A new finding for GTW, and a neat looking preview of a sooped up Defender style of game. Deadhead was done as a small project whilst Wayne and Anthony were working on another project. Wayne originally posted all of his disks across, which is when we found Deadhead.
The other good news is that one of the Amiga disks supplied actually contained an Amiga version of the game (Thanks to Adrian from aGTW for the porting!) An entry for this can be found at https://amiga.abime.net/games/view/deadhead
The game was almost completed, and features a standard Defender style of game, an asteroid belt sub level and a end of level guardian. There was also to be a Paradroid style level integrated, but this seems to have been dropped for reasons unknown.
We did however recover a preview which shows an early test scroll for the lost level and some block graphics from some Amiga disks. I’m not sure how complete the game is, but it seems to go on for a long while. The game contains no music, which we doubt was ever started.
The game seems to have been cancelled as the C64 started to die out… the machine was not really profitable any longer. It asks questions about why the Amiga version was not released… but I guess now it is time to try and find Anthony to find out more.
Wayne suggests that they didn’t approach any publishers for the game at the time. He moved to Manchester, and the coder went to University in Swansea – and that was that sadly.
It isn’t anything fantastic or ground-breaking, but it is a nice finding with some good techniques and effects used throughout.
More soon on this game we hope…
Contributions: Wayne Billingham, Adrian Simpson, 6R6
