Games That Weren't^®

Thanks to Vinny Mainolfi for highlighting details of this lost sequel which was being proposed by Shahid Ahmad back in 1986.

Just before starting work on Pandora in 1986 for Firebird, Shahid and discussed the idea with his friend David about doing an interim project at the same time.

Things got literally to the stage of some basic design documents and mockups, before the idea of a sequel was canned before it could be started or even proposed to Firebird Software.  Instead, full focus was put into Pandora, which was eventually released in 1988. Shahid recently dug out the design documents they produced and put it on his blog – you can also find these below.

We’re not 100% sure if the game would have been exactly the same as the first in terms of viewpoint, as the documents talk of of Staff of Karnath styled movements and Pandora’esq moving characters.  The idea would be that the game would be completed within 2 weeks to make a fast buck.

It’s a shame that it never came to fruition, as if anything – it would have been a welcome sequel.  Shahid feels that it is a shame too that the game never got completed – but you never know if some day he may resurrect the game as a remake, considering he’s been working on a remake of the original at the moment.

Another one bites the dust!

Finally – confirmation that a C64 conversion of Jetpac was in the works from Ultimate. A small news snippet in Commodore User magazine details that the game was being prepared – though of course pretty late compared to the Spectrum/Vic 20 releases, with a release date set for 1984.

The game of course never surfaced, and for years we’ve puzzled why there was no official conversion. However, there was a feeling that a conversion was already out there and the official conversion was in fact this game:

http://www.gamebase64.com/game.php?id=10512&d=18&h=0

Bac Pac is from 1984 and is pretty much a solid conversion of the game – it doesn’t quite fully match the Spectrum version though. So we’re wondering if maybe Ultimate rejected the conversion, or decided that actually the game was a little too old to consider releasing at that stage.

Well, we recently found a news snippet from BigK magazine in 1984, where one of the writers at BigK was sent a copy of Bac Pac it seems (based on the description of the game), thinking originally it was an official conversion from Ultimate. Tim Stamper however confirmed to BigK that the game was unofficial and not sanctioned. It seemed very clear at this stage that Ultimate had no intention of seeing a C64 conversion done.

Unfortunately it is likely that Commodore User got their facts wrong, and maybe they had seen Bac Pac and got excited by the conversion, thinking it was official. It seems that Computer and Video Games magazine also had the same confusion too (see scans).

We’ll keep this entry open until we get concrete evidence that no official conversion was under way.

We are excited to learn of yet another Ultimate game which was apparently in the works for the Commodore 64.

Following on from the successful conversion of Nightshade, Shahid Ahmad was offered the chance to convert both Knightlore and Alien 8 for Firebird Software.

Unfortunately though, things went sour with Ultimate after Shahid got himself an agent, and the agent tried to contact the Stampers.  The Stampers at this point stopped all contact – something which Shahid has ever since regretted.  A huge shame!

What is not known is if the conversion was offered to anyone else after that point, or if it just faded away due to not being able to find someone else up for the job.  I guess we may learn in time!

What is interesting though is that there are currently 2 unofficial conversions in the works which you can learn more about here:

http://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=29053&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=knight+lore

At somepoint or another, we will get to see a conversion of the game it seems – which is great news!

A very quick entry which was brought to our attention via a tune in Gilles Soulet’s HVSC folder.

Sapiens was a game being developed by Loriciels back in 1986 time, and it seemed a C64 version was on the cards to follow the Amstrad version that did get a release (Loriciels was a prolific Amstrad developer/publisher due to its French roots and the success of the machine out there).

The game was a graphic adventure which had you selecting commands from a menu to move around the game. It was pretty much like a cross between The Hobbit and Maniac Mansion.

Gilles composed his tune in 1987, which suggested that a C64 version must have been under way. It is unknown why exactly the game never quite made it, and so our journey began to try and find out more.

When we heard back from Gilles in June 2023, he confirmed there was never any intention of releasing the game on the C64 and nothing was started. C64 had lackluster sales in France, which convinced them not to bother.

The music was made on the C64, as the editor/compiler (called Kmuse) that Gilles used was developed on C64 for a previously released game called The Fifth Axis. All they had to do was adapt the play routine for the Z80 and Amstrad audio chip.

So that solves the mystery of why the music existed, and now we can close case on this title!

Commodore User magazine ran a pretty interesting game advert back in 1984 for a title called “Beat 1984!”, which was described as a four part adventure game for the C64 with graphics and sound.

The short story line was as follows:

“Your modem has connected you to big mum’s computer – beat her, ‘Beat 1984!’ A four part adventure game for the Commodore 64. Graphics and Sound. Travel; Get Rich; Stay Rich”

The idea was that you’d pay a £18 subscription to the 4 parts. If you solve part one by March time, you’d send your tape/disk and would get part two sent back in return. The game completely ended on the 31st December 1984. Parts would not be sold separately.

I have to say, its the most strangest sale concept for a game that i’ve seen, and no doubt it probably didn’t do very well. Handing over £18 was a lot of money for something you didn’t get to see until you recieved the game, and only getting one part at a time drip fed on completion of the previous seemed a little odd too.

When you sent the game back, was part-one deleted for part-two to take its place? How did that work? Overall, this could be a tricky one to recover – especially with all its parts. Were all of them completed, or was just one part ever made before the concept was dropped?

Did you send off for this game? And did you ever get anything back? Not much else is known just yet, but watch this space.

A very quick entry for a game which is essentially confirmed as vapourware, but was actually being planned for a C64 release back in 1990.

Empire were busy negotiating for the rights to a number of Don Bluth games, including Dragons Lair 2, Space Ace and also All Dogs Go To Heaven.

Although ST and Amiga conversions were agreed and eventually released, it was decided that the C64 market was not suitable for the game, considering they felt that the game would take up 6 disk sides. Ian Higgins at the time , who was negotiating the deal, suggested if there was any interest in doing a cut down version instead. There was no response on this, and so the development was canned before it could really be started.

Or was it started? There is currently no evidence that the game was in development or not started at all, so it remains open to see if there was any concept work done. The game itself was a set of mini games all strung together, and it wasn’t too well recieved at the time – so possibly we didn’t miss much. But of course we are still curious as to what happened and to see something of it.

Well, in October 2013 – contributor Romppainen spotted an ebay auction selling a selection of Vidpro cards. These were cards that used to be on display in the likes of Toys R Us in the USA, where you took the card and went up to the pay register to get your game. In the auction there was a All Dogs Go To Heaven card with a clear Commodore label on it. Was this really a C64 version being sold, or merely a mistake? We’ve added the scan regardless.

Hopefully we’ll get confirmation soon of just how far it got!