1994 Starbyte
Platform: Commodore Amiga
Our next entry is thanks to Grzegorz Antosiewicz, and is of a title that was eventually released on PC for the German market in 1997, but was due an Amiga release much earlier.
Bazooka Sue (or Bazuka Sue as one magazine oddly referred to the game) was first mentioned way back in 1992 as being a new SCUMM style game with a protagonist described as a cross between Kim Basinger and Miss Piggy. Not an insult to the looks of the character, but the fact that they are oddly part human and part pig!
It seems that without access to Lucasarts’ SCUMM engine, development was quite drawn out and would go on for many years. Even once the CD32 had come about, there was talk of the game being released on the platform. However, the Amiga was starting to fade and Starbyte would move onto other platforms, with 1995 seemingly seeing their final Amiga release.
What is odd is that Krisalis Software was listed as having some kind of involvement in the game at various points in the press around 1994 time. Did they jump on to help at some point?
Overall, it seems plausible that the long development and then eventual demise of the Amiga saw Starbyte decide to shift focus and convert the title to PC instead. What you probably see in the PC DOS title is much of what the Amiga game would have been like – even likely featuring the same graphics ported over.
But what of that original Amiga development, and could something be found some day? How far did it also get? We assume that the team behind the PC version were those also working on the original amiga title: https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/bazooka-sue/credits
We hope to get in touch with a member of the team to find out exactly what happened, and see if there is a chance we can sample this strange SCUMM-style title for ourselves.
With thanks to Grzegorz Antosiewicz for the heads up about the title.
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