Vietnam Gunboat 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 the subject of Vietnam or Gunboats.
However, Martin/Stadium64 got in touch recently and informed us that there was an article briefly on the game in Swedish Datormagazinet Issue #4/1989. (Released in March). The group Groovy Bits were working on the game after Players presented them with the game idea.
Thanks to Anonymous Contributor, we get a translation of what was said:
“[The British publisher] is named Players and the four, together with 15-year-old Tomas Danko, are about to convert a budget game to the 64. So far, they’ve completed the opening demo and are waiting for an advance payment from England:
– We’ve been promised 15 000 SEK, plus 2 SEK per sold game, says Johan Bernkert, who is the one doing most of the talking.
To be honest, it is not really a conversion in the true sense of the word, since there is no original of the game to convert from. The whole thing started with them making a game with the title “Squad One” [sic] which they sent to the UK. But the game was seen as too lacking in originality to be released.
– The game was like Delta, explains Johan. But worse. But despite the setback with the first game, Players got in touch with the hacker group and presented them with a game idea: Vietnam Gunboat:
– It’s about a boat going around doing work in Vietnam, claims Johan, only to follow up with: It’s a stupid name, though…”
So originally, Groovy Bits had got in touch with Players and submitted them a game called Squad One, which was too similiar to other games and didn’t want it. They instead presented them with the Vietnam Gunboat game idea and got them working on the title. At the stage of the interview in the magazine, they had completed the game’s intro sequence.
Sadly no more was ever heard about the title, and it disappeared for good. Thanks to Martin, we can at least now add the credits for the game in some shape or form and we hope soon that this may lead to finding something of the game and find out what happened.
However, Anonymous Contributor has flagged that the game could be linked to the Accolade game Gunboat, which had been referred to as Vietnam Gunboat, and was set in the same area. It seems there was no official plans from Accolade to do a port, so perhaps Players approached Accolade to get the rights?
Anonymous Contributor has suggested that perhaps originally Accolade had called the game Vietnam Gunboat, but then decided to expand the game to cover different areas – so dropped the “Vietnam” bit. Perhaps Players for their budget label were to keep the game as a cut down version, or would they later change their game to match the Accolade title. All details which are currently unknown.
Confusingly, the PC DOS version was listed in January 1992 in an issue of Italian magazine Computer Videogiochi as Vietnam Gunboat. All very confusing!
More research is needed, but Tomas Danko confirmed to the limited edition 2016 book “Svensk videospelsutveckling. Från 50-tal till 90-tal” that the game was not completed and suffered from a lack of graphics being produced for it. All that seems to be left is a SID title track that Tomas composed (see downloads)
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.
Hopefully Tomas can shed some more light soon and help solve this confusing mystery and perhaps even find the lost demo?
