Games That Weren't^®

No, this isn’t another Giana Sisters, this was the real thing.. Orpheus were planning to convert the loveable plumber to our C64 screens.

Orpheus are greatly remembered for Electrosound, but after seeing their game attempt, ‘The Young Ones’, Mario on the C64 could have been a disaster, but then again even a classic! :)

Nintendo said ‘No way’ to the conversion and Orpheus’ dreams of creating the hit arcade/NES game were doomed, and so Mario stayed faithful to the Nintendo platform and became a massive success.

Just how much was actually created or even started is anyone’s guess, though its likely that Orpheus never started anything, and wouldn’t have done until Nintendo gave them the go ahead.

Possibly just an idea on the drawing board…

Around the same time that World Class Rugby was announced, Audiogenic also announced a follow up to Emlyn Hughes called “Super League Manager”.

The game was mentioned in issue 7 of Commodore Format and was being programmed by Gary Bassett. Gary was working with Lou Macari to get some management tips to help create a more realistic experience.

Apart from this one mention, the magazines never mentioned the game again and it soon disappeared for good.

With a programmer lead, it is hopeful that we will find out more about this title very soon. Was the game going to improve on the action of the first game?

Martin Smith informs GTW that the game was eventually released for the Amiga and ST in 1995 (late in those machines’ lifespans). It was primarily a management game, but with few statistics and concentrating on player personalities and training schedules. It linked with Emlyn Hughes’ in that a few of your games could be played out if you had EHIS.

Martin / Stadium 64 supplied some scans of the various inlays that were produced for the action football game, with the 1990 re-release of the game to co-incide with the ST/Amiga releases. Here there are mentions of the Super League expansion, and with links to the C64 edition quite clear.

Development hell?… hopefully Peter from Audiogenic will shed more light soon…

Does anything exist?…

First reported in Zzap’s news page in July 1988, a third in the series of very popular Huey games by Cosmi and Paul Norman. The last sequel was released around 1985, so quite a large gap to decide upon a 3rd game.

However, Cosmi did release a number of games through Microprose, but Super Huey 3 was sadly not to be one of them.

Apart from the small news clippet, nothing else was really mentioned about the sequel, so we have no indication of how far the game would have got before it was cancelled. Why was it cancelled?… We don’t know.

Considering that C64 game were advancing rapidly in 1988, it would have no doubt looked far better than the previous two games, but would it have played just as well (if not better) ?

We hope to find out – and maybe Paul Norman has the answers?… We hope to find him soon and find out more and maybe help solve this case…

One we hope to find a lot more out about soon!…

Thanks to Wayne Wormsley for highlighting this one!

Super Fighter was a PC based fighting game (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Fighter) which became pretty popular, and so much so that a Demo group were looking to convert it to the C64.
In an issue of Commodore Scene, some intermission screens were shown – but we are not sure what issue this was and need to get hold of Allan Bairstow to confirm.

Nothing of the game was ever shown, and the conversion was soon forgotten about. Now I remembered that back in 2001, Deathadder/CWD contacted me to inform that he was looking for someone to do a conversion of the game. Sure enough, after trawling through some CD backups I had – I found a very old 2001 news page on the game which said the following:

"It seems that C64 games are emerging again, slowly but surely… But this time is more of a request to all you C64 users out there who are interested in actually making a new C64 game possible!.

Death Adder / CWD recently e-mailed to me about a conversion of the classic 1993 PC fighting game called Super Fighter. Not quite in the same league as the mighty Street Fighter 2, but a good game in its own right.

Coders, musicians and graphiticians are wanted to start up the project and hopefully complete what could be a cool conversion of a great fighting game. We are still waiting for something to beat the likes of IK+, and unfortunatly 10th Dan never was to be…. so is anyone out there wanting to knock IK+ off its top spot?

The good news about the project is that Deathadder has ripped out all the current graphics, sound and moves ready for someone to take control of and use for analysing next to a C64 when converting it over. So at least the graphical side of things is made a little easier to whoever is up for the challenge of this game.

This game isn’t planned to be sold or anything, but to be spread for nowt as with Metal Warrior, but if profit is a question, then something could be arranged.

Is anyone interested?… anyone up for a challenge?"

It seems that no-one did take up the challenge – and that was that! Or are we wrong, and did someone start it?

It would be great to get hold of the graphics that were ripped – it seems that some of these were maybe published?

Do you know anything more?

Another game we’d better start looking for, and one which might be slightly harder for me being in the UK. Super C (Or Super Contra/Super Commandos) is a US only release it seems and one which had it been released would have been as hard to find as Simpsons Arcade in the UK on the C64.

Super C is confirmed as having a C64 conversion in the pipeline, due to the C64 mention in the advert (See Scans). It is not a US re-release of the original Contra game from Ocean, but a totally new game which was developed by Konami.

However, although IBM and Amiga versions were released, the C64 version never surfaced and is now a mystery to GTW. Could it be the same development team as Simpsons Arcade?… maybe… but we need help to find out!

Konami’s US releases were generally ok, so we could potentially find a nice conversion out there somewhere.. but how much of one? A full game or just an early preview?… We are hopeful of anything, but most of all we want to find out exactly what happened to this Konami title.

Contributor “Termie Gen” makes a good suggestion that Konami periodically updated its status about its games, so the C64 version was likely in production and may have just been heavily delayed before cancellation due to the dwindling C64 market in the US. The lack of screenshots could be a good indication that it never got too far either. A valid point is made that as DSI/USI did the DOS and Amiga versions, but also did convert some games to the C64 – they could well have been involved on the C64 version of Super C too!

Contributor “Anonymous” makes a good suggestion that Konami may have needed to rename the game at some point, as “Super C” was also the name of a C compiler from Abacus Software, which was heavily advertised for the C64/C128 around 1987-1989. Did this have any affect on the game not being released? Unlikely – but who knows?

We don’t know much else at the moment, but maybe someone can help us find out more?… Can Super C be saved on the C64?…

Another title which could well be vapourware, and one which we may not need to do any searching.

Super Cars 2 was never fully announced by Gremlin, though Games X magazine reported that the C64 version was coming soon and its price was to be announced. Did Games X get some crucial information which the others didn’t?

Very unlikely, and so this could well be a cock up on Games X’s part. A shame, as this was a fantastic game on the Amiga, and would have made a fantastic C64 conversion.

Maybe … just maybe… a conversion was secretly being worked on, but this is to be confirmed.

Do you know anything more?…