Pegasus and the Trials of Perseus was yet another early C64 game that got some heavy advertising, but never seemed to quite make it for reasons unknown yet. There were various adverts in magazines at the time, and even a review!
As described by the review (if it was indeed a review at all – see the scans and the same matching screenshot as the advert), the game puts you in search of the treasures of the gods. You have the favour of Olympus as you ride Pegasus, the great winged stallion.
On your steed, you soar skyward to perform heroic deeds. Following the riddled advice of Zeus, you then fly over the rolling hills of Greece towards the temples of the Titans. When you dismount, sword in hand you must fight Cyclops, Medusa and the Centaur.
The game also had speech synthesis throughout and various 3D effects and looked pretty good in its single static screenshot. So what happened to the game?…. we aren’t quite sure, but Tymac did release a few titles for the C64. Maybe they went bust just before it got a release?
Thanks to Fabrizio Bartoloni, we learn that the game featured in a bit more detail within Commodore Power Play issue 8, and it is here where its revealed that Game Gems were behind the development – meaning its likely that the developer and artist was the same as who did Flyer Fox. As a result, we’ve added the same credits for now.
According to the article, the game was presented at CES 1984, and it seems therefore this was a game that was fully playable and got quite far. Can it therefore be saved?
Contributions: Peter Weighill, Fabrizio Bartoloni
The GB64 I forgot to mention (facepalm): https://gb64.com/game.php?id=2837&d=18&h=0
Thanks Fabrizio – this is great work! Updated the page with the details, plus extra scans! I’ll get adding First Strike as well!
Addendum: via this GB64 entry on another Tymac game we learn Game Gems was employing Charles Teufert as a programmer and Gregory Carbonaro as graphic artist, the former also worked on another Tymac title, Type Sniper. Last but not least, you may notice the other games list in the link from my previous comment were published but Pegasus and “First Strike”, the latter not listed at GB64 nor in GTW64.
Pegasus and the other talking games by Tymac were presented at CES 1984 and developed by Game Gems Inc. according to Commodore Powerplay Issue 08 of Spring 1984 page 24: https://it.scribd.com/document/14500599/Commodore-Power-Play-1984-Issue-08-V3-N01-Spring#content=query:pegasus,pageNum:26,indexOnPage:0,bestMatch:false . The accompanying screenshot is the same already featured in your gallery but in larger resolution.