Our next set of prototypes into the Games That Weren’t archive are a special set of IK+ prototypes for the Atari ST (and a possible one for the Amiga too), and graphical assets showing early differences and features not in the final game.
There are two prototype builds for the Atari ST, both of which contain what seems to be a blood dripping effect at the start which didn’t make the final cut from what we can see. One build seems to be quite a bit earlier, and features no music and hasn’t had fine tuning for the gameplay. You start with a red belt, even though you are on white belt – and the bonus games play after 1 fight.
The bombs also seem to be graphically missing, and there are likely a number of other differences too. The other prototype has a proper loader, and now contains music – but the same blood effect at the start. This is much closer to the final game – though again will likely contain some subtle differences to the final release. Let us know if you spot anything interesting!
One of the last asset disks on the ST has a few TOS files which run and demonstrate parts of the game, including animations, scores and message boards. We have also included an Amiga build which doesn’t seem to boot properly, but if you load the “1” file, the game loads up. This seems to be close to a final build, with some graphical and sound glitches.
Found within many of the disks were the samples used within the game, which may include a few that didn’t make the final cut. There was also a large number of graphical assets as NEOChrome files, many of which feature sprites that were never used (including many for the background animations), logo and background tests and what seems to be some video titles that were. There are also a number of other test drawings done by Archer (including some shirt designs – some with IK+ on), many of these can be seen below in the gallery – see what you can spot!
With huge thanks to Chris Wilkins (Fusion Retro Books) for the loan of Archer’s disks to preserve and permission to add executables to the site and Alan Hammerton for hardware help.
In memory of Archer Maclean – 28 January 1962 – 17 December 2022.
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Nice to see the IK+ sprites sheets in the assets. Looks like Archer had planned a racing game called Quattro based on some of the images on the ST disk!