A quick addition showing a rather different looking Knuckle Buster game on the C64 by Mat Sneap. Luckily in this case the preview has been around for some time. The thing is that some people have specified that they prefer the preview to the final game. Do you agree?
Here is a comparison between the early version title screen and final version:
And now the game itself:
If you want to check out both versions yourself, then grab them from here:
Happy New Year, Frank. I’m not sure if you are intending to do this, but this V1 could / should be included as a proper entry on your site. A recent Lemon64 post mentioned that the V1 release has a main sprite that is virtually identical to that in the the coin-op game – Knuckle Joe – of which this game is obviously a clone. This is already alluded to in the comments from Glenn. The inference being is that the coders might have been asked to change a few things before the game was released to avoid any potential copyright infringement or that the game was originally intended as a fully licensed port.
Happy New Year Gaz! There wasn’t any plan to make a Knuckle Joe entry, but it is plausible that the game started out as an intended conversion and the licence fell through. I think before I create an entry, we’d need to see something in the press talking of an official conversion, or alternatively try and get hold of Mat himself to clarify. I’ll try contacting Mat now and see what he says.
This earlier version is much closer to the arcade game ‘Knuckle Joe’.
I wonder if this was the intention.
I’d love the chance to talk to Matt Sneap about this game…
I think you’re spot on Glenn! I’m sure i’ve heard the Knuckle Joe link too elsewhere. It could well have been the intention to do a conversion at some point. Would be good to find out exactly from Mat directly.
Cheers Frank!
I’ve reached out to the man himself via Linkedin.
Let’s see if I get a response.
It’s not that bad of a game really you know?
It’s just you have to learn to exploit it a bit to win.
I guess you should never have to ‘break’ a game to win but in this case I quite enjoyed doing it!
You should check out the Speccy version…
Now that one is broken in a whole different way, I’ll leave it up to you to find out if you haven’t already…
Best :)
Glenn
This is a brilliant find! I never realised there was an earlier version.