, rather the extremely buggy programming which would require noticable rewrites of much of the code. I reviewed it, and now, all the years later, I hope I can say it without Markus Schneider, thecoder,being offended: It would have to be rewritten from scratch!
Marc and I were in a bad situation back then. Both C64 versions, Lethal X-Cess and Monster Business had to be cancelled due to major guys involved in personal crises and the DOS version of Stone Age had lousy progress, the original programmers working on it for a year or so already and never being able to get a step further. DOS programming seemed to be a rocket science to some people back then ;-) We had to make a decision.
And with two projects just having to cancel, we decided that I should program the C64 and DOS versions of Stone Age personally and with a new team for both graphics and music to not risk anything anymore. We knew that a “simple” puzzle game like Stone Age back then would provide the same revenues like a hugeshooter like Lethal X-Cess or a medium-sized platform game like Monster Business. We were not able to take risks anymore and were running out of time and money.
We chose to do Stone Age. I asked a friend of mine, Carsten Neubauer, to help me with the DOS version of Stone Age. He had experience with DOS programming already. I started at zero, but just had done the C64 version, so with joined forces we were able to do the DOS version very fast. ”
Markus Schneider speaks to GTW about Monster Business…
“Well, I mean both, Oliver and also Mario could not give a true statement about this project since I am the only one working for more than 8 weeks on it. First off, the code was not buggy or absolutely never need to write from scratch. If someone writes several weeks onto a source code, you cannot get into it in 4 days. As I really appreciate Mario and his talents I am wondering about his statements, but money was the clue I guess.
The main problem was simply that I could not realize the amount of enemies as the Amiga version had. I asked for less enemies and could have been finished into a short time. But Marc Rosocha denied and sent Mario as a controller.
The really funny thing and the proof that there wasn’t anything buggy or something is, that the same source code was used within just 2 more weeks (including graphics and sound) for the game “Magic Mouse in Wonderland”, which got good critics for gameplay and music. I was just reducing enemies (sprites).
And for history: this story was the trigger to stop any ambitions working as a programmer.”
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