Games That Weren't^®

A nice looking puzzle game, where you control a hi-res overlayed ball character which follows a path of tiles around a multiscrolling map, avoiding other hi-res overlayed enemies.

It’s a little frustrating back tracking paths when creatues start to come down the same route, but the preview is going along the right tracks by promoting a nicely polished game, which is quite fun to play.

Graphics are nice, which include the well animated and drawn sprites with their hi-res overlays to enhance detail.

So we’ve got the graphics, we’ve got the gameplay and the sound, so why no completed game at the end of it all?

This cannot be answered just yet, due to a lack of information, which hopefully can be brought in soon with a little bit more research. However, Ian Coog and Mariusz Mlynski have both helped to confirm some credits and we hope to learn more soon!

Nice game, but we don’t know anything about it!…

A surprise finding for GTW in 2012 was made when Richard Bayliss was checking through some loader source files from Paul Hughes’ disks that we backed up recently, and he came across a source code file named “Defender 2”.

Richard recalls about how he came across the game:

“I was browsing all the source disks I had difficulties viewing all of the loader sources on so many disks. I like to see some nostalgic loaders and how they were programmed, but I couldn’t get to grips with Commodore’s Assembler 64 to try and view/assemble the .src files to machine code programs.

However, I stumbled across a .D64 with the Zeus assembler, with some sources. I was tempted to check out the sources. Some were just scrolling messages. Then I tried loading in “DEFENDER 2″ source code into the assembler. I assembled the code to see what it was like. Well, the code assembled but I was missing the graphics files. So I tried loading in OBJECT, SCREEN 1, GRAFIX filenames, got back to the assembler and assembled the source. It turned out to be an unfinished game. So now I have put together the Defender game into one file, with an aid of a couple of tools, and now you can load and run it with pleasure :)”

When this was presented back to Paul Hughes, he was surprised that we had managed to dig out what was confirmed as a very early stage conversion of the little known Spectrum game, Subterranean Stryker. Paul shed some light on the game:

“The story behind the game, was that my local computer shop had a software house in the back – Insight Software. The first game that was being developed, for the spectrum, was a defender-a-like in caves called Subterranean Stryker, so I thought I’d show them a C64 version – the little ship was copied pixel by pixel from the Spectrum all the rest were rubbish little blocks that I cobbled together – not the spectrum maps.

Nothing came of it – in fact I’m pretty sure I never showed them it! Its not really a game its just a scroll and some (crappy) collision detection. I really had buried that one in the darkest recesses of my mind :o)”

It is indeed not much to look at, and is a very early test preview with a ship and a scroll routine – but Paul very kindly allowed us to preserve waht remains of a rare conversion from the early days. Many thanks to Richard Bayliss for helping to preserve it!

Case closed!

An interesting looking game, which feels a bit like a mixture of Paradroid, Alien Syndrome and Citadel mixed together.

The game is currently bugged which you are able to check out, as the droid seems able to move through walls and things. Though the actual game looks as if it could have been a nice release if actually finished off. There is little to do here, apart from blow up some nice green switch thingy’s on the walls.

The music is by Rob Hubbard, but looks as if it were ripped from another game, possibly temporarily until the game’s proper music was composed.

Developer Mat Ellis got in touch in early 2021 and confirmed that the game was actually a port of Alien Syndrome for U.S. Gold before the deal was nabbed by ACE. They began to rework the port into Subclavian before another project came along and focus was switched over to that.

Mat confirms that the new rework of the Alien Syndrome game which had you running around a spaceship, avoiding/shooting mutants, saving prisoners and getting power ups. Essentially Subclavian was going to be exactly the same – but with a different story and robots instead of two hero humans, collecting robot parts and fighting other robots instead of aliens. A bit of a mix in with Uridium/Paradroid and Subvlavian was to be born.

What you see here is essentially how far the game got before cancellation, and Mat confirms there is nothing more sadly to find. A nice glimpse at what could have been a very different conversion of Alien Syndrome!

Case closed!

“Strobe” is a new addition to GTW, in which at the time, not a lot of information was known. The game was an up and coming Pong style game set in the future, and the preview in the wild was not playable, and demonstrates a nice title screen and a part of the game itself.

Credited to Double Density, it seems that this game was destined for release in the German market, but never quite made it. Ruben Spaans in 2012 came forward and shed some light on the game:

“I have a version slightly newer than the preview on GTW. It is playable, but extremely bugged. The game was never finished because I lacked motivation (I would rather make demos at that time) and because it was so hard to debug.

The differences between the old version are: new music, and it’s playable. The left and right balls can be controlled with joysticks, and they can interact with the slopes in the arena, as well as collide with the third ball. The gameplay is extremely bugged, though. The player-controlled balls can travel to the other player’s area by going through the goal area (it acts like a long tunnel).”

Ruben kindly as mentioned has passed on a previously unseen and more complete version of the game which is playable. This was as far as it got unfortunately, and its a shame – as the game looks nicely polished, if only of a simple theme.

But at the least the mystery behind this game has now been solved, and we can close the case on it. Check it out! Thanks to Slator for the tidied up version of the game!

Case closed!