Games That Weren't^®

The year is 2047 and you have been summoned to the Historisat satellite which is orbiting the Earth. As the game starts that is all you know but you will soon discover that a scientist has seen the future and only you can save mankind. A prototype android, called Mek, will mutate and start to replicate, eventually destroying all but a few members of the human race?

That was the introduction in the CU Amiga review of a game which was by Oxford Digital Press, who were also linked to "Sleeping Gods Lie" that never got a C64 release either.

The reason we have an entry for this game is due to a brief mention in CU Amiga a few months before the game was reviewed. They mentioned the game was coming very soon for the Amiga, and following shortly afterwards on the C64. This is the only mention though it seems and the later CU Amiga review and Zzap 64 reviews do not mention the C64 conversion.

Considering that Oxford Digital’s previous game was not released on the C64 either, this may not have been started. It was a fairly ambitious game but seemed to be one that could have converted ok.

We don’t have much more information i’m afraid at present, but in it goes into the archives as one we need to confirm. Maybe you know something more?

How far did this one go?…

Mentioned at the end of the first game, Tiger Road 2 was of course the sequel to the not too bad Capcom game. The C64 conversion of the original was good for rose tinted reasons (I loved it!) – comparing against the arcade, its completely different in places and quite boring.

You’d think that the C64 developers would be referring to a potential conversion of an existing conversion, but research didn’t find any sequels – so was it a bit of tongue in cheek?

It seems it was, and coder of the original game Keith Purkiss confirmed he never worked on a sequel. The title is therefore vapourware and it is very much a case closed!

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?