Games That Weren't^®

I’m kind of surprised we didn’t have an entry for this game sooner in GTW64. This is another Paul Kubiszyn game which never saw the light of day and was being developed around the time Commodore Format were still going (just!)

Very strangely, this is very very similiar to Super Pac Twins which Paul was developing at the same time. That was a more simplistic game where you just ate dots in a maze like Pac Man, but Twin Balls expands on the idea by making it more of a Pengiun Towers clone with sliding tiles and other bits. It’s actually a far better game!

Well, basically Paul informs us that after CF put Super Pac Twins on the covermount without permission – he canned that game. The demo released was just for screenshot purposes, but CF may have been desperate for covermount content. Not to be put off, Twin Balls was a re-use of the concept that was canned, but with added elements to move it away from a standard Pac Man clone.

In total, two previews were released – and the game never got finished due to real life kicking in and other projects (See Creator Speaks). We assume that Paul just lost interest in the game before going onto doing the likes of ?Interlaced Pairs as his final swan song on the C64.

Nothing more was ever produced, so check out the creator speaks for input from Paul himself about the game…

Case closed!

Ask a C64 user what their top 10 games are, and you’ll often find Turrican or Turrican 2 high up there. Although Turrican 2 was Manfred Trenz’s last Turrican effort on the C64, this did not deter fans of the game to create their own sequel in years to come.

Games were slowly drying up towards the end of the 90’s, but one or two gems were promised… such as Turrican 3 from Protovision. Rumours of development were spread like wildfire on the C64 scene, but then suddenly a preview appeared unexpectidly, much to Protovision’s dismay…It seems that while the game was being demonstrated at a party, someone stole the disk and spread the game preview around.

It was this sad gesture from the C64 scene which prompted the game’s developers Stefan Gutsch and Chester Kollschen to cancel the game production. Ironically at the same time, Factor 5, who were developing Turrican on other systems threatened legal action against the game. So it was doomed anyway… but maybe in recent times it would have been finished off had they not lost heart in the game due to one person who stole the disk.The game itself is a very faithful update of Turrican, featuring flicker free sprites and even music as the game played!… something not thought possible even by Manfred Trenz.

A few levels were done before the game was cancelled, with one or two large monsters (which looked very impressive). Overall the production looked very promising.Around the same time, Smash Designs started producing their own version of Turrican 3, and in 2004 they finally finished it. Possibly some ideas from Protovision’s version were used as inspiration, but at least a Turrican 3 did make it in the end. Would two versions have been completed had Protovision not had their disk stolen, and didn’t have Factor 5 on their backs?

The preview has been floating around the net for some time, but recently Protovision have been spreading all the remains of Turrican 3 with their other sold products for people to see.

Jazzcat has kindly passed on these remains for GTW to preserve and show some of you for the first time too. Now you can see for yourself the potential of this conversion.

Also check out the words from Protovision, as mentioned on their website.

Case closed…

It was always thought that Alter Developments would be doing the C64 conversion of Troddlers, if anyone. It was announced they were trying to do Troddlers in an issue of Commodore Force. These were the same team who brought you Lemmings on the C64.

However, the guys from SCS-TRC were also trying to get the contract, so there was a bit of competition there.

The Alter Development version of Troddlers consisted of 6 levels which looked good and would work very well. These levels were done for the purpose of demonstration to Sales Curve. The SCS-TRC version looked more impressive, and so it got the contract away from Alter.

Sales Curve continued with the project with the other team, and eventually they pulled out of the market and decided not to go with any more C64 stuff. The game would have been canned anyway. Alter had already stopped work on their version anyway, so that was that.

Remi says that he felt sad that Sales Curve didn’t continue, and what with their past work, you would expect the conversion to be very good.

Remi told GTW that the previews may still exist in his disk collection, and hopefully they would be uncovered….

….Well.. its happened!!!… Thanks to the game’s programmer, Niels Brouwers, we bring you the first ever glimpse of the original conversion that was taking place. Niels got in touch with GTW, and kindly passed on all the previews which existed.

All in all this contains 6 playable levels and a few pictures which would have been included in the game.

Although it does not look as polished as the accepted contract version, this contains more playable aspects of the original game. No doubt in time, this would have been tweaked and improved at the end. It still looks an impressive conversion, and there is much more here to look at.

It is interesting to compare both versions, but essentially with the two versions there is a half complete version of Troddlers. Sadly the game is missing music, but we are unsure if any was actually composed for this version. We will try and find out soon.

Check it out and see what you think :)

Found at last, and another case pretty much closed!…

The game was being built for Palace Software by John Menzies and John Cassells and was a horizontal scrolling SEU with bitmapped backgrounds and a sprite plex. The game used VSP to scroll the screen, which was a risky technique to use, as it wasn’t stable on some C64s.

Jason Kelk actually had the soundtrack on his disks, composed by Sean Connolly when he was still in Pulse Productions (complete with sampled drums). This was dug out and recovered for this GTW entry and can be found in the download below.

The game itself is amazing for its time, and even though it was created pre-90’s, you can see just how much this game could have done well for Palace. Featuring wonderful backdrops and creatures to blast, also with a impressive set of weaponry.

John Cassells got in touch with GTW and informed us that the game was cancelled as they could not guarantee that the scroll routine would work on every C64 machine. A huge disappointment, and something which we had thought could probably be improved/fixed these days due to breakthroughs with VSP. Raistlin/G*P however confirmed that although Safe VSP was available, due to the nature of how Touchlight works, it would be impossible to use to fix the issues.

Thankfully, a rather large preview of the game has long been out there, cracked by Babygang, featuring pretty much all of 5 levels, apart from the final two which only really have the background graphics. So check it out for yourself!

Next we hope to get hold of John Menzies to learn more about its development and before we close the case on the title. We assume that the leaked preview is all that ever existed.

Yet another title enters the archives, and this time by the development team behind Lemmings on the Amiga.

This was obtained from DMA Design’s own tribute webpage, and was released into the world by Mike Dailly for people to check out.

It is a sideways scrolling SEU with some borrowed sprites from Armalyte due to the fact that Mike had no graphic artist to help him.

It is a rather small play area, though there is some nice graphics and parts of the level close in and out to try and crush your player. The attack waves are quite simple at the moment, though there is a element of playability present in this early demo.

This game was created after Menace, and got Mike the contract to do Balistix on the C64. The game got shelved for unknown reasons. But its possible that Blood Money was started instead, which Mike states that the game had a few bits from this game.

This really is as far as the game ever got, so you won’t find anything more to look at. A promising looking title, but sadly never to be, but at least we had Blood Money! :)

A relic from DMA designs and a nice one too. Case closed…

This is a promising looking preview of a game which reminds me slightly of Cyberdyne Warrior. Its a nice preview, with some fair (If jumbled) graphics in places. The main sprite moves very well and in places the graphics look nice, like in the shop screen. The preview features no sound, and it has recently come to light about the game’s existance thanks to its coder, Kevin Murphy.

You may remember Kevin for his game "Thrustaball" which appeared on ZZap’s covertape back in the early 90’s. Kevin created a variety of good quality games, but sadly never got the break he deserved.

After/during the new incarnation of Thrustaball to be sold abroad (Mega Thrustaball), Kevin was working on Thunderzone, which was probably his most ambitious of his game creations. Various levels and bits were created with the intention of probably going Multiload.

As quoted from "Creator Speaks", Kevin describes the game… "The idea of the game, was basically to trudge about the various levels shooting at and blowing up various unstable nuclear reactors, using teleports to zip about the level and shooting aliens and collecting pickups and credits to spend on weapon upgrades in a shop."

The game was sent to Legendary Designs on various occasions in its various forms for playtesting, and feedback was given for improvements etc.

The game got to quite an advanced state, more advanced than what can be seen from this "Very early preview", as Kevin describes it. Later it had a full working shop, fully upgradable weapons, aliens and sfx. There was also a variety of levels created too.

Unfortunately, due to Mega Thrustaball not being sold and Kevin not recieving the payment he was due, he lost heart in the project and scrapped it. So at the time just an advanced preview existed (Near to completion). The game was later to resurface in 1997 under another programmer taking the helm. (This also got scrapped and no further progress was really made).

Kevin sadly does not have any of his work any longer, though there are two places to look.

For one, Legendary Designs will have a later preview if members still exist. A developer called Michael Reichmuth, who worked on Thunderzone and started up the project again in 1997, is also someone else who is likely to have the later versions. Other than that, Kevin mentioned a friend who possibly may have still had copies of all his work… and guess what!…. He DID!….

Jason Steele had very luckily kept all his disks from 20 odd years ago, and still had all of Kevin’s old work and has very kindly backed it all up and preserved it for Kevin!… Kevin has released all of the new work, and now GTW has added the extra bits to the archive
too.

You can now find some new bits in the download link! :-) …. The new version, includes aliens, the ability to purchase new weapons and 2 levels. There were actualy 3 levels designed but Kevin is pretty sure the third level is now lost forever.

Now included in the zip file are 2 new .d64 files. The file T1.d64 contains the game v2.prg file, this is level 2 of the game. The file T2.d64 contains the TZ Demo.prg file and this is a version of level 1 of the game, with player to alien collision detection disabled and maximum credits, so the player can purchase all the weapons and explore the level. There are also editors and bits which were used for the game, and also a logo of somekind for the game.

Some fantastic findings, and we are very glad to add these to the archive with this preview!… A big thanks to Jason Steele for helping preserve more of Kevin’s game!….