Breathless is a FPS game for the Amiga that was released in late 1995, and was shown in the press a lot at the time over the years.
As a result, there were a number of early screens and demos that had features that didn’t make it into the final game. Grzegorz Antosiewicz has kindly gone through various demos and magazine previews to highlight some of those differences below.
First magazine previews
First previews from magazines show different HUD with F1 to F19 keys, score and credits counters and some small four status bars.
Grzegorz then found four demo versions and took screenshots to highlight differences, which we have included Grzegorz’s comments:
First demo
“First demo is mostly showing engine presentation. It boots straight into game. You can walk and see different rooms that show what the game engine can do. You can’t shoot and enemies can’t either. There is no working map function, shop, no options to configure graphics and bottom HUD do not work.
It was released in February in 1995 with three screen shoots from later build and description what finshed game will have to offer.”
Second demo
“The Second demo version was closer to the finished game. It has one very large unique map with some dungeon/castle setting. It has a working menu, loading and configuration screen. In game there is a working map and shop – if you find shop terminal, then that allows to buy better guns, upgrade them, buy extra ammo, health and shield.
Bottom HUD is now same as in finished game and is working too. This demo version is also very hard, enemies have many more hit-points than in finished one. With default gun, you can only kill standard enemies and trying to shoot some higher rank guards took too much time, usually they will shoot you first.
My best solution was just to run, collect health, ammo, shield and credits pickups do not waste time on shooting and go look for shop terminals to buy better weapons.”
Third and Fourth demo
“The third and fourth demo was made for Amiga Games and Amiga Format magazines. Each one had one short level based on levels from final game with some small alternations in layout. Now the game setting is more about exploring some industrial/military installations.
Everything works, just like in finished version and difficulty level is easier. Enemy HP was better balanced.”
Final game
Then here are screens from the final game for comparison:
With thanks to Grzegorz Antosiewicz for his excellent research and dissections.
