A late entry into the GTW64 archives now with City Survivor, a game which has been doing the rounds for many years – but has just passed us by. That might be because entries for the game suggest that it was released in 1988 by Grandslam, but that wasn’t the case at all.
The game reminds me a lot of Rags to Riches, and has you control a character who has to visit different locations in a City, such as a bank and a food place. I think the idea is to try and keep making money and keep yourself alive for as long as possible.
It seems that the programmer Bas Klaaysen had sent it off to Grandslam for publication, but it was never to be. In 2025, Bas commented on a YouTube video of the game and explains more about what the aim of the game was – which you can read in our Creators Speak segment below.
A shame to hear the experience had by Bas, where essentially where the game was never picked up and source code had been stolen, making Bas never want to make games again. Thankfully what remained of the game managed to make it out, and we’ve added an early preview and what seems to be the final version. As its not complete, and confirmed as so by Bas, we have set as a “preview”. Hopefully we’ll learn more about this intriguing title in the future.
Contributions: Bultro
Supporting content
Available downloads
- Preview_CitySurvivor (zip)
Gallery
Creator speaks
Bas Klaaysen talks about his game:
“I programmed this game in assembler around 1988-89. Took me a year of my spare time I still got the handwritten designs of the graphics, memory addresses etc. Once finished the playability and graphics was too outdated to have it commercially set out. The idea was to have the character survive by working at the build site, eating, drinking, getting money out of the bank, empty the guts in the toilet, distraction at the playroom, brothel and fitness room.
All with the obstacles as seen. I had not fully adjusted the difficulties of the subgames yet and sound effects were still to be planned. Having programmed the game I never played games anymore. The disappointment of not selling the game and having part of the source code stolen at the time made me decide to never try to program anything commercially again although I started my computer science studies shortly after, with the c64 experiences background in mind.”
Bas Klaaysen
