1993 Software 2000
Platform: Commodore Amiga and CD32
Our next entry into the GTW archives comes courtesy of Anonymous Contributor, who had been digging into details on Winnetou for the Commodore 64 and found a stack of new information on the Rainbow Arts game.
However, when the Rainbow Arts game died a death and disappeared off the face of the earth, another title from the Karl May series would be marked as coming soon from Software 2000, with Der Schatz Im Silbersee (or ‘The Treasure of Silver Lake’ for the English translation). This would be a few years later in 1993, when adverts began popping up in German gaming magazines.
What isn’t 100% certain, is if this particular game was any relation to the game that had been in development at Rainbow Arts. We suspect that this was a separate development, but we’ll keep an open mind.
The Software 2000 game was being advertised for release for both PC and Amiga, and featured Winnetou going on adventures with a few comrades, and was based on one of the books in the series. It would be a graphic adventure which was strongly reminiscent of the Sierra adventures and was due for release in February of 1993.
Based in the wild west, the game would follow the exploits of Winnetou, Firehand and Aunt Droll as they travel to the Rocky Mountains in search of a famous treasure in Silver Lake. Much of the book would be cut from the game, so you wouldn’t get much advantage from having read the book beforehand.
Only the PC game would end up seeing release, but the Amiga version would never appear for reasons currently unknown. Oddly though it would be eventually reviewed in Amiga Joker magazine in 1994, getting a score of 74% – suggesting that the game was fully complete. The PC manual also has instructions for the Amiga version too.
Thankfully a demo version has been out there for some while, so you can get a glimpse of how the game was shaping up on the Amiga. The full PC version is also out there too, but it would be fantastic if the full Amiga version could be saved. The question is why it was never released – and perhaps it was due to the declining Amiga market? It feels like there could be another reason.
Thanks to AmigaJay, we learn that the game was also featured on CD32 lists in late 1993 for a 1994 release. It’s unknown at present if any work was started or if it was just vapourware for the platform.
Hopefully we will get to learn more soon, but if you know anything more about this development on the Amiga – please do get in touch.
With thanks to Anonymous Contributor for all the research and information gathered, AmigaJay for the CD32 information and Archive.org for various scans.
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