Remember Hoppin’ Mad by Elite? That game where you control a set of bouncing balls across a landscape? Well Vicious Circle was to be a similar sort of game, with a larger ball and only one of them – bouncing around various obstacles (with right to left scrolling) and shooting various enemies.
The title was being coded by a chap called Alan Jesse, who worked on a few games that never quite made it – including a game called Quantum – which eventually got a release on Commodore Zone magazine.
The graphics were also done by Alan, but some (including the loading screen) were done by Jason Kelk.
Luckily this particular title from Alan got leaked out to the world many years ago, and so we can present a download option for you to check the game out. At this early stage, it isn’t completely playable – but there is a show of promise with a nice game engine taking shape.
Sadly it seems the leak is what killed the game, which upset the developers. It had been originally banded to various budget labels at the time under the Bigtime Software label, but sadly without any joy.
Jason suggests that there was a later version which had more variety, a bigger selection of weapons – but its not clear if Jason has a copy of it. Maybe some day we could see more of this game.
Could it have been a fun and thrill filled budget title back in the day? We’ll never know!
Contributions: Jason Kelk
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Available downloads
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Creator speaks
Jason Kelk speaks about work on Vicious Circle
“Vicious Circle was Alan’s first game, written around the same time I was writing Co-Axis and both were sent off to budget houses (along with a few other odds and ends) under the Bigtime Software label to see if they’d be interested.
A later demo of the game existed at one point which has more variety and a bigger selection of weapons, but I’m not sure if I’ve actually got it. The Rough Trade crack of Vicious Circle and Co-Axis upset all of us to the point where both games were canned.”
