Our next entry, Rebelstar 2 is a bit of an odd one as the first game never even got released on the C64 either. But sure enough the sequel was advertised by Silverbird in Zzap issue 44.
After contacting Richard Hewison from The Bird Sanctuary website, he confirmed that they mostly released adverts which never rang actually true. So it seemed that this was purely vapourware.
Thanks to @C64Takeaway, we have had confirmation from Julian Gollop himself to say that the C64 version never existed. So it seemed Richard was right!
BUT – a twist in the tale – as Dave Korn confirmed in 2015 that he definitely converted Rebelstar 2 to the C64. He is very certain that the game was never actually canned, but although he completed the port – Telecomsoft was sold off and shut down before it could be published.
This certainly the case as Silverbird ceased to be! So we now have a full game to try and find, and Dave is hopeful that he may be able to find it some day in his attic. As of 2026, he’s not yet found anything – but if anything does surface, we’ll be the first to know.
The game was ported across directly from the Spectrum to the C64. It roughly took only a day to get the majority converted, and maybe a few more for tidy ups. Dave kindly shared a few details about the process in August 2026:
“I have one story I remember from doing that conversion. There was 6144 bytes of assorted binary map and graphic data that I had to transfer from the Spectrum version to the C64. I considered doing something clever, like writing a speccy tape loader for the C64, then decided to just go for the dumb solution: I wrote code on the speccy to print it all out on the screen (with checksums), sat there with a cheap Walkman and a C-90 and recorded myself reading it all out. Then I sat down in front of the C64, stuck the headphones on, pressed play and typed it all back in. Worked first time, only took a couple of hours and was probably quicker than writing and debugging a speccy tape loader for the C64.”
We hope to have more soon, as it would be amazing to see something found in the future.
Contributions: Richard Hewison, C64Takeaway, Julian Gollop, Dave Korn, Dougan, Iain Black
https://uta.pokefinder.org/Ultimate_Tape_Archive/Paste-Man_Pat_(1989_Silverbird)_%5b4558%5d/Extras/Inlay.jpg
Thanks Dougan, i’ll add to the page quickly!
Gutted to hear game was finished, but never released.I poured so many hours into C64 Laser Squad+Lords Of Chaos, yet we had crumbs from the table compared to ZX Speccy owners.