Trojan

Elite

Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5

A big finding for GTW, thanks to Zeldin/Cascade, who came across a bizzare set of files on a bunch of second hand disks. These were named Trojan Demo 1 + 2.

Upon further examination, it seems that the preview was of an early conversion of a Capcom arcade (http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?game_id=10202). A bit more digging and we found that Elite were infact linked to the conversion for the ZX Spectrum here.

When we queried things with Steve Wilcox from Elite, he mentioned that they considered it but Capcom’s commercial terms were unrealistic and the game only “middling”. Funnily enough the Elite evidence is very strong, as there is a message from the programmer which says “I would have liked to have written Scooby Doo”.

The previews we have are of a working title screen and high-score, and of a scrolling part of level 1. None of it is playable, but the files are labelled 1 and 3, which means that a second file is actually missing and could well be out there somewhere. Just how the game got leaked anyway in this current form we don’t know, but we believe that it was on a BBS. Maybe someone has all the files, and maybe part 2 is actually a playable version? Do you know where it is??

We had wondered if this was the same game that Durrell were linked with, and which is in GTW at the moment. If it is indeed, then it could be that Rob Hubbard was doing the music. Well, Clive Townsend confirmed with Martyn Carroll that he was working on a Trojan conversion for Durell, but it was cancelled early on. It was a Capcom conversion too, and the screenshots prove it … see below!

So not only is there a C64 conversion to find, but a Spectrum version too… and Rob Hubbard music to boot! Confirmation comes from Jan Harries that Rob was indeed behind the music and it was fully composed!

We need to find some credits, which is going to be tough… so help us find out more!… Steve doesn’t recall who was behind it, so can you help?… Was it one of the standard Elite developers?

In 2012 we have reason to believe that FTL (part of Gargoyle Games) was behind the conversion, though we need to track down Roy Carter and Greg Follis to confirm.

However, many moons ago we found some odd ninja sprites tucked away in the Hitpak version of 1942 (see gallery). Could these potentially have been intended for Trojan?? If so, then it suggests that the developer could well have been Stephen Green who did 1942. It’s something to go on at least for now!

More soon on this exciting development we hope…

Contributions: Zeldin / Cascade, Steve Wilcox, Martyn Carroll, Clive Townsend, Jan Harries, Andrew Fisher, OmegaMax

Supporting content

Available downloads

Update history

  • 16/03/21 – Possible link made to Stephen Green and possible sprites added.
  • 11/05/17 – Added reverse engineering details from OmegaMax
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