Games That Weren't^®

Hero is one of the lesser known Mega Game titles which Imagine Software were to release back in 1984. The series was to include around 6 games – with Hero to be the 3rd/4th title being done on both the C64 and ZX Spectrum. Both Bandersnatch and Psyclapse were the two more well known titles.

Originally we only had the one entry for the entire Mega Games set, but to be honest – each game is worthy of its own entry. So we have the main Mega Games entry to cover all, and ones for each title that we know of which were due for the C64. The Mega Games entry in particular will talk more about the failed hardware add-on attempt to combat piracy. Here we will focus purely on the games themselves.

At present, we unfortunately know very little about Hero and what the game was about. It is early days, but we hope to learn more from the game’s supposed developer on the Spectrum: John Heap. Dave Colclough was rumoured to be C64 developer, but unfortunately we believe that he passed away some years ago.

Once we know more about the game – then we’ll be sure to update this entry!

Novasoft was one of those early development companies for the C64 which disappeared as quickly as they arrived.
I don’t think i’ve ever really seen anything to come out of the company.

As the game name suggests, Cyclotron was a tron bike clone for two players. Little else is known apart from that, apart from that the game was scheduled also for the Vic 20 (which also doesn’t seem to have surfaced). The game was advertised along with others by Novasoft, including a Jigsaw Assembler utility.

So did a few copies sneak out in some shape or form? Was the game actually ever started?

Very early days for a very early product from a very early C64 company.

Just after Evil Dead, Palace Software were planning a range of other horror titles according to a small news snippet in Commodore User magazine back in 1984.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre was another of those titles, but like with Halloween – it never quite made it and Palace went on to do other titles like Cauldron and Barbarian. The game was releasd on the Atari VCS, but by another company.

Just how far this game got, we do not know. We don’t even know how the game would have played either.
We hope to learn more soon about the game!

Shahid Ahmad was not a prolific C64 developer, having just a few titles released before he moved onto bigger platforms. He produced the stunning Chimera and Pandora games, as well as wowing Ultimate with his C64 conversion of Nightshade.

But Shahid really came to the forefront when he did the C64 conversion of Jet Set Willy for Software Projects back in 1984.

Shortly after the game’s release, Shahid was trying to work out if the games industry was for him or not. In the meantime, with a friend they started a game called Baby Starts Walking.

Essentially Shahid took the JSW code he produced as a starting point and tidied it all up. A friend supplied graphics and did most of the room designs. Just before finishing the game completely and including all the enemy sprites, they tried to sell it to a company (as of yet unknown, and which Shahid may not decide to name). They offered £3000 for the game, but it was turned down by Shahid and his friend – in hindsight a decision they now regret.

Sadly we may never get to see the game, as Shahid had all his work stolen back in the late 80’s – and none of his source code seems to exist any longer. But luckily Shahid has been finding various documents and designs for various games, and recently found a game map showing all the rooms for Baby Starts Walking – you can check this out for yourself in the gallery.

Maybe, just maybe, Shahid’s friend kept a copy of the game in an executable form … but its unlikely. A sad end to a potentially fun JSW clone, actually using the original JSW engine!

Very little is known about Newt, apart from the fact that it was to eventually become Hyperactive by Special FX.

Paul Hughes was writing the original at Ocean Software as his very first game, and was suggested to have been a Cobra killer from Joffa Smith.

The game for reasons unknown was canned though, and was later resurrected at Special FX by Joffa Smith under a different design and name of Hyperactive. Tony Pomfret coded the C64 version of this.

But what of the original Newt game by Paul Hughes? We are still hoping to find something of the game and get more details from Paul himself. But for now here is a quick entry as a marker.

Yet another football game for the C64, though an unreleased one luckily for you who are sick of all the poor footy games to grace the C64 (excluding just a few).

Screen 7 announced the signing of Vinnie Jones (who was at Leeds United at the time) to create a game called “Vinny Jones Soccer Spectacular”. The game was to be developed for the C64, Spectrum (probably Amstrad too) and Amiga by Emerald Software.

Emerald Software are known for doing the conversions of Moonwalker, Vigilante and Running Man on the C64. That track record in itself doesn’t seem to bode well, and it is possible that the game could have been terrible had it been released. However, we’ll reserve judgement until we hopefully see something of this game.

The question is – did it ever get that far? There are no versions out there for any other platform, with the Spectrum version listed as missing in action on World Of Spectrum. Screen 7 only seemed to have any releases back in 1989, and nothing beyond that point. This suggests that the game never made it due to Screen 7 going under.

Do you know any more about this game?

A game flagged up thanks to Marco Das, and advertised in the inlay of another Players Software game (See gallery)

Without any information known at all about the game, including from any other platforms – we assume that its a shooty/army based game that got canned very early on. Quite possibly it was a casualty from the death of Players Software around 1990, hence not a single release on any other platform.

That’s all we know!… to say any more would be rambling, so i’ll stop there and say that we need to do a bit of digging!

A starting point at least – do you know more?