Tarot (Commodore Amiga) - Games That Weren't

1989 Light Source Productions

Platform: Commodore Amiga

Following on from recent recoveries of Maximum Overdrive and Solar Wind, we’re adding a very early entry for a title called Tarot, which sadly didn’t get particularly far in development. What is present though is a sort of Tir Na Nog / Shadow of the Beast inspired looking game with large main characters and some very atmospheric backdrops.

The recovery comes thanks to programmer Lance Abson, who recently revisited the project after rediscovering a collection of original floppy disks from the late 1980s. After getting in touch with Games That Weren’t, the disks were carefully restored, imaged and preserved, with Lance very kindly allowing the recovered materials to now be added to the archives. Lance revealed in a recent video on his Lost Pixel Vault channel that development on Tarot began back in 1989 when he was just 14 years old, teaming up with game designer Jim (surname currently unknown) to create what was intended to be a large fantasy adventure for the Amiga 500.

According to Jim’s original design notes, the game would see “Chaos reign throughout the land” as a magician tasks the hero with recovering three magical stones – the Sun, Moon and Star stones – and returning them to the Temple of Harmony. The adventure would take place across a mysterious fourth dimension accessed through a magical crystal. Lance recalls in his video that the pair had ambitious plans for 22 levels based around tarot cards, though only around half a dozen areas were ever started.

On one of the recovered disks is some early source code which, when compiled, produces a simple character test with a parallax scrolling background that can be moved left or right. Although there is no sound or real gameplay implemented, the build already demonstrates some promising technical work, including layered scenery, large animated sprites and early experiments with masking to allow the main character to walk behind trees and scenery objects.

Other disks contain graphical assets for the project, gameplay sequences, animation frames and a map builder utility. Lance notes that many of the graphics were drawn frame-by-frame in Deluxe Paint on a 7MHz Amiga 500. Several different backdrop themes were created, alongside enemy graphics and a very polished looking walk-cycle animation for the main character.

Perhaps most remarkably, Lance was also able to compile the original source code successfully under WinUAE after the disks had been restored and imaged. The project consists of 2,483 lines of 68000 assembly code written during his early teenage years. The review also highlighted a few bugs and quirks that Lance notes were fairly typical of commercial Amiga games from the era. The recovered disks also contained a few additional surprises, including some gameplay test sequences, sprite experiments and a small demo that Lance says would later influence sprite scaling techniques used in his later unreleased Ferrari racing game project from 1992.

Developer Lance Abson admitted that he had largely forgotten about Tarot over the years until rediscovering the disks recently, though he recalled in his video how heavily inspired the project was by games such as Tir Na Nog. Thankfully the disks were successfully restored and preserved before any further deterioration could occur, allowing the materials to finally be saved properly after more than 35 years. Its a fascinating glimpse into an ambitious teenage Amiga project that sadly never progressed beyond its early stages, but even in this incomplete form there is already a lot of promise and atmosphere on show.

With a huge thank you to Lance Abson for trusting Games That Weren’t with the preservation work and for allowing us to share the recovered materials with you all.