Games That Weren't^®

Another of the unreleased 22 games which one day we hope to track down and bring to you, like Codemasters should have done a long time ago. Nothing is known of the actual game, or what it was about.

An interesting point to make, is that Matt Simmonds, who did the Grell and Fella music, has done a piece of music by the name of Thunderhawk and it seems likely this would have been for a Codemasters game.

Thanks to Zoltan, we learn that a conversation about the missing Codemasters game came up between Barry Joynes (aka Derbyshire Ram) had sent a message to Jazzcat flagging up that “Thunderhawk is a game that still exists gathering dust in the Codemasters archives”.

Back in 1996/97, Commodore Scene magazine it seems tried to contact Codemasters with a view to getting access to all the missing games and even spoke with Richard Darling (who seemed open to the team going through their archives). Unfortunately it seems this never happened, so many of these titles are still at large (even though we’ve managed to recover some of them over the years ;-) )

One other thing to note is that we know a “Firehawk” game was being done by Codemasters, so could Barry have got the titles mixed up? Sadly Barry passed away many years ago.

More information needed, so can anyone help?

Some of you may have wondered in the past if Beyond The Ice Palace was meant to have been a Thundercats game. Certainly the main character looks the part, albeit with blond hair – so it was fairly plausable. Well you wondered correct!

Thanks to Patrick Furlong for originally suggesting, but it seems that according to one of the Amstrad magazines of the time (Amstrad Computer User), the game Beyond the Ice Palace was actually intended to be a Thundercats game for Elite. Nick Jones confirmed to GTW64 that this was the case, and it was to be the second game in a series of three.

That’s right … the second game. You see, Elite actually commissioned 3 separate teams to produce 3 separate Thundercats games – which were all intended to be released as a series. The first in the series was Gargoyle Games’ Thundercats – The Lost Eye of Thundera.

Issue 3 of ACE magazine confirmed that there were 3 versions in production – one version being produced in house at Elite (thought to be the 3rd part) and another version which was outsourced (and now known to be Nick and Dave’s game) – thought to be the second game in the series. The game was described as being a 4 way scroller with an exploration element – which fits the description. You can see the snippet scan below.

It is very possible that the full title of the game should have been “Thundercats 2 – Beyond The Ice Palace”, but this is to be confirmed. The question is why the Thundercats name was dropped and the title renamed? What happened to the 3rd instalment too?

We now await to see if Nick may have anything of the game in its original Thundercats guise. His disks are at his parents, so maybe some day we will get to see the game as it was originally intended.

Yet another Thunderbirds game was in production you may be surprised to learn, and we have learned about the game thanks to Jayenne Montana, who tells us that the game was in the advance planning stages before it was cancelled due to a contractual ‘en passe’.

The game was to be a 2.5d left/right scroller, described by Jayenne as a capture flag and shoot-em-up. It was shaping up very well in design, and had sandbox code/art produced. Could we ever find any of it?

Jayenne had the following to say:

“I have very little sentimentality regarding my own work and did not collect any games/artwork of products I had worked on and so have nothing to offer in respect to demo’s, screenshots or other L – wish I did now – still, we live and learn I guess.”

It’s possible there might be something – but its likely to only be a rolling demo which Jayenne mentioned was all that was ever created.

Clement Chambers (Head of CRL) had the following to say:

“Got the rights from Gerry Anderson and started work. Firebird offered a much bigger deal. Got a phone call from Jerry to the effect that he was going to do the Firebird deal in any event so all deals were off.”

As a side note, the same person who took the Thunderbirds licence, also tried to nab the Rocky Horror Show licence too from CRL. Cheeky begger!

Could the rolling demo be found?… maybe, but its unlikely…

Graeme Mason mentioned that the Terrahawks game that CRL previously did may have been the reason that Gerry Anderson decided to not let CRL do a licenced game. The Terrahawks game bore no real relation to the series, and this may have put Gerry off the deal.

Lost forever?…

The final part of the Wally games series, to round things off and complete what was a fantastic series of games pre-Dizzy era.

This time the Wally family were off on holiday, but become stranded on a desert island. The aim? – To escape and get back home.

The game was a big hit on the Spectrum and predictably recieved high scores. However the C64 version was never seen.. although advertised.

Considering that all the other Wally games were converted to the C64 by Nick Jones, it is very surprising that the final game didn’t make the translation. Mikrogen continued roughly into 1987 before going under, so what happened is anyone’s guess.

We were in contact with Nick Jones a long time ago, but sadly have lost contact since. It is highly likely that Nick did do the C64 conversion, but how far exactly and why was this not released?   Well, in 2012 we got hold of Nick again and sadly he confirmed that he did not do a conversion.

It seems likely therefore that there was no C64 version ever in production – but we need that confirmation to close the case.

Anyone know any more of this conversion or lack of one?

Originally we didn’t know a great deal about this game, only that it would have been the sequel to the released game and featured more of the other trains from the popular series.

However, news has recently surfaced on the World of Spectrum about the sequel from Clockwize and confirmation of the conversions. Taken directly from the World of Spectrum entry, Dean Hickingbottom recalls…

“Game design and attract mode graphics inspired by the ‘Thomas’ book, ‘The Race’. The ZX game was ported to the Amstrad CPC by Dean Hickingbottom. There are also CBM64 and Atari 8 bit versions. This game was never released due to a dispute between Alternative and Clockwize.”

Alternative had the game mentioned numerous times in Commodore Format, but nothing ever of note, apart from its goings on within its Time Scanner.

So confirmation!… but who was behind the C64 version and did the game really get fully completed?… The note from Dean seems to suggest just that and it was merely a dispute with Alternative that prevented the game from seeing the light of day… Could we therefore be eventually seeing a full version of this game?

We could indeed – the game has been confirmed as being completed and a master disk produced and hopefully in the future it should see the light of day. The inlays were even produced, but sadly Dean doesn’t have any of them. Developer names have been confirmed also!

Great news in the hunt for this long lost game…

Not a lot is really sadly known about this game, even if it bore any resembalance to Thing On A Spring!…

This is a title which was first mentioned to GTW by Martin Holland before he passed away. The game seems to have been complete, and Martin had found the game, but sadly Martin died before the game could be passed over. It might be down now to finding the coder, or even the person who took over Martin’s disk collection, which is a bad thing to look at really.

Martin’s words on the game were… “‘Things On Strings’ – something to add to GTW at the very least to keep your readers happy :)” , which to us confirms he had something of the game.

We could possibly narrow down the programmer to Martin Howarth or Mike Ager to start with, as these were two of the main developers at Creations.

A lot more information needed on this title, such as what the game is about etc. We will hopefully hear more soon after a few questions will be asked around.

More information needed, so can anyone help?

For a more detailed analysis of Triffid Software Research and the Runemagic Adventure Series, read the entry for The Secret River. A quick summary is that a series of eight adventures were planned, the first two of which, The Secret River and The Wizards Citadel, were released on the BBC Micro and had planned releases for the Spectrum 48k, the Commodore 64 and the BBC Electron. However, none seem to have been released for unknown reasons.

The games were text adventures loosely based on the Dungeons and Dragons RPG system. In The Wizards Citadel your character sneaks into a wizards citadel (as you do) to steal treasure and the like. You are captured by the Wizard who sends you into the dungeons beneath his citadel to collect some ingredients for him, including the eye of a Cyclops and four other unsavoury (and presumably hard to get) things. If you retrieve these objects for him, he will spare you your life, which is only fair considering you broke into his home and tried to rob him blind.

Why the C64 version never came onto the market is unknown. Presumably it would be a very straightforward port, though you’d hope they’d add a few graphics here and there to soup it up a little.

Its unlikely we’ll find out more about these two games, or the planned games that also never saw the light of day. It’s a shame as the concept of eight adventures you could play through with the same character is a true role-playing concept and perfect for frustrated gamers who didn’t have people to play with in their own neighbourhoods. Sadly, despite advertising directly at the target audience (via Games Workshops’ magazine White Dwarf) the games presumably never sold in large enough numbers to fund further releases.

Finding these games would be a real boon to C64 RPG fans, but will they be harder to find than the eye of a Cyclops?

Do you know anything more of this game?

Now, this will be something people will maybe shed a tear for…. news that The Wild Bunch was indeed making its way onto the Commodore 64!

Though not quite in the Firebird release form you may have expected, but through C64 developer Jon Wells. GTW recently quizzed Jon about rumours he laid about a Wild Bunch sequel and Atic Atac 2 in a note file he once wrote. Although these were just vapourware and overexcitement, Jon did confirm excitingly that he DID have a Wild Bunch conversion well under way.

Jon was a huge fan of The Wild Bunch when he had a Spectrum back in the day:

"The Wild Bunch was a classic Speccy and Amstrad game that was programmed in basic, it was released by Firebird on their Silverbird label in the early to mid 80’s. It was one of those games that I enjoyed on my Speccy, before I got my own C64 in late 1987.

When I tried to see if a C64 version was made I was surprised that it had’nt been converted, so it was one of my wish list to do."

Then something that may interest you…

"I did create an 80% playable version in basic (before I learned machine code) which is sitting on one of my many development disks somewhere. I wanted to add music, sfx and the gunfight sequence, but never got round to doing that as I needed assembly experience which I never had at the time.

It was one of those projects I intended to revisit when I had the assembly experience, but didn’t get the chance due to the conversion work I did for Cult/D+H Games during 1988-91 and then projects like Sceptre of Baghdad and Treasure Isle taking presidence. If I can locate this it’s something I’ll send over for you to upload."

Being a fan myself of The Wild Bunch, this is a big wow for me… and I really hope Jon will be able to dig out the conversion for us to show the world. Maybe someone will want to finish it off as its so near completion?… It’s a possibility!….

Well, across 2008 and 2009, Jon Wells did something quite fantastic and decided to finish off the game thanks to this research and write up we did!…. You can now order a complete authentic Firebird tribute game or a Psytronik edition!…

It is a fantastic turnaround and another one saved, plus a long awaited conversion that has finally arrived!…

Case closed!…