Flashpoint

Ocean

Status: No Download, Findability: 2/5

Flashpoint was another production of the highly successful Denton Designs for Ocean Software.

This was to be a puzzler based game with the screen split into two segments and controlling some kind of pyramid structure. It wasn’t a bad game, but it wasn’t particularly great either it seems.

The game was advertised very briefly in Commodore Computing International, and briefly in other magazines with small mentions. Flashpoint was pretty much completed according to rumours at the time.

Stuart Fotheringham shed some light on the title, and indicated that after Ocean turned down Starrace, Flashpoint got pulled shortly afterwards. This may have been due to the game being a bit too crap for Ocean’s liking. To prove the rumours to how complete the game was, the game eventually got released in some way on the Spectrum through a “Your Sinclair” covertape and can be found on the World of Spectrum website.

Sadly the C64 version never surfaced in a similiar way, which leads us to believe that it wasn’t quite as complete as the Spectrum version. It was however completed!

Artist Paul McCarthy confirms that he did the loading screen and in-game graphics for the game, which had a more futuristic Tron-esque graphical look. The code was done by none other than Mike Hutchinson, who is famous for Double Dragon 2 and Final Fight.

The problem was that Flashpoint was considered too cerebral and hard to master by the publishers and never released. Sadly Mike no longer has anything C64 related, so this could well be lost forever.

A puzzling curiosity of the scene…

Contributions: Brendan Phoenix, Stuart Fotheringham, Aidan Lockett, Paul McCarthy, Mike Hutchinson

Supporting content

Update history

31/05/16 – Developer credits confirmed and sad news!

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 3 Comments

3 Responses to Flashpoint

  1. Just a hunch/long shot

    Stuart Fotheringham who is refered in the article was the graphic artist of a similar graphicwise game a year later named Troll (1988) of this unique looking game .

    http://ready64.it/giochi/scheda_gioco/id/1753/troll

    Also Fred Gray was the sound fx/music developer for both games Flashpoint & Troll .

    I mean is there any chance/possibility that in Troll some assets/graphics engine were recycled and reincarnated to the Troll game .
    It may be just a coincedence …

    • Hi Nemo – you could well be onto something, though Stuart confirmed he had nothing to do with a C64 edition. A young chap called “Ralph” said he did a loading screen, and did a loading screen for Hard Drivin’ It could be possible that the coder was Mike Hutchinson as a result, as Ralph done a lot of work with him. Not sure who coded Troll though – but you’re right, both games are very similar!

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