Games That Weren't^®

Mentioned in issue 7 of Commodore Format, a 3rd game in the Test Drive series was planned for the C64. Sadly it was never to be, as this was the only mention about the game and it soon disappeared from mention.

What happened?… What was the game going to be like?

We don’t know yet sadly, though we expect it would have been more of the same as with the sequel, with some new maps and maybe new cars. The PC version was released in 1990, so it seems Accolade cancelled things early on when deciding to move to 16-bit platforms.

This needs a lot more research and we will be trying to find out more about the game very soon.

Text adventure from Kayde who went into administration at the 26th August 1983. Did Spectrum releases, tried to do C64 and Vic 20 ones, which never seemed to surface.

The game in the advert (Two adverts were submitted by Peter Weighill) was described as follows:

“At 4.30 on August 18th 1864 a storm hit your ship. Within minutes it had been consigned to the deep. You somehow managed to leap clear of the doomed ship and cling to some floating debris. Can you find the means to rid the world of this terror from the deep?”

We don’t know how far the game got exactly, but do you know any more?

Can you help?

Mentioned in Commodore User July 1989, System 3 announced plans of a new tennis game which at the time was untitled.

The game promised a “revolutionary approach” to the game, involving two player options, a 3-D rotating court overview and action replays.

Overall it was due for release in September 1989, but never surfaced.

The question we have, was this actually Sensible Software’s game? … meant originally for System 3, then given to Palace?…. Hopefully Jon Hare will know more..

More soon…

Destiny didn’t release too many games, and Teladon was one of those. It got a Spectrum release, but sadly wasn’t very well recieved. The game basically takes two styles of gameplay, including a tunnel/mountain 3D section and then a Head Over Heels perspective part – but the two elements didn’t play particularly well.

The spectrum game can be found here… http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0005174

According to the World Of Spectrum, the game got a C64 release, but Gamebase sadly doesn’t list it, so it is at large i’m afraid. And it is very likely that the game was shelved. Now why exactly is a good question that we need to get answered. Looking at the styles of gameplay, the isometric part might have been troublesome, as it has been so many times in the past with those kinds of game on the C64. Was it just a straight Spectrum port or a fresh start?

It could be that Destiny closed its doors too before the C64 version could be finished – but this is all speculation and no fact. Basically we need to do some digging and find out what happened to this game… can we find anything playable?

Contributor Dimitris F. spotted that the game was advertised in Greek magazine Pixel back around 1988 time from a games store. Was this just the Spectrum version listed in error – surely it must have been?

Do you know anything about this conversion?…

This game was the satire of British political life in the guise of a parody of The Hobbit.

It is rumoured that this game was unreleased because of poor sales of the game Denis Through the Drinking Glass by the same author.

Another rumour also is that it was withdrawn in the last moment because of the bombing of the Conservative party conference in Brighton where Norman Tebbit (who has lent his name to the game) was injured.

This latter reason seems to be the case, as in a December 1985 edition of C&VG (issue 50), the late Keith Campbell briefly interviewed Roger Taylor (one of the writers on the game), and he confirmed that it was withdrawn due to the Brighton bombings. We attach the scan within the gallery for you to read.

So was the game itself actually finished, and can it be saved? … We hope to track down Roger and see how far things got and if things have survived after all this time. The game most likely was written in The Quill.

We’re not trying to pull your leg, but yes… a C64 conversion of the powerful Team Yankee game from the Amiga/ST was indeed being considered. I guess we could have laughed when we heard Battle Command was being converted, but look how well that turned out in the end?

But with the ability to control multiple vehicles in a 4 way split screen… Could the C64 really have handled this? … Maybe Empire were considering a cut back version or a top down version (Like Amaroute).

Either way, this would have been a very tough challenge to take on – so did this really ever get started?

We have no credits or leads to chase just yet, but just to warn that we may get laughed at with some of our enquiring emails that may follow for this game…

More soon we hope…