Games That Weren't^®

EXON + SCHN were rumoured to have been working on a Creatures/Rick Dangerous clone which was according to reports almost complete.

We only ever heard of the game in a brief news item and then that was it. There only seems to have ever been some graphic demo releases from the Polish group.

Long way to go with this entry…

Another unnamed game, and this time by Stephen Kellett. This game is best described by its author…

“I also had an un-released 4 way scrolling space game with a huge landscape to fly over (using some nify storage techniques). I can’t remember the numbers now, but it was as if you had 16MB of data to fly over even though the machine only 64KB of memory. Never had the time to put the game logic into it as the degree and life took over.

I don’t think I ever gave it a name. It wasn’t for a specific pulisher. Most of my games were written and then offered to a publisher of my choosing. Circus Fun and Strontium Dog were both exceptions. I think it shows – these two games were offered to me by publishers and designed in both cases by other people. I didn’t have any emotional investment in them. Both of them, are the two games I am the least proud of (or actually, not even proud of).”

So at the very least there seems to be a rather impressive technical demo somewhere to be found of a game which had much potential, but sadly was lost due to real life issues.

There is hope that Stephen will be able to dig out some of his lost work, along with this technical demo.

We hope to hear more soon!

Ben Hayes was famous for his music produced at Sonic Grafitti, but also did a stint of game development – producing the C64 versions of Bubble Dizzy and Wrestling Superstars for Codemasters. He was also part of the Kick Off 2 cartridge development that never made it, but Ben was also working later on on yet another football game (Which was brought to attention in a 1997 fanzine interview)

This time it was for Codemasters (And yes, another to the tally of the infamous unreleased 20-30 something games), and the game was to follow the development of Wrestling Superstars.

There was never much to be though, as Ben enlightened us when asked about the game:

"The footy thing… er… I think there’d been possible interest in a budget priced kickabout type game after Wrestling Superstars was finished, and I got as far as a scrolling field with a few players running about on it knocking a little white blob around, but that was as far as it went.

I think I gave up on the programing "career" a couple of weeks afterwards. I’ve been through all my old disks in recent years and there’s no evidence of any of it surviving, so that’s the end of that I’m afraid! I don’t think it ever got as far as needing a title."

Of course, Ben lost most of his disks in a flood – so it seems unlikely that anything will have survived of this early game. So it is very much an open and closed case, but yet another Codemasters title dug out for the list…

Long way to go with this entry…

Yet another game with no name, this time a title from American group From The Ashes, which was apparently to be a new Project Firestart style of game.

And that is all we currently know at present. Looking at CSDB, there is no reference to such a game – so we are wondering how much of this was vapourware.

Thanks to Moloch, the game was never actually started – and all that existed were some initial ideas (probably just that it would be inspired by Project Firestart). So there is sadly nothing to see here!

Case closed!

Very quick entry, but mentioned in a 1997 edition of Commodore Scene was a Summer Games styled game set in space being worked on by Ewen Gillies.

There is no further evidence of the game, and we do not know how much was started.

Long way to go with this entry…

This is a unnamed Donkey Kong clone which was being developed by Mike Berry in the 90’s. It was mentioned in an interview in Commodore Scene back around 1997 time.

Mike had the following to say about the game when questioned:

"I barely recall the Donkey Kong effort. IIRC it was only a single level, and I do remember being very impressed with myself over it! I’m afraid that’s one that is probably long since lost.

I might even have just formatted and rewritten over that particular demo disk. I don’t recall seeing it much after I finished tinkering with it. It was far from complete, and more of a test of how to make a character move and jump on platforms. I remember thinking it would be a doddle to create a pixel accurate jumping/climbing character, but weeks later, and minus about 70% of my hair, I changed my mind!

I managed it eventually, but boy was it a struggle. I mean, it sounds so simple in theory, but in practice it’s a nightmare (for me anyway!).

I’ll have a check on my old programming disks to see if there’s anything there, but I’m pretty sure that its been lost forever."

So it could be a case closed before we know it. Mike has backed up all his remaining disks, so now it just remains to be seen if anything does turn up some day.

Long way to go with this entry…

An interesting title mentioned to us by Paul Hughes as a title which was shown to Gary Liddon at Thalamus, before Paul actually got signed up by Ocean Software.

This was to be a full screen scrolling Spindizzy clone with tricks used to mask sprites behind isometric blocks.

The idea was being pitched, and progress was being made when Dave Ward signed Paul up to produce for them, and Paul went on to create the famous Freeloader Ocean Loader, and Jon Dunn’s music player.

Sadly this interesting title got canned as a result, and now lays dormant on an old 1541 disk gathering disk somewhere… Just where, it’s not quite known yet.

It is possible that one day we may see a glimpse of this game, especially since Paul has been busy porting a lot of his sources and releasing them.. it is very possible that if this game were found, it too would see its way into the GTW archives.

Its early days yet, and hopefully soon Paul will add a Creator Speaks page to talk a bit more about this title, and give a better picture of what was to be.

Would it have set you in a spin?… We shall see…

Universal Military Simulator was a very advanced battle strategy game which was developed by Rainbird and was released on the ST and Amiga platforms back in 1988.
For more details about the game, check out Richard Hewison’s excellent write up here: http://www.birdsanctuary.co.uk/ums/i.php

The Amiga review was listed in Commodore User magazine back in December 1988, and stated that a C64 version would be out in 1989, along with other 8-bit versions.

However, this never quite happened – and it seems only the 16-bit versions ever surfaced. We can only assume that the complex 3D grid systems used in the game were far too complex to move across, and the idea of 8-bit conversions were scrapped very early on. Richard Hewison was quizzed about the game.

Richard had two people he could ask about a UMS conversion for 8-bits. The project manager and the original designer and programmer.

And now it has been confirmed that UMS on the C64 *was* started, but was aborted when Telecomsoft was sold to MicroProse. Sadly it barely got off the ground before it was canned. Ezra Sidran did a small amount of work, but unfortunately nothing exists now. It seems therefore we have little to do but soon close the case. There is always a chance something could be found, but its very unlikely.

Close to being a closed case!…