Games That Weren't^®

Around the time of Chris Shrigley’s early success with Bounder,
Gremlin Graphics were regularly employing the skills of what was later to be come Core Design. Chris was assigned to a game called Task 2, which was apparently named due to the objectives in the game. This game was brought to light by Terry Lloyd, graphics man for many C64 games.

The game was a horizontal scrolling shoot-em-up, with the main ship (temporarily) borrowed from Nemesis. The game involved
flying from one end of the map to the other, and go in reverse again in similar vein to Defender. The task was to get to the end within a time limit, whist avoiding obstacles (in similar vein to Scramble) and shooting enemies. Once you got to the end, you had to race all the way back (covering the map twice, hence Task 2). Although pulled, the guys felt that the game had a lot of promise.

Sadly the game was in development at the same time as Bulldog. Why is that a problem you ask?… Well, Gremlin looked at the situation and found that they were about to release two SEU’s around the same time of each other. Looking at the completion status of both games, Bulldog was the most complete, and so Task 2 was indefinitely shelved.

Completion was believed to have been around 50%, with most of the graphics all pixelled by Terry Lloyd. Music no doubt would have later been composed by Ben Daglish, and we are quite confident that he never started anything sonically for the game.

We have been in touch with both Terry and Chris, and it seems like we may never get to see the game. Chris is now based in America, and over the years has moved around a lot. Disks have sadly become lost, and it is very likely that the C64 materials from his early days are long gone. Gremlin work was often done on Wise terminals according to Chris.

A quick search however by Chris did sadly not dig up any results. However, one small possibility remains with Terry, who may have a few disks with graphics left on, and possibly a small demo of the game running. We live in hope, and hopefully we will be able to save and preserve Chris and Terry’s long lost game..

Chances of finding this game could be long gone sadly…

This was thought to be a lost game, but we have been informed that a release was made.

http://s64.emuunlim.com/gameinfos/system8/system8.htm

This entry as a result will be removed in the future.

Case closed!

And so the list continues with yet more Hi-Tec games added into the archive. This time with “Sylvester and Tweety Pie” which was a platformer where you had to try and catch Tweety Pie and you could scale walls, but some walls had ‘goo’ on them which meant that Sylvester would slide down the wall if you weren’t quick enough to scale it.

Craig Kelsall was assigned to doing the conversion and recalls seeing the Amiga version which had the basic wall scaling feature with graphics from Potsworth being used. Craig is rumoured to have got a demo to the same level with graphics being borrowed from Potsworth. Craig was surprised that the Amiga version never got a release, but we confirmed this by checking the release lists.

Gary Antcliffe was doing the Amiga conversion and confirmed that Hi-tec went under before it could be complete. His recollection was that the game was a simple platformer along similiar lines to Scooby and Scrappie Doo, though they were trying to push the tech a bit more as they were trying to get Sylvester to run up slopes in a similar way to Sonic. Apparently Tweety wasnt in the game at this point. (Sadly Gary nolonger has any of his Amiga disks any more)

Richard Morton worked on the Amiga graphics, and he mentions that the Sonic Slopes were being borrowed from another development that never made it (Speedy Gonzales). The original tech was used from Wacky Races. He adds to the game play saying that it had a dash of Spy Vs Spy in it with Sylvester having to go around and set up traps for Tweety Pie. He mentioned having disks possibly still, so this could be something for AGTW in the future.

However sadly Craig no longer kept any of his C64 materials. Andrew Routledge, who is believed to have been doing the C64 graphics, never kept his disks either so it seems the only person who could have anything is Dave Palmer, but it seems unlikely now.

This is all we know at present – nothing was mentioned in the press it seems, maybe you know more?

Is it possible to find this title?

Swords and Sorcery was originally announced in 1984, as a revolutionary computer role-playing game, claimed by its designer Mike Simpson to be the first of its kind. It eventually did surface on the Spectrum and Amstrad, earning considerable critical acclaim, but no C64 version appears to have surfaced.

The games database MobyGames describes the game as such:

“The catacombs of Zob are believed to contain untold wealth and fortune, and this is enough to tempt you. That means entering an imposing dungeon filled with strange foes – Mages, Servants of Set, Revenent Guardians and many more. After taking 14 days of training to build up your skills, or taking the default combinations, your magic and swordplay must face the challenge.

Swords and Sorcery is a dungeon-crawler that uses the proprietory MIDAS system to present a first-person visual representation of your position, in a manner similar to Bard’s Tale. This is on the left of the screen, with a map of your surroundings on the right, and text messages detailing your current situation below.

Below even that are the menus, which are activated by moving a highlight bar left and right before selecting the correct option. Enemies you meet can be threatened, bribed or grovelled to. You can activate any spells you collect, including un-poison, weaken enemy, and freeze enemy.

Watch out for magical barriers and traps, and use the transporters to your advantage. When you encounter magic would will have to test it to determine its use or detriment.

The Armour of Zob is split into several pieces, which would will hopefully find on your quest. There are also extra swords and shields to collect, plus some treasure as a reward.”

Sounds like something which could work well on the C64, so hopefully something can be traced.

Richard Hewison gained details from Mike Simpson which informs that the C64 version never got started:

“No. C64 was never contemplated.”

However, in the scans section, if you read the Zzap snippet, they mentioned that the game was heavily delayed for about a year, and causing Mike Simpson some headaches. Maybe for that reason and for money lost on the game, it is not one which people want to focus on. But then Richard Hewison suggests that this may have been referring to the Spectrum version, and not a C64 version which might have been publicised by marketing in the hope that the Spectrum version sold well.

Does this mean that a C64 version ever existed? Gary Mays recently contacted GTW and said the following (but sadly didn’t leave an email address for us to get back to him):

“Hi, I am Gary Mays and I was the publisher not the programmer. The C64 version was never released – the endless delays in release of the Z80 language version cost PSS a small fortune and we frankly lost heart as well as money.”

So confirmation is now complete that the C64 version was infact never started after a lot of money was lost on the original game. A huge shame!.

Interestingly though in 2011, Garry Irwin got in touch as he recently created a blog post on Alternative Software and some advert scans. In one of the adverts showed “Swords and Sorcery” being advertised for the C64. A misprint, but ironic!

Here is the shot…

More fuel to the fire was added when Robert Robichaud recently uncovered more details to confirm that a C64 edition was under way, and very likely in development long before the plug was finally pulled. Aimed at the US market too. I’ll let Robert take it away…

“It seems that sometime in 1986, classic US publisher Datasoft (at that point owned by IntelliCreations, after a chaotic ownership situation that played out a year or so prior) struck a deal to license some of the PSS catalog for release in the US, including new conversions to US-centric micros like the Apple II and Atari 8-bit in addition to the expected C64 version. This deal seemed to encompass the usual PSS strategy wargaming fare (a number of which did indeed reach the US market), but also included a planned conversion of Swords & Sorcery.”

Robert then gave a series of snippets of info collected from various magazines, which we have included under the Articles section. Robert then added based from this information…

“As you can see, it would seem from this report that Datasoft may have actually shown some version of the Sword & Sorcery port(s) in action to a small group of US computer media and software distributors at their off-site CES suite in early 1987.

After this, Swords & Sorcery continued to be listed in Computer Entertainer’s “Availability Update” section every month thereafter, with gradually slipping release dates, all the way up to the December, 1988 issue, where it appeared for the final time, by this point listed as a Fourth Quarter, 1988 release for the C64 and Apple II, the Atari version having been dropped earlier.

It should be noted that by the time Datasoft published another catalogue (seemingly from around 1987/1988 and also available for viewing on the MOCAGH site), any mention of Swords & Sorcery had been dropped, although other PSS conversions had indeed been released to the US market, and continued to be up through later titles like Sorcerer Lord. However, as I’ve mentioned before, Computer Entertainer was very thorough indeed, and had constantly updated “insider information” from all of these companies, so if they were still listing it up to the end of 1988, it’s likely that Datasoft still hadn’t officially cancelled it.

Having read your GTW entry on the game, this all seems quite perplexing, as the original developers appear to have shut the door on this conversion project before it even began, However, I’m starting to wonder if perhaps, since Datasoft seemed to be going forward with these ports well after PSS had abandoned the idea, they may have actually just purchased the rights and began their own ports, either in-house or farmed out to a another developer? It would seem like this would have been a necessity in any case, as it’s doubtful PSS would ever have had anything to do with the Apple II or Atari conversions, which would have been aimed solely at the US market and were planned by Datasoft from the very beginning. Also, as I mentioned earlier, RPGs were big business in the US computer gaming scene, so it would make since that they might be keen to continue pursuing the project on their own, even if the game’s original developer had dropped out. A bit of a mystery here then, and I’m not sure where else to go with it. I don’t know if anyone who was around at Datasoft/IntelliCreations is findable at this point, and the PSS guys didn’t seem to have any further information to share. Still, maybe there’s something out there…?”

Robert’s theory seems very real, and its a possibility that could be worth checking out.

Do you know anything more about this game?

Another rather obscure title which we are struggling to find out anything about. This was mentioned at the end of a magazine in their “Next issue” slot.

We need to try and find out which magazine in particular as we have lost the details of where it came from.

Hopefully then we can give a date and a publisher too. Information otherwise is very scarce.

Could it be this game as highlighted by contributor Fabrizio Bartoloni? : http://www.lemonamiga.com/games/details.php?id=3373

Do you know anything about this game?

Sword of the Samurai was a strategy game set in 15th Century Japan, written for the PC in 1989 by Microprose Software. It was a fairly well recieved game, and some people had fond memories of it:

http://www.links.net/dox/warez/games/microprose/samurai/

As you can see from the advert scan, a C64 version is promised as coming soon. So what happened to it?…. Was Sid Meier possibly involved in it?

This is not the same game as the US Gold game of the same name, but something that was surfacing much later.

Do you know anything more about this conversion?

A very unknown GTW title which has only really come to light because of some documentation that came to light with proposals of a game for Empire on the Commodore 64 called Sword of Abbadon.

All we know about the game is that it was being developed by Paul Clansey who did Wizard Warz, Alien and Time Trax on the C64. In 2012, Paul got in touch with us and shed the following light on the game:

"I think the title was actually Sword of Abaddon (from Jewish and Christian lore- and as such referenced in Warhammer and other games).

Was scheduled for completion 1st half 1991. I was only the coder- can’t recollect who did the design or graphics. Don’t think any music was written.

Coding had got as far as implementing animation of main character, then- unfairly on the Empire guys- I abandoned the project after I got a full-time job outside of the games industry and couldn’t find enough time to continue on it. I don’t know if anyone picked it up. The only thing I remember about the game was that the characters were unusually images."

A promising sounding game, and what of the chances of finding it?… As with a few other titles, Paul hopes to recover a disk with the game on and we hope from this we may be able to preserve the remains.

Soon we hope to get some scans of the Empire materials to add to the site to give even more background. It’s early days yet though otherwise!

Another coin-op conversion by the arcade conversion masters, Elite.

This was to be a conversion of the popular arcade game, and was an ambitious one to do at that.

Sadly although mentioned (albeit briefly) in Commodore Format, the game never got heard of again and it slowly disappeared out of thought.

Just how far the game got, we don’t quite know. It may have been cancelled early on, as Elite seemed to have stopped all 8-bit production into 1991 apart from work on the NES.

Hopefully we can find some information soon about this conversion, as Elite are still going strong and maybe Steve Wilcox will know more

More research needed…