Games That Weren't^®

Final Eclipse was to be a 3D space shooter published by a company called Boone in 1983. The game was being coded by Rebecca Ann Heineman at the time and it is believed the game was coming on well.

The game was based on an ongoing saga of Captain Brian Fargo and how he saved the Earth from being a block of ice.

Rebecca’s work consisted of a tech demo where it faked 3D, where you would fly a ship over terrain that was a grid that moved in 3D. The camera could not turn, it could only move forward, backward, left strafe and right strafe. The grid would move in perfect 3D – however since Rebecca could not turn the camera, there was no option to calculate rotation – which was how Rebecca did image rendering on the Vic 20.

Sadly the game was never to be as Boone go into market and internal problems in 1983, and everyone was sadly laid off. The company suspended operations as a result, and a group of Boone programmers led by Brian Fargo went on to form Interplay.

Final Eclipse was caught up in the storm as a result and was never finished.

Although Rebecca had the box from the game, sadly it was only the box that Rebecca had kept and the game is now long gone. It will require a miraculous finding to ever see anything of the game.

Case closed!

It has always been wondered what happened to the sequel to Olli and Lissa on the C64. Especially if you consider that the first game was released by Firebird, and the 3rd game was released by Codemasters. We learn that Silverbird was to release the game on the Spectrum, Amstrad and C64 back in 1989… but sadly only the Spectrum version seems to have surfaced with its “Halloween” sub title and theme.

Just what happened to the C64 version, we do not yet know – maybe Silverbird went under after the Microprose take over before the C64 version could quite sneak out? Very possible, maybe the Spectrum version was ahead in its development?

It is possible that the conversion was being done by the same person who did the sequel or 3rd game, but this needs confirming. Do you know any more?

Whilst flicking through an old Sinclair User magazine from May 1985, Mark R Jones spotted an advert for World Series Baseball, which listed a game called Key To Success as coming soon for the Commodore 64.

This is the first we have ever heard about the game, and what it is exactly is a huge mystery.

Could it have been a title which carried over from the demise of Imagine Software before Ocean took over? (Like World Series Baseball), or was it something being developed by Ocean in-house for the new label?

Bob Wakelin confirmed that he recalled producing packaging artwork for the game, but can’t recall what it consisted of. It’s unlikely the artwork has survived, but you never know … it may turn up some day and give some clues to what this game was.

It is very much early days, and due to the age – it could be a tricky one to try and pin point what exactly it was.

Can you help us find out more?

Thanks to contributor Nemo for bringing this to our attention, but something that possibly isn’t a GTW64, but there is possibly some interesting interface software and ideas that could be useful to preserve. Back in the early 90’s, a German company called LDG/Softwarecorner made available an interface to allow users to hook up a Laser Disc player to play the likes of Dragons Lair and Space Ace via a special hook up to their PC/Amiga/ST or Commodore 64.

As described on http://www.mos6502.com/friday-commodore/laser-disc-games-for-the-c64/, the idea was simple – where you would hook up a C64 as a control unit to a laser-disc player and special software would transfer the joystick inputs to the laser disc. Overall the system wasn’t cheap and it isn’t certain if many set ups were sold. But it isn’t 100% sure if any C64 implementations ever made it out.

There doesn’t seem to be anything preserved of the communication software at present. Interestingly, in recent years – the founder of LDG – SoftwareCorner, Dirk Neuen turned up on some forums trying to sell various bits and pieces from them days. Some C64 materials were likely to be within the lot.

As a result, we are now attempting to contact Dirk to find out more about the system and hopefully digitally preserve more details about this fascinating system!

In the meantime, another project by a guy called inuyaksa2 is under way and can be seen here using a similar idea… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MR8edbm62VE

Even more impressive is a REU version mixed with the Nuvieplayer which is being done by the same guy.

In 2024, contributor Gerry got in touch to say that he had recently brought the interface by LDG and has supplied a photo. Sadly the software couldn’t be found for it, so it still remains at large.

At some point i’m sure we’ll learn more about it! :)

Yet another obscure game, this time by an obscure company called “Mushroom”… Who I don’t think lasted particularly long.

Dune Buggy is not to be confused with the Corbis game of the same name, and has you trying to escape Customs who are chasing you with helecopters and fireballs. You can either fire at the objects or jump over them.

According to a competition entry with the game listed, the graphics were particularly good with the screen split 7 times to give a realistic effect. The game was listed in the advert as created by Nigel Rowlan, who was famous for the Skramble release by Rabbit Software.

Well, sadly it never surfaced… What happened?…. Did Mushroom Software collapse before a release was made?

As Super Scramble was going to be a rip off of the Rabbit Software game Skramble, was Dune Buggy perhaps a rip off of Trooper Truck by Rabbit? (although the coder is different).

Have you seen or heard of this game?

A quick entry to cover yet another title which we are not quite sure if it actually got a release, or if it only sneaked out in small numbers.

Muncher was listed as a 100% machine code game making good use of the sound and graphic capabilities of the C64. It was indeed a pac man clone from 1984 time and advertised by Christine Computing – who seemingly were more of a TI 99/4A outfit if you check their advert out.

There seems to be nothing about Christine Computing on the web, apart from some old mentions which suggest it was operated by Ian and Christine Godman from Watford.

Do you know any more about this game? Can it be saved?

A quick entry to cover a series of titles which were advertised by Dromedia Software back around 1984 time for the TI-99/4A and C64 platforms.

The set of software was listed as Soccer Supremo, Pirate Island and Cricket.

Soccer Supremo was described as a soccer management game, where you control your squad, rating, finance in order to take them from the 4th division to the champions of 1st Division.

Pirate Island was a board simulation for two players where you had to gather treasure and return to the home port.

Cricket was a limited overs match between England and West Indies. You state the number of overs and control team selection.

It is very possible that all games were sold on the C64, with Pirate Island seemingly out there and is within the C64 tapes collection … http://c64tapes.org/title.php?id=5466 … but is not yet preserved.

Stephen Horsfall got in touch with GTW64 and he suggests that after the Ti-99 market collapsed in the UK, they went straight to Amiga and may not have released the C64 versions. A few were sold by post for the Ti-99 but not many. It seems that at least Pirate Island made it though and we hope to see it preserved. The others may be a stretch too far to find!

Watch this space!