The Abyss

Activision

Status: No Download, Findability: 1/5

A title we know very little about from the press, apart from the fact that the name was mentioned in C&VG January 1990. They mentioned that the game was a film licence coming soon along with Die Hard. The first game made it, but The Abyss seems to have dissappeared.

David Kinder got in touch with GTW and mentioned that Infocom (Who were owned by Activision at the time) were working on a game called “The Abyss”, based on the film.

Apparently the game was being written by Bob Bates (Who later founded Legend Entertainment). The game got to a reasonably complete state on 16-bit formats, and was a text adventure. A version has rumoured to have been leaked, and features what seem to be placeholders for graphics.

The game was cancelled when Activision closed Infocom down in 1989… which suggests that C&VG may have got their news a little late before it was announced about the cancellation.

There seems to be no trace or evidence of this game on the C64 platform, so i’m a little stuck on where to go just yet. Did it ever get past the planning stage? Other Infocom titles at the 1989 time (“Journey”, “Shogun”, “Arthur” and “Zork Zero”) were not released on the C64.

It could be that there is an adventure game to find, but it might be that a C64 version could have been a straight port from the 16-bits that was to be started once the 16-bit versions were complete. Pure speculation, and hence we need to do a little more digging.

Developments being made for this one…

Contributions: Peter Weighill, David Kinder

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 3 Comments

3 Responses to The Abyss

    • Sounds like at most he may have done the underlying engine – but when The Abyss was mentioned, he didn’t seem to react like it was something he had forgot about doing. Though the guy who does the interview suggests that they recovered it, so that is a useful route to check :)

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