A game that was due to be released from Ronald Mayer, who was an Austrian programmer of a large number of C64 games in the 80’s.
In a 2015 interview, Ronald reveals that Maze Patrol was to be his first full price game that would be released by Swiss company Linel.
Ronald recalled the following in the interview:
“I wrote the programme completely in assembler, drew a cover image – very demanding, it was week-long labour, but nothing emerged. That was my only game which was never released. It was called MAZE PATROL, no one knows about it… it was certainly one of the most extensive. That was a disappointment.”
The game was actually completed in 1987, after Linel approached Ronald to write the game. The game was completely written on spec, but when he gave them the finished game – they did nothing with it at all. Unfortunately he was never paid for his work either.
According to interviewer Christian Genzel, Ronald told him that the game was similar to his Hungry Hoodlum game – but he admitted it wasn’t a great game overall.
Musician Helmut Melcher got in touch in September 2020 to confirm that they did a series of music jobs, and did a composition for Maze Patrol. It is hoped that maybe the music could be at least recovered if the game cannot. But is there perhaps a copy of the game out there which contains Helmut’s music already?
Do you know anything more about it?
Contributions: Lenny Bronstein, Helmut Melcher
Supporting content
Update history
07/08/20 – Added musician credit.
In the years 1987 – 1989, I did a few
programming and games music jobs
for LinEl. In April 4th 1987, I sent the
music and music coding to Ronald.
I still have a copy of the letter, and
a print out of code and data.
So: The music and its coding for
MazePatrol on C64 stems from me.
Regards
Helmut Melcher
Many thanks Helmut! It would be fantastic if your music composed for the game could be found and added to the High Voltage Sid Collection at least. Hopefully we may find a copy of the game, which includes your music (if we can get hold of Ronald.)