Trojan (C64) - 1986 Elite

A big finding for GTW, thanks to Zeldin/Cascade, who came across a bizarre set of files on a bunch of second hand disks. These were named Trojan Demo 1 + 2.

Upon further examination, it seems that the preview was of an early conversion of a Capcom arcade (http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?game_id=10202). A bit more digging and we found that Elite were in fact linked to the conversion for the ZX Spectrum here.

When we queried things with Steve Wilcox from Elite, he mentioned that they considered it but Capcom’s commercial terms were unrealistic and the game only “middling”. Funnily enough the Elite evidence is very strong, as there is a message from the programmer which says “I would have liked to have written Scooby Doo”.

The previews we have are of a working title screen and high-score, and of a scrolling part of level 1. None of it is playable, but the files are labelled 1 and 3, which means that a second file is actually missing and could well be out there somewhere. Just how the game got leaked anyway in this current form we don’t know, but we believe that it was on a BBS. Maybe someone has all the files, and maybe part 2 is actually a playable version? Do you know where it is?

We believe that the development was by Durell, and quite likely Ron Jeffs – who was their main C64 developer. This means that Rob Hubbard would have been doing the music (who had Trojan listed down in his invoice history). Clive Townsend confirmed he did the ZX version at Durell and recalls seeing the other versions in development too. The ZX version thankfully has been saved in its final state.

In 2012 we did have reason to believe that FTL (part of Gargoyle Games) was behind the conversion, though we need to track down Roy Carter and Greg Follis to confirm for sure, but then many moons ago we found some odd ninja sprites tucked away in the Hitpak version of 1942 (see gallery). Could these potentially have been intended for Trojan? If so, then it suggests that the developer could well have been Stephen Green who did 1942. But our money is still on Ron Jeffs.

If you know anything more or can help us find the missing second file – then please do get in touch.

Contributions: Zeldin / Cascade, Steve Wilcox, Martyn Carroll, Clive Townsend, Jan Harries, Andrew Fisher, OmegaMax