1986 Unknown
Platform: Amstrad CPC
Bounty Hunter is a new finding and recovery at Games That Weren’t, and a relatively advanced multi-screen platformer for the Amstrad CPC. The game has a main character navigating slopes and throwing grenades, and with land-mines that set off a very Raffaele Cecco-style explosion. Perhaps Raffaele was even involved with the development?
The high-score screen lists a “Raffaele”, and also a “Nick” (which could be referring to Nick Jones). There are other credits though much higher up though, including a “Leo”, “Nigel”, “Chris” and “Jim”. Is it all merely a co-incidence?
In the meantime, we’ve added this advanced development thanks to Dean Hickingbottom, who recovered the game from the development disks of Keith Goodyer. It could well be a demo by Keith, though the credits are strange and Keith normally credited himself. The title does has some similarities to the earlier preservation of Time Lords that was made, and which Keith created.
Actually – you’ll notice that segments of the background graphics and the font are exactly the same. Time Lords though came 2 years after this game, and was much simpler overall – so perhaps Time Lords was just an attempt to re-purpose parts of this game as a budget release of some kind.
We are seriously wondering if this could have perhaps been the game that inspired Raff to create Exolon and then take to Hewson. In an interview at Crash with Graeme Mason, he mentions being inspired by a character created by a friend who could launch rockets from his back. Here the character launches grenades, but its in a very similar style. Is there a link? We’ll try and get confirmation from Raff very soon.
The prototype we have here may actually consist of a few levels (and looking in the code suggests it), and there could even be an ending screen too. We were only able to play through The Swamp first level before dying each time. Unfortunately the grenades don’t seem to do much, but you can shoot enemies and get pick ups to help you through. It’s pretty tough though, and if you loose all your energy, you lose a life and are sent all the way back to the start.
To load the game, attach the disk in an emulator like WinAPE and then type “|CPM” without quotes. It will boot into CPM mode, where you can then type “bounty” (without quotes) to then load the prototype in.
It’s a great recovery thanks to Dean, and we hope to learn a lot more about the development in the future. We feel there is a lot more to it, and more of a story to share over time. For now, check it out for yourself and tell us if you find anything interesting!
With a huge thank you to Dean Hickingbottom for preserving and allowing us to release.
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Thanks! i was curious to see if the game endend somehow and tried using saves, but seems impossible to go past part 3, since energy drain is massive and there is only one energy filler throuh the way..
Would be intresting trying with an energy cheat, but i’m totally dumb at this things :(
No problem at all. That’s good to hear there are more parts overall – I would be interested to see an energy cheat as well to see more of the game and how far it can go. There does seem to be a completion message in the code too.
sorry, i’m not very familiar with cpc. i tried to load disk file but it gave me “direct command found”..what i’m supposed to do? i tried every cpc configuration..sorry!
Ah apologies – i’ve forgot to mention that you will need to first run CPM. First type “|cpm” (without quotes) and it should boot into CP/M 2.2 with a prompt.
Afterwards, just enter “bounty” (again without quotes, and press enter) and it will load up.