Games That Weren't^®

Up In The Air was to be a game similiar to Sub Hunter by the same coder Richard Bayliss, with graphics and game concept by Wayne Womersley. Think Sub Hunter in a different direction and in the air with a plane as the main sprite. Development was started in February 2009 by the group and got off to the positive start.

The game originally started as a shoot em up concept in the sideways Shoot Em Up Construction Kit by Wayne. The concept showed a toy aeroplane which has to blast different types of enemies on each level and then fly over baloons to burst a particular amount per level. The balloon part was inspired by Kikstart on the C16.

Richard picked up the game and got to work moving the concept outside of SEUCK and into a game coded from scratch. The idea would switch to a different direction of scrolling and feature end of level baddies and bonuses.

Development got fairly far over the space of just over 3 years, with a large number of levels completed, each with an end of level bad guy. Unfortunately as things progressed, inspiration for completing the game became difficult and trying to fix some of the issues with the game.

Too many graphics to cram in, less room to try and improve some of the game play issues – all of this coupled with general demotivation to complete the game meant that in May 2013, the game was officially cancelled. Richard is planning to move onto other projects for Psytronik. Unfortunately sometimes it does just happen for some games – that the developer can lose interest and motivation and decide to move on. Sometimes its for the best, and Richard has certainly done this a few times as you can see from the archive (and unsurprisingly given the sheer output that Richard has on the C64 scene).

Richard has now decided to release all of the workdisks from the game, as well as last build of the game with approximately 9 levels for you to check out for yourself.

We have also added Richard’s own words on the game and also PDF’d all of the diary pages from the TND website for posterity. Check it out!

Case closed!

Our next entry never had a proper name unfortunately and was just known as “Boxing Game”. It was originally started back in the 80’s by Mikkel Petersen, mostly as a hobby project in 1988.

The game was abandoned for many years until around 1996, and development continued in small drips and drabs until around 2000. From this point the game was not touched again, and almost 13 years on now – it seems unlikely that the game will ever see completion. Mikkel felt that it was too late for the project, and that’s why he walked away from it in the end.

Looking at the preview – although lacking on background graphics and title screens, the game is actually playable with fighting moves, rules and a scoring system. It’s actually quite a neat game, and a huge shame it never got completed.

Genesis Project released the final state of the game in May/June 2013 for people to check out for themselves. They have added a menu system to select basic options for playing the game and warn that occasion the game may hang on round 10.

So go and check out a neat boxing game that never was. Mikkel recently kindly gave his own history about the game, which you can read in creator speaks!

Kid Saviour was to be a Giana Sisters clone by Roy Fielding, who did some music work and also did Hectic 2 back in the early 90’s.

All the hard work according to Roy was done, with decent collision, scrolling and sprite animation – but he never got to finalize the baddies or the maps/levels. It just had one test level overall.

Sadly Roy swapped his C64 back in 1992/93 and gave all his disks away with it, so the source is sadly lost. However there has always been faint hope that a preview could be found.

Mike Berry once had it, but sadly couldn’t find it. He has kept all his disks, and Roy sent him a copy of the test level many moons ago.

However, it seems the preview was finally uncovered by Joachim Wijnhoven in 2013. The preview was oddly discovered on a disk from Paul Kessels. Paul sadly cannot recall anything about it.

At first it wasn’t known what the game was, as there was no labelling, but at the end of the map – the map spells out “Toy”, which was the handle for developer Roy Fielding who did some work for CP Verlag. Paul worked on Blond Blubber, another unreleased game – which was meant for CP Verlag.

A connection was made, and it was established that this was indeed Kid Saviour. Overall, we have a very early preview – sadly not too playable … but enough with a main character that you can run and jump with. Worth checking out.

Roy confirmed that the title was his, and sadly this was as far as it got! No more was really produced, and he was surprised that the demo got out there.

Interestingly, an early Kid Saviour demo from 1991 was discovered in CSDB, which was complete with graphics from Hektic 2. Suggesting that Kid Saviour eventually turned into Hektic 2, or the engine was just used as a test (Though Hektic 2 came out in 1992!). We’ve added it to the archive for posterity anyway!

Well, we’re glad its saved and finally it is a open and shut case for this game!

Hydrogenese was yet another game to come from the excellent X-Ample, who produced many stunning games.

ASM magazine issue 7/89 had a short news feature that stated that Mario van Zeist and X-ample were hired to make games for Digital Marketing, followed by some information on both Hydrogenese and Bamboo. However, the BWB link was a red herring, and it was Joachim Fraeder who confirmed that it was X-Ample behind the game. Coder was Helge Kozielek, with graphics by Michael Detert and Thomas Heinrich. The sprites and backgrounds we later recycled and used in Parsec.

According to ASM, Hydrogenese was to be a shoot’em up similar to Armalyte or Menace and it was about four “heroes” with different strengths and weaknesses. The player could choose between these heroes and the task was to “clean up” the weapon systems of a space ship. The player was also supposed to also be able to remote control cleaning robots.

The original plan was to have a shoot em up section and then sections where you would have a full 4 way platform/scroller, like Hawkeye 2 (which Mario Van Zeist showed Helge how to do).

So what happened to the original game and why was it cancelled? Originally the game was planned to be part of a 25.000 DM contest by disk magazine “Game On”, but it wasn’t finished in time. As a result, Helge didn’t get to finish the game and it was split up into several other games and finished by other programmers.

Tales of Boon, Darksword and Greystorm used the jump and run levels. Parsec used some of the shoot em up levels, and Hyper Aggressive used the puzzle sequences and some of the music. Thomas’ music was split across many other games in the end, but now thanks to Se7en/Digital Excess – you can download the original music demo that Thomas produced.

Sadly it was believed that the original incarnation of the game was fully lost, but we held out hope that it would show up some day. Well in September 2024, that day finally came when Success + The Ruling Company recovered a preview of the game showing the stone level, thanks to CBA.

What’s more is that the disk recovered from a set of disks in Germany (possibly from an ex-X-Ample developer), also contained two previews by Thomas and Michael that were testing the parallax and platformer segments of the game which were likely re-used in Darksword.

It is a fantastic recovery of a game which was felt to be completely lost (apart from its inclusion in other games). It is possible that other levels could exist, and we hope that this may lead to more in the future – the screenshots we had before show a different level and slightly different score panel. As you will see from the preview, it is fantastic and a huge shame it never saw it to completion.

Check out Creator Speaks too for words directly from the author!

Mutant Zone was to be the sequel to Spore and published by Mastertronic back in 1989.

The sequel was a full 2/3 screen scrolling game which had a far right display panel (Top to bottom) consisting of multiplexed sprites. It was not quite as mental as the original game and described by it’s creator Paul Rogers as more of a “slow burn”.

The game was actually reviewed in ACE magazine and given a rating of 624, and was also planned for the Spectrum too. Sadly neither version ever got released for reasons that are currently unknown.

It seems that ACE reviewed an incomplete copy, as Paul suggests that it just needed tweaking on the game play – but everything else was pretty much done. It is not known why it was decided not to release the game! French magazine Tilt! also included a small snippet review, which said: “Piloting a tank, you have to find your way in a huge base while destroying many enemies. This software could have been interesting but is poorly made and the action is repetitive. There are way better “budget” games.” and gave it a B rating overall.

Paul is looking for the source code for the game, but currently cannot find it. We hope he’s more lucky very soon!

In the meantime, GTW64 did locate a game called Cybowormz which looks startlingly like Mutant Zone and the screenshot we have. Just look at the screenshots and the main sprite! It certainly feels Spore like too and the dimensions of the screen, bullets etc look identical.

Cybowormz was confirmed by Paul to be an earlier incarnation of the game which has somehow sneaked out. Mutant Zone will be very much similar, but with a lot more interaction and actual gameplay. The Cybowormz build is in a very early stage of development. Paul continues to hunt for remains of Mutant Zone, and we are hopeful that it will turn up some day soon!

For now, check out the review and a rare glimpse at the C64 version and a preview of a future GTW download we hope!