Games That Weren't^®

Another missing title, flagged up to us thanks to JazzGhostrider and mentioned as coming soon to the Commodore 64 in ACE magazine. The game was a graphic text adventure game produced by The Essential Myth, who had also produced Book of the Dead for CRL.

As you may have guessed, the adventure was based on the hideous exploits of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and was this time being self published by The Essential Myth in 1988. The game was reviewed in ACE magazine issue 13 for the ZX Spectrum and got a reasonable score overall. There was criticism regarding the price of the game.

Although the ZX Spectrum version was released, editions for the Atari ST, CPC and Commodore 64 never seemed to make it. The Atari ST edition did eventually surface in 1991 via Zenobi Software.

So what happened to the CPC + C64 editions? Did they ever get started and do they still exist? We assume that the C64 edition would have been created by the same person who did the C64 conversion of Book of the Dead – though the game is only credited to “The Essential Myth”.

If you know anything more, please do get in touch.

A short GTW64 entry for a sequel to Lupo Alberto, which was considered whilst the first game was still in development.

The game was to be called “Two hearts and a chicken pot”, and presentation screens and graphic elements were made by Luca Stradiotto.

In the end, it was decided to do a different game instead called Cattivik, where some of the ideas from Lupo 2 were taken and used instead.

This game was at least started on the Amiga, but we’re unsure if a C64 version ever got beyond planning stages.

A very short entry for the GTW64 archives, and to carry out a search for a Bombuzal editor which was sent out to various developers such as Jeff Minter, Andrew Braybrook, who were invited to create levels for Imageworks’ Bombuzal.

Both Tony Crowther and David Bishop felt it would be a great idea to get other big names from the C64 scene to produce levels for the game, including journalists, in the hope that it would help ensure better scores for the game. It wasn’t really necessary as the game is fantastic anyway!

It would be a great curiosity to find the editor that had originally been sent out to everyone, and could even be used to generate new levels for the game today.

Do you have it on a stray disk or know how we could find it? If so, please do get in touch.

Another GTW entry for Kele Line games, Field of Fire is not to be confused with the SSI strategy game of the same name that was released in 1985.

The only references to Field of Fire we have comes in an issue of Zzap!64, where the magazine interviewed Kele Line and talked about a few of their upcoming games. As a result, we have no screenshots, code or design notes to see what the game was intended to be.

However, it seems that this game could have been called “Fleet of fire”.

More Kele Line entries… with Western Game the latest casulty to go on that rather long looking list. The game was mentioned in computer magazines, but never seen. One particular source was Computer Action, 1988, issue 2, pg.5 which mentioned the game.

I think we can make the safe assumption that the game was a Western themed game with Cowboys. Just what type of gameplay involved is completely unknown at the moment. It is another one of those dark areas which needs a lot of examination before we can give a full analysis of it.

Contributor ‘Anonymous’ was able to find a snippet in SOFT magazine issue 2 (1987) where the game was named Fleet of Fire (it’s very likely that these games are both the same). The game was offered as a 3rd prize in a competition with the following text:

“[As third prize you get] Kele Line’s next release, “Fleet of fire”, as soon as programming is complete, not a bad thing if you love action. This is because “Fleet of fire” (previously named “The Western Game”) closely resembles “Gun Smoke” from the grill bar machines!”

The competition took place, but no 3rd place winner was ever announced.

It seems that potentially the game was cancelled due to it being a bit too close to Gun Smoke overall, though surely the rename and potential reskin was enough to sneak it out?

As mentioned in the text, the game was originally known as The Western Game, a working title quite clearly – but mentioned in computer magazines such as Computer Action in issue 2, page 5 in 1988.

Do you know anything more about the title?

Another currently missing game which may or may not have been released (highlighted thanks to Bertrand / Atari Frog) – this time in the shape of Euchre for Four, which was advertised back in June 1983 by Hutchcraft Associates in Issue 6 of Compute! magazine.

This seems to be a card game which was advertised for C64 and VIC-20.  But did anyone ever get a copy?

Thanks to Fabrizio Bartoloni, we learn that Euchre for Four was still selling in 1987 according to issue 14 of Info, page 41, where it was bundled on the same disk with a Backgammon game (see scans).

If you know anything about the game – please do get in touch.

Quest for Cyrus was announced in 2001 as coming soon by programmer Lorin Millsap. Described as “a game with a playing style much like that of Nintendo’s Zelda and the Final Fantasy series.”

Commodore Wire news site at the time suggested that:

“Quest is designed on “a fairly versatile game kernal that sports a fast loader. The game is highly disk intensive and as a result, its capabilities are incredible.” The game is currently in the testing and error checking stage. Millsap hopes to release Quest for Cyrus before mid 2001.”

However, just a month later, Lorin reported that there was a delay in publishing due to technical issues via the C64games.de website:

“Lorin Millsap from Pixel Pyramid Software has now announced that development of the planned C64 game ‘Quest For Cyrus’ will be delayed. The reason for this is a change in the basic system. It is currently expected to be released in September this year. The report still has good news: the game will be compatible with all known Commodore drives. It would also be nice to have compatibility with CMD drives – let’s wait and see.”

The game never surfaced after that, and we’re not sure yet why. Lorin is still active in the C64 scene, so we hope to learn more in the future. If you know anything more, please do get in touch.