Early days, but it seems that Empire Software were considering a sequel very early on to Pipe Mania, so much so that a design document was produced with all the details by The Assembly Line back in 1991. A massive thank you to Paul Cawley for recovering and scanning these details.
Although no C64 conversion is mentioned (only Atari ST, Amiga and PC), it is likely that Empire would have arranged for a conversion to have taken place. Assembly Line clearly state that they do not want to do the 8-bit versions at all.
Assembly Line produced a design document that you can find in the scans area below, and which depicts at least 50 levels in total, borrowing ideas from both Klax and Loopz to extend the basic theme of the game. The idea was that each level would have a set of tasks to complete, such as “Make four sections, each five pieces long”.
There was concern about borrowing ideas, but there is no intention to just rip both games off. Did Empire perhaps get cold feet because of this?
One innovative feature was to be various control options for the user to choose from and whichever they felt most comfortable with. They could even choose mouse as well. A two player mode was also to be included, as well as bonus levels to break up the tasks.
There seems to be no evidence that the design was taken forward or started at this stage, but we hope to find out more soon. It wasn’t until much later when Empire released a sequel, which doesn’t seem to follow this design document at all.
More soon on this one we hope.
Contributions: Paul Cawley
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