Starring Charlie Chaplin

1988 Canvas Software / U.S Gold

Platforms: Atari ST and Commodore 64

As part of the launch and release of The Games That Weren’t book, we are adding additional assets and content that didn’t make it to print as bonus content to share with you.

Within the book is a detailed 10 page full story about the unreleased Starring Charlie Chaplin for both the Atari ST and Commodore 64 platforms by U.S Gold. The book also includes a specially re-pixelled Atari ST screenshot from a grainy magazine scan.

st shot2 2
A gameplay mockup screenshot from the Atari ST version.

Produced by Canvas Software in 1987, this was one of the hardest write ups to research, due to a number of key people no longer with us today. We however talk to as many people as we can to piece together what happened to both conversions – including Donald Campbell, Danielle Woodyatt, Dawn Hollywood (nee Drake), Jon Grimshaw, Paul Clansey, Richard Tidsall, Sean Townsend, Stephen Ward and Simon Butler. Giving as complete a picture of what happened exactly as we possibly can.

The Commodore 64 edition was actually fully recovered by GTW back in 2016 which contains a download and further details of that version + recovery.

During our research over the years, we bought and obtained various magazines to produce hi-res scans of Atari ST screenshots shown in the press at the time, as well as adverts. Some additional scans have been contributed from Ross Sillifant as well. All of these can be found in our gallery below. In addition there are various other scans from our research, and the most exciting are the development notes and sketches provided by C64 developer Sean Townsend. In total there are 83 scans for you to check out, giving an insight into the work involved to produce the conversions. We hope you enjoy them!

With thanks to Sean Townsend and Ross Sillifant for their contributions, help and scans.

Resources

Gallery

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