Games That Weren't^®

Another game, another title which was never really mentioned in the press – probably because this was a submission to a magazine, rather than a full commercial game it seems.

This game was discovered on a disk in Darren Melbourne’s collection, which seems to have been given to him by Gary Liddon. It was found alongside another adventure game by the same author – both of which seem to have been submitted to the White Wizard at Zzap 64.

The game was the first of an “Arlia” trilogy. There is not much back story to the game and things kick in pretty quickly. The game does give away on the title screen that Keith Matthews was from Cardiff, so we hope to track him down!

Both games though are dated from 1984, which suggests they had been sat on for a period of time before the author then submitted them. Were they submitted for review? Does this mean they were on sale at any point?

Well, the author commented on the CASA website that the games were only distributed to close friends and never submitted for publication. He no longer had any copies, so these were possibly the last remaining copies of his game. Thankfully the author was able to see their work once more. See Creator Speaks for more details.

I’m not much of a text adventure player, but the game seems detailed enough with some good puzzles throughout. It is a shame that more people back in the day didn’t get to experience it!

We hope that some day the author will see his games and will get in touch to shed some light on them and we can finally close the door on this case. For now though, check out the games for yourself and see what you think!

Now then, our next entry is a title which was never advertised in the press or mentioned. It was highlighted to us when Andrew Morris (Magnetic Fields graphic artist, who did graphics for Kikstart 2, Lotus 2 and many others) got in touch with a few titles that he had worked on.

Otherworld was one of those titles, but the big difference was that the game was actually coded by Andrew – who dabbled in coding as well as graphic work in the early days. Otherworld was a project being done for Mr Chip Software and was started way back in 1985 by Andrew as a concept. It was worked on, on and off right up until around 1989 and was pretty much completed. However, by that time Andrew was already moving fully onto design work (and ditching coding completely) and Magnetic Fields started to move onto the 16-bit platforms. The game was forgotten about, and Magnetic Fields were firmly in 16-bit mode from that point on. Their last C64 game being Super Scramble in 1989. Had Andrew had polished things off and pushed it out, it would have likely gone on the Mastertronic label as a budget title.

The game itself is a flick screen platformer, which has a very similar look and feel to Thing on a Spring, but with a bouncing Amiga red/white ball as the main character. Things are split across 6 levels in total, including themes such as Kitchen, Toys and Plants. You essentially have to switch off a load of switches on each level, to open a door at the end of the map to escape. In your way are a number of platforms, conveyor belts and creatures trying to stop you. You get one life and large block of energy to play with, which means the game is pretty tough.

A huge shame that we never got to purchase the game – but did it survive? Andrew gave the news that we were desperate to know, which was that he still had all his disks – which should have the last version of the game. So Andrew posted a few boxes down, which GTW64 got to work on. After finding an executable with no sound, but playable – we thought that this was it – but then found a disk which was labelled as a back up of everything related to the game, a loader file reference and a SYS jump code. Following the instructions brought a few loading issues, but eventually a rather corrupted title screen appeared with some music. There was a seemingly complete version here. The irony was the disk was one of the only ones which had bit rot and corruption throughout.

After consulting with both Jazzcat and Jani Tahvanainen, they suggested some tips to get the data off the disk. The first tool used suggested did the trick, and after several backups – Jani confirmed that we had managed to get everything off the disk. The game now loaded with the title screen in-tact from believed to be the last remaining copy in existence. Phew!

Graphically the game is of a very good standard, which was to be expected of Andrew. The main ball is well animated and looks very nice in its hi-res mode. The enemy sprites are cute and well defined, and the backgrounds are crisp and very cartoony. Sonically we are treated to a previously unheard Shaun Southern tune on the title screen, and some simple SFX throughout. The title screen is nice and colourful overall, with bold text and some witty text from Andrew. Basically you will see early on just how much of a shame this didn’t even get a budget release – especially seeing how complete and polished it is.

Recently in 2013, we also recovered an unused loading screen for the game, as well as some graphical assets which we have added to the pack.

But it is saved now, and finally as intended – you can check out the game for yourself. A fun budget platformer which was almost lost in the midst’s of time (or bit rot as we know it!)

Case closed!