First offered in Zzap issue 62 in their Zzuperstore as a special offer, Purple Saturn Day never quite made the light of day on the C64 for reasons still unknown today.
Judging by the adverts published in CVG, the game was a kind of sequel to Captain Blood, featuring very similar graphics and published by the same publisher. Now Exxos didn’t stay around long, but they were part of Infogrammes, who still go strong today. So it wasn’t a publisher crash which caused this title to die out.
Strangely the game was actually released across most of the planned formats, but just never happened on the C64. It received good results throughout the magazines, even on the Spectrum where it got a grade in the 80-90% range.
The only guess is that either the developers ran into troubles with the game on the C64, or the C64 version was dropped as Infogrammes moved away from the C64. Infogrammes were not too keen on the C64 due to their French roots, where the Amstrad, Spectrum and Amiga were far more popular.
With a developer name now known, it seems that something was started! Thierry Levastre was the programmer, who spoke with Arcade Attack in 2017 and revealed that this was the first game he worked on as a conversion to the C64 for EXXOS. It was a freelance contract, and he mentions limitations of the four colours by blocks of 8×4 on a 16 or 8 colour palette. Transparent colours included, all done using an Atari ST.
Weekly Italian magazine Videogiochi C64 did feature the game, but only a poster oddly – and no C64 specific coverage. We’ve added scans for the meantime.
It’s not clear how far the conversion had got or why it was cancelled – Thierry didn’t go into it any further. Sadly we’ve learnt thanks to Andrew Fisher that Thierry has recently passed away.
Contributions: Peter Weighill, Ross Sillifant, Nemo, Andrew Fisher, Fabrizio Bartoloni, Archive.org
Sorry for my usual flood of comments, upon further investigation I’ve found out it’s number 6 from 1989, full copy in PDF and other formats here: https://archive.org/details/VideogiochiC64/V64_06/
Thanks Fabrizio and no worries – adding scans now!
It’s a shame they didn’t have some C64 specific coverage :(
Addendum, the issue is from 1989: https://www.ebay.it/itm/405426083091
I still remember it being talked on the game press, e.g.: here is “Videogiochi C64”, a weekly Italian games magazine, there is one such issue on sale right now on eBay:
mag cover: https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/au0AAOSw2UBm027m/s-l1600.jpg
game poster for C64: https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/lE0AAOSwS1Nm027n/s-l1600.jpg
P.S.: I’ve downloaded the pics in case the eBay sale ends before you manage to check it out.
Sadly, Thierry Levastre has just passed away. But this linked interview mentions it with a possible C64 screenshot…
http://obligement.free.fr/articles/itwlevastre.php
Thanks Andrew – that’s really sad to hear :( I’ve checked the article, and the screenshot shown seems to be from the CPC version (based on the colour palette). I did reach out to Thierry a few times over the years, but sadly didn’t hear back.
“Thierry Levastre”
http://www.bozocircus.free.fr/tlevastre_cv2.pdf
(Conversion pour la C64)
http://www.bozocircus.free.fr/e_purple.php
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http://usebu.forumactif.org/t1030-thierry-levastre
“. 4. After making the adaptation of Purple Saturn Day Exxos C64, you go home Ocean France. You take part in 1991 in adapting Pang who will win the Golden Tilt Best Adapted arcade! “
ST review in ACE Issue 17 Feb’89 (Pages 46+47 if your looking to put more scans up ) has C64/128 version as :Under Development.
At the end of C+VG’s ST review, they have both C64 and Zx Speccy versions as arriving later in the spring.(Issue 89 P35 if your looking to put image up.)