Games That Weren't^®

Hyper Galactic Warrior is a title that has been around for some time, possibly first surfacing on Compunet as a preview.

The game is a Uridium clone, of which there were plenty at the time. This suggests the game is dated at around 1986-87. The game was written by a chap called Ian Moran, who produced another Uridium’esq game that never was called Omega Ceti. We believe this was the follow on from that initial preview, where the split screen approach was ditched.

Overall, it isn’t a bad title – but it is very likely that the simularities to Hewson’s classic meant that this one was never going to get a release. Maybe we have it wrong, and Omega Ceti was in response to this by making a game with a slight twist (split screen).

Well, Ian got in touch and confirmed that the game was never more than a scratch about to upload to compunet. They were also written in a way using the Expert Cartridge which meant the game was not really expandable. Ian was basically playing and testing things out. See Creator Speaks for more details.

This therefore draws a conclusion to this title and solves the mystery. This is as far as the game ever got, and therefore is case closed!

Not entirely sure how we missed this, but it was tucked away in the demo archives as Pulse Preview. We discovered it by going through Cory Kin’s CNet disks and got a bit of a surprise to see a proper conversion of the Spectrum classic.

Due to the date of production, we don’t believe this was official at all – and could be the reason why the game was abandoned. The preview we attach here is sort of an advert for the upcoming conversion by Pulse Productions, which were a demo group active mostly on CNet at the time. It gives some intro text, followed by a short animated sequence of the game and the jet pac guy getting into the rocket.

After pressing space a few times, a conversion of the Spectrum loading screen is presented.

There is no doubt that the game could have been converted perfectly fine. The question is whether anything came from this preview, and if anything playable was ever actually produced. However, worst case – we have been blessed with a brilliant Jet Pac clone called Rocket Smash in the RGCD 2013 competition – so we do now finally have a decent conversion of sorts.

But what of this intriguing Speccy port? How far did it get? Well, so far Sean Connolly, Duncan MacDonald and Dave Edwardson don’t believe that it got any further than this demo – so it looks like an accurate Spectrum port isn’t on the cards just yet!

Omega Ceti is a title that has been around for some time, possibly first surfacing on Compunet as a preview.

The game is an interesting Uridium clone of sorts – which has a split screen display for two players to fly over a dreadnought and fight together. Quite a unique approach. The game was written by a chap called Ian Moran, who produced another Uridium’esq game that never was called Hyper Galactic Warrior. We believe that Hyper Galactic Warrior may have been born from this original demo, which Ian suggests he developed in 1986.

It’s a well produced game for its time, and has plenty of promise. What stopped Ian from finishing it? Was it real life commitments, or a case of too many Uridium clones on the market?

Well, Ian got in touch and confirmed that the game was never more than a scratch about to upload to compunet. They were also written in a way using the Expert Cartridge which meant the game was not really expandable. Ian was basically playing and testing things out. See Creator Speaks for more details.

This therefore draws a conclusion to this title and solves the mystery. This is as far as the game ever got, and therefore is case closed!

Our next entry has very little in the way of clues, apart from this loading screen created by Lizard for Tim Rogers and Darrin Stubbington. We believe the screen was released on Compunet at some point, and was found lurking on Cory Kin’s disks.

The loading screen depicts a castle on a hill, with a path leading to it. There is no clue to any company on the screen, just the names of those involved.

We asked Darrin Stubbington regarding the picture, and he couldn’t quite recall what the game was about. All he could remember that it was for Melbourne House. In the end, Darrin suggested that this game may have turned into Throne of Fire. However, we’re not entirely certain of this – as there have been no clues in the press to Mike Singleton’s game being called anything different.

One possibility is that Questerious was a similar game which Darrin and Tim were working on, but with Mike’s game coming along – they decided to ditch the similar game, and as compensation – get Tim and Darrin to do the C64 conversion of Throne of Fire. Pure speculation of course!

Well, Tim pretty much confirmed to us that this was to be an original game – but before they could get into the work, things switched over to Throne of Fire for Melbourne House. He believes that nothing was really started, and it was only really at the planning stage before it was cancelled. The screen is possibly all that may exist! If Tim does by chance find something some day, we shall hear about it I’m sure!

We need a lot more information on this title, from Cory in particular – but on Cory Kin’s disks, we found a series of bits and pieces (mostly graphics) for a sort of RPG/Gauntlet looking game. We believe it was called Questor 3, though this also needs confirming.

It is possible that this was a very early game from Cory, being developed in Laser Basic. Just what sort of game it would have been isn’t fully clear, but the screens we have extracted suggest a text adventure or RPG title.

Once we have more information, we’ll be back with the details. For now, check out the screens we have salvaged.

An interesting entry for our next title. Activision have a history of different versions of their games existing – Wonderboy, Afterburner, Time Scanner, Enduro Racer, Karnov to name a few. Could Rampage have been yet another to add to the list?

This demo has been around for some time now, but the scroller suggests that this preview was actually preview of a game in development. With Bart Meeuwissen (White/The Judges) being the main developer, and Marco Scheepers as the graphic artist (who later did the graphics for 5th Gear). The demo shows a potential loading screen, and then a character selection screen.

We assume that the game was in development, but there are no clues online to anything else leaked or what happened to this other development. We believe that Jeroen Kimmel would have been involved in the music, but nothing in HVSC suggests this just yet.

A lot will result on us finding Bart and Marco, and getting their input of what was happening at the time. Was this an official production for Activision, or just made up text for the demo? Time will tell!

Another game which has been in the C64 archives for sometime, but one which hasn’t really had much attention. Rim Raiders is a early title by Paul Shirley of Spindizzy and Confusion where you must simply blast what are called Sprints and Spinners to progress through the different zones. In the game, you must collect jewels (like Spindizzy ironically) for extra shield.

The game was credited to Paul Shirley for 1985, with details saying that the last build was in 1987. It is likely that the game was actually got to a point in 1985 and forgotten about, and Paul just compiled up a version for Compunet in 1987… maybe as an advert for his coding skills? It seems odd that someone like Incentive didn’t see the game and want to publish it.

We hope to speak to Paul sometime in the future and find out what the plans were for this game. Was there more to the game though and was it actually meant for anyone?

Temple of Medom is an early and very strange game, where you control a bird initially flying over a landscape. Pressing fire and moving actually allows you to fly, but you can also land on the ground and turn into a man who then gets trees and other objects walking at him.

The demo is heavily bugged, and dying many times will result in the game crashing out.

There is no indication of who this game was being developed by or who it was for. It has been in the digital archives for some time as well. We believe that it was released onto Compunet, so was an abandoned game very early on in the C64’s life.

Was it shown around to different companies and rejected? Did the coder lose interest? Who was the coder?

Many questions and no answers as of yet.

Paul Baker is not necessarily a name you may recognize straight away, but he was the coder of Ghostbusters 2, Jet Boys and Road Warrior – but also the Empire Strikes Back game which we’ve had in the GTW archives for some time.

Starswarm was another title by Paul which was never to see the light of day properly – we don’t know exactly why either. Presentation and game was looking to be shaping up pretty well – CRL would have happily snapped the game up i’m sure. Well, neither CRL or any other company did – so we guess that Paul just decided to release it into the wild and onto Compunet.

Was there anything more to the game than just this preview? Who was the game actually intended for?

Steven Day suggests that Starswarm was uploaded onto CNet and suggests it was probably just a tech demo to send out looking for work. According to Steven, CNet was jammed with them in the 87 period – suggesting that Empire Strikes Back and Goldrunner were similar stories too.

Paul Baker could be a hard character to try and track down to find out more, but we’ll see. It is hoped that some day we will find out exactly what the intentions were for this game.

Uridibad was released onto Compunet by Sensible Software back in 1986, and what seems like a joke at the expense of Uridium – was actually going to be a full game.

Jason Kelk posed the question to Jon Hare via Retro Gamer magazine back in 2009 about if there were plans for more. Jon mentioned that it was originally planned to be taken further and released in the same way that Galax-I-Birds was by Firebird, but other games superseeded it.

A shame, as a piss-take version of Uridium with the same humour as with Galax-I-Birds would have been superb!

So we are pretty sure that there isn’t anything else to really see apart from this demo. The finished game of course would have had music and improved graphics, but what else would have been included?

Hopefully some day Chris Yates will shed some light on this budget title and what the plans were exactly for it.