After the discovery of various bits and pieces which were created by Apex and that never saw the light of day, there remained a few demos which didn’t really tie into any particular GTW titles.
So as the Rowland Brothers are highly regarded on the C64 scene, it felt right to put together a small compilation of some of their lost works. This is why this entry is simply called "Apex Demos".
The first demo is simply of two bikes with a raster title in the center of the screen. This may have been an advertisement, or simply Steve testing his drawing skills. It has not been confirmed that this was for a game being produced.
The second demo consists of a series of large sprites, which look as if they were being developed for Retrograde. It is likely that these have actually been used, but this demo is demonstrating these large sprites flying from left to right.
The final demo is something a little bit different for fans of Creatures. A special demo of Creatures created for the Emap fair back in 1990. This was rushed overnight as the Apex crew tried to tie up a demo to show people at the show. The difference with this particular demo of Creatures is that its not actually playable. John Rowlands has programmed the game to play by itself in a variety of ways and showing different progressions… almost as if they were playing a video feed of the game in action. Not giving anything away there it seems :-)
In 2008, Jason Mackenzie dug out a few little extras too… 4 previously unseen screens. Cyberdyne Warrior loading screen (Which can also be found in the Cyberdyne Intro entry) and also:
1) Spaceship picture … Which some people may recognise from the pages of Commodore Format when they did a feature on Vidcom!
2) The Ultimate Warrior … Which could be a loading screen of another GTW?… We’re not sure yet!
and
3) Porsche R69 … A cool little car picture.
And that is it… a few little snippets of C64 code from Apex which have not seen the light of day until now. Maybe there will be more in the future, and certainly we will try and add it too!
No case to chase, but something to check out for curiosity…
Contributions: Jason Mackenzie, Steve Rowlands