Games That Weren't^®

A very quick entry for a title we know very little about.

Battle Truck was a title listed in the Screen Test Budgets section of ACE magazine (Issue 20, May 1989 – Page 66) as coming soon.

The game however never surfaced and doesn’t seem to have come out on any other platforms, even though Spectrum was listed as one of the platforms to expect a release.

We know nothing about the game either, and there were no games that Players released that featured trucks.

Fabrizio Baroloni found a news item in ASM issue 67 of 1989, where Rob Cobain was responsible for the launch of the Players Premier line up. This mentioned a number of titles including this one here. We’ve added the text within the articles segment and the scan.

Do you know any more?

A very quick entry for a title we know very little about.

Eagle Storm was a title listed in the Screen Test Budgets section of ACE magazine (Issue 20, May 1989 – Page 66) as coming soon.

The game however never surfaced and doesn’t seem to have come out on any other platforms, even though Spectrum was listed as one of the platforms to expect a release.

In 1991 however, there was a game called Hawk Storm, which may well have been the game – or maybe a sequel of sorts. We are not sure just yet, and need confirmation.

Fabrizio Baroloni found a news item in ASM issue 67 of 1989, where Rob Cobain was responsible for the launch of the Players Premier line up. This mentioned a number of titles including this one here. We’ve added the text within the articles segment and the scan.

Do you know any more?

Quest of Eternity was to be a space based text-adventure written by Ian Soutar with Argus Press and their Mind Games department.

The description was as simple as “Starring The Zurga. After a desperate space battle only a fleet of heroes remain to prevent the invasion of earth. The future of home lies iwth you!”

Although promised for various platforms, it seems it only got released on the Electron/BBC Micro by Bug Byte (who were brought out by Argus Press). Did they do a limited release of the C64 version?

Very much early days as we try and work out what happened to this game.

Quest for Eternity was to be a space based text-adventure written by David Cockram with Argus Press and their Mind Games department.

The description was as simple as “Starring The Overlords of the Universe. The candidate (you) have to get to the Chamber of Creation. It’s a laugh a minute, since its 2000 light years away on the most horrible planet in the Universe … and your starship doesn’t work either!”.

Although promised for various platforms, it only ever got a release on the ZX Spectrum and the Atari 8-bit platform – and seemed an OK game. Did the other platforms have issues with conversions?

Very much early days as we try and work out what happened to this game.

Cloak of death was to be a horror based text-adventure written by David Cockram with Argus Press and their Mind Games department.

The description was as simple as “Starring Ghosts Galore, Spine Chilling, blood curdling, great gory graphics, Horror, Shock in the early evening. Avoid the rats and crazy dogs – you’ll feel really good after this one”

Although promised for various platforms, it never got released anywhere from the looks of things. However, thanks to Avram Dumitrescu, we have learnt that a Atari 8-bit version did make it! What happened to the C64 game, we do not know.

Very much early days as we try and work out what happened to this game.

A combined entry for now for a competition ran in BigK magazine which was to lead hopefully to publishing of a game based on animations Techno Police, Space Firebird or Dracula.

Mountain Video Games was running the competition with BigK and asking readers to write an exciting and fast moving arcade style game based on one of their animation videos. The prize would be £1000 worth of Commodore equipment and the deadline was 1st June 1984 (so no chance of thinking of entering i’m afraid).

Head of the company, Daniel Brant, assured BigK that his company will either market the prizewinning game themselves or arrange for its marketing. Although there was a game called Space Firebirds released on the Spectrum, we don’t believe that it was anything to do with the competition.

BigK never got to report back on who won the competition (from what we could see) and so the competition seemed to die a death. What happened to Mountain Video and Daniel Brant? Could BigK’s old editor Tony Tyler shed any light on what happened?

Were there ever any submissions to this competition which could be salvaged?

Our next entry into the depths of GTW64 comes possibly a title which was merely listed as a mistake. Automata were predominantly a Spectrum based company, with very little C64 output at all during the early 80’s.

Morris Meets The Bikers was a cute single screen platform based game which was released on the Spectrum and which received good reviews overall.

So how did a C64 version come to light? Well, in an issue of BigK magazine in 1984 – there was a large advert for Deus Ex Machina, which has the C64 version listed in its order form below. Was this indication that they had a version available, or merely a printing error? It is the only C64 option listed, so it seems an odd mistake to make.

We hope to find out more soon, but check out the scan for yourself – maybe there is something to find of a C64 version some day…

A very very quick placeholder entry of sorts for a game briefly mentioned in an article with John Darnell by Martyn Carroll in Retro Gamer magazine.

In the article, John mentioned working on a game called “Sleepwalker” for Software Projects but the game was never fully released, although complete.

We know little about the game itself at the moment, but John has offered hope by recently finding a map of the game (printed on a dot-matrix printer and held together with sticky tape!) and also a disk, which *may* have the game on.

Sadly John has found that the disk doesn’t have much of the game on at all – but the game is now being redeveloped, as you can read here!…

Sleepwalker (C64) being re-developed!

In 2016, John managed to dig out a full map of the game – which is a glimpse of what could have been with the original game.

Could well be case closed soon indeed!

A very quick entry on a game which we know very little about at present.

The game was a type-in which was submitted to BigK magazine and was about to be published, but the magazine went under just before it could. Unfortunately it seems that the game has never quite made it out in any shape or form.

We learnt about that game thanks to John Palmer who recalled the game was developed around 1985 by his brother Richard, with graphics by himself.

It is hoped that they still have something of the game, but it is looking likely that this one is lost forever. Maybe some day it could be found and digitally preserved.

Watch this space!