Games That Weren't^®

Yet another Beyond Belief game which was planned and mentioned in the interview with Jim Scott.

Information is a bit scarce, as all we currently know is that the game was to be a Super Wonder Boy clone where you control a Jack Russell called Blot. So an arcade adventure where you control Blot and have to save the world.. or something :)

Although the Spectrum version had some preview shots emerge with an entry in World of Spectrum, the C64 version was never seen or heard of. But from the looks of the Spectrum version, it seems very much it was a straight clone of Super Wonderboy!

Contact has been made with Jim Scott, but sadly we have not heard anything back just yet. Hopefully soon we will hear back and find some information based on this game and the others.

So for now we have no credits for the game, so hopefully someone will step forward for it.

More research needed…

Yet another strange one for the vaults of GTW… Originally it wasn’t known about until TGM shed some light. Originally this game was known from a strange set of advert slogans which were used in Zzap issue 40 back in 1988. There were two cartoon adverts saying “Where’s Super Thief?” (See scans), but turning later pages does not find any advert in relation.

We assumed that this is reference to an up and coming game with clever advertising (gone wrong?). However, we didn’t know anything else about the game. When flicking through a copy of Games Machine, it all became clear with the following news snippet on Super Thief…

“On the Palace label itself comes arcade adventure Super Thief, by Dan Malone. The horizontal scroller, featuring complex backdrops, casts the player a model of unsullied selfishness, robbing the future for all its worth.

Malone’s been working for over a year on the ST and Amiga versions, and 8-bit should follow. Palace hope for a release later this year.”

Sounds very cool, but with no trace on the ST or Amiga, it seems that this got canned maybe when Palace went under. Coder Sean Griffiths confirmed that Palace cancelled for the game, which they seemed to do a lot of back in 1989… maybe to save money in desperate times?

Sean also confirms that they were only working on a C64 title, and there was no ST or Amiga version in development. It is likely that they may have been started if the C64 game was released. Richard Joseph was also indeed the composer too.

We believe that the game was actually finished, so it is hoped that Sean may find something of the game.

Yet another obscure game, this time by an obscure company called “Mushroom”… Who I don’t think lasted particularly long.

As you can guess, Super Scramble is a clone of Scramble and according to the review in Home Computer Weekly, it was pretty good!

According to the review, the design was excellent, with smooth scrolling and nicely animated radar scanners and rocket exhaust. The music was apparently an appalling version of Paint it Black and the only way to turn if on and off was to shoot/bomb musical notes scattered around.

Well, it never surfaced… but the musical description rang a bell (The toggling via the musical notes) and sure enough Rabbit Software’s version of Skramble did this. But the music in this version is from Star Wars.

So was the Mushroom release actually a pirate of the Rabbit Software game?… Well it seems it was trying, as the advert from Mushroom Software states that Nigel Rowlan was the coder, and it was indeed him who did Rabbit’s version. So now we know that we’re looking for a variant of the game! Can you help us find it?

Thanks to Peter Weighill and Rio Baan in January 2020, an auction has appeared selling just the inlay and no cassette sadly. But a scan has been added to the archive. So it exists – just need to find a copy to digitally preserve.

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?