1995 D3 / Phoenix Interactive
Platform: PC DOS
Our next entry within the Games That Weren’t archives is an early PC development for a space shooter known as The Grid, developed by D3 for Phoenix Interactive in 1995. Little is known about the game at this stage apart from what we have gleaned from an early demo and various concept screens.
Thankfully we have been able to recover a very early demo, where you can move around a small flat texture shaded area in a “Descent” like way, with pillars as obstacles and various hover sleds that you can shoot with laser cannons. The hover sleds just move around and don’t have any real AI at this stage.
In the demo, you can press various keys to turn features on and off, but also add additional cars too. A full list of the controls can be found in the .doc file within the archive. There isn’t much else at this stage, and the concept images don’t give too much away about what the game was to entail.
Within the assets, it seems there were plans for vehicles such as light tank, heavy tank, gyro copter, hover sled, hover/plasma bike, heavy quad, spyder and plasma sled. Each would have different sets of specifications and attributes, which you can see from the images in the gallery.
Some of the concept screens suggest that you were to be able to create your own characters for the game, changing features of your avatar such as hair, lips and eyes. In addition to this, the ability to construct your very own craft to use within the game too, and what seems to be levels as well.
Our guess is that the aim was to fight against other craft and try and survive and climb up some kind of league table. No doubt there would have been a range of obstacles added to avoid and to also take cover. We’ll hopefully learn more in the future from those involved.
It seems the demo was pitched around to various publishers at the time, but didn’t get any takers. As a result, remains of the title have been resting in an archive for about 30 years. There could be more to find in the future, and if we do – we’ll be sure to update this page.
With thanks to Mark Greenshields for allowing us to preserve and make available.
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