Games That Weren't^®

Ok, so we’re cheating a little – but it is very possible that all of these games were released. So now we just need to make sure they get preserved.

Sophisticated Games advertised in various magazines during the early 80’s for their range of games, which were pretty much BASIC produced titles that were sold via mail-order. A typical back bedroom operation it seems.

Here is the list so far which were advertised and their statuses:

1. Cricket …. PRESERVED! SEE DOWNLOADS!
2. League Soccer … PRESERVED! SEE DOWNLOADS!
3. Whodunnit? …. Currently lost
4. Top of the pops …. In GB64
5. Election Night Special …. Within C64tapes.org, but not yet preserved.
6. Party 4 (Containing Masterword, A Day At The Races, Game X (Strip Poker) and Consequences) …. currently lost
7. Adults Only …. In GB64

Now there are titles of them names but with different companies, so it is possible that Sophisticated games “borrowed” titles. But so far it seems based on the ones we know are out there, that they were all developed by a R.Hill (Richard Hill?).

Do you know any more about the lost ones, and can you help us digitally preserve them?

Both Cricket and League Soccer were preserved by Dave Bulwer and kindly provided to GTW to put in the archive. So download below and enjoy! We hope to find the others soon!

Starburst may have actually seen a release, but in very limited numbers. The game was offered for sale as part of a GEMS compilation pack by Digital Dynamite. An advert was listed in Issue 61 of Zzap, with a review of just the text adventure game which came as part of the pack of 4 games. The adventure game managed to find its way out though… http://www.gamebase64.com/game.php?id=9297&d=18&h=0

Duncan Scott Kershaw confirms that the game was infact his game that was released eventually by Commodore Disk User….

http://www.gamebase64.com/game.php?id=7360&d=18&h=0

Apparently Duncan sold the game to Digital Dynamite, and the game appeared on Commodore Disk user without his consent.

Sadly it seems that the idea of 4 mixed games genres of unknown quality in a mail order advert for £8-11 wasn’t a great idea, and so Digital Dynamite disappeared without trace, and it seems not really anyone picked up a copy.

But regarding saving the game – we hit luck with Andrew Rodger, Duncan Kershaw and Mark Wilson all had copies. Duncan started things by digging out some photos of the GEMS collection, and then Mark Wilson followed recently with the disks themselves.

Mark had backed up the game to D64 images – and has very kindly passed these onto GTW to include and show Castle Boy and Stratagos for the for the first time. It is very possible that only those involved on the project ever got a copy in the way of a complimentary copy. What is warming to learn, is that all the developers seem to have got paid for their work – but the company themselves just didn’t make the money and Digital Dynamite was no more. A shame!

Well, although CDU released the game – it seems that they had released potentially an earlier version of Duncan’s game without permission. This version for Digital Dynamite may well be more complete, but for certain contains some previously unheard music by Andy Brown. This has been kindly ripped out by Ian Coog and we have now added the SID files for this – there are 4 tunes in total.

As a result, we have added screenshots now and a download for the pack, as this is pretty much the complete edition of the game, which is a neat vertically scrolling blaster!

Enjoy and case closed!

Castle Boy may have actually seen a release, but in very limited numbers. The game was offered for sale as part of a GEMS compilation pack by Digital Dynamite. An advert was listed in Issue 61 of Zzap, with a review of just the text adventure game which came as part of the pack of 4 games. The adventure game managed to find its way out though… http://www.gamebase64.com/game.php?id=9297&d=18&h=0

The game is a simple single screen platforming game, where you must simply kill all enemies on a screen by having enough energy at the time. If you run low, you need to pick up small E blocks to build up your energy.

Sadly it seems that the idea of 4 mixed games genres of unknown quality in a mail order advert for £8-11 wasn’t a great idea, and so Digital Dynamite disappeared without trace, and it seems not really anyone picked up a copy.

But regarding saving the game – we hit luck with Andrew Rodger, Duncan Kershaw and Mark Wilson all had copies. Duncan started things by digging out some photos of the GEMS collection, and then Mark Wilson followed recently with the disks themselves.

Mark had backed up the game to D64 images – and has very kindly passed these onto GTW to include and show Castle Boy and Stratagos for the for the first time. It is very possible that only those involved on the project ever got a copy in the way of a complimentary copy. What is warming to learn, is that all the developers seem to have got paid for their work – but the company themselves just didn’t make the money and Digital Dynamite was no more. A shame!

Ian Coog has pulled out the music for HVSC, which you can find here. It is a simple Soundmonitor tune, but currently we are unsure if the coder composed it or not.

Castle Boy isn’t anything too special, but it is great to see the game saved from obscurity. We hope soon to get some scans of the inlays and bits!

Case almost closed!

Puzzle games are quite abundant in GTW64, and Stratagos is now about to add to the tally – a puzzler by Andrew Rodger.

Stratagos may have actually seen a release, but in very limited numbers. The game was offered for sale as part of a GEMS compilation pack by Digital Dynamite. An advert was listed in Issue 61 of Zzap, with a review of just the text adventure game which came as part of the pack of 4 games. The adventure game managed to find its way out though… http://www.gamebase64.com/game.php?id=9297&d=18&h=0

Andrew that he was paid for his work and the game contained his Red Sunset tune as a title/in-game tune.

The game itself is a neat puzzler where you must replicate a sequence of colours by moving over a set of tiles in order. If you go over the same colour twice, then it removes it from your list. It is an interesting idea which is a bit difficult at first, but once you grasp it – its good fun. Graphically it looks quite nice too. The only thing is that you may get frustrated once you realize that past level 99, it loops to 1 :-)

Sadly it seems that the idea of 4 mixed games genres of unknown quality in a mail order advert for £8-11 wasn’t a great idea, and so Digital Dynamite disappeared without trace, and it seems not really anyone picked up a copy.

But regarding saving the game – we hit luck with Andrew Rodger, Duncan Kershaw and Mark Wilson all had copies. Duncan started things by digging out some photos of the GEMS collection, and then Mark Wilson followed recently with the disks themselves.

Mark had backed up the game to D64 images – and has very kindly passed these onto GTW to include and show Castle Boy and Stratagos for the for the first time. It is very possible that only those involved on the project ever got a copy in the way of a complimentary copy. What is warming to learn, is that all the developers seem to have got paid for their work – but the company themselves just didn’t make the money and Digital Dynamite was no more. A shame!

So now finally you are able to play this hidden gem from Andrew thanks to the efforts of Mark.

Case pretty much closed!

A small entry for a SEUCK effort which never quite got to see the light of day, produced by Andrew Rodger (famous for Terminus and many tunes on the C64, such as Arnie 2).

The game was completed, though never offered to anyone it seems and so had been gathering dust on a disk somewhere in Andrew’s collection.

We missed it at the time, but the game was finally released on The SEUCK Vault in 2015, after Andrew got the disks backed up. So here it is in full, and another entry closed!