Games That Weren't^®

Released on the ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC, Spaced Out was a puzzle game that was produced by Steve Cain and John Gibson back in 1987 for Firebird Software.

The game had a mixed reception, but was a good solid budget title overall. Zzap 64 in June of 1987 first mentioned that Spaced Out was coming soon to the C64, mentioning John Gibson, but most likely he only ever wrote the Spectrum version and someone else did the CPC and C64 versions.

Sadly as you can tell, the C64 conversion never surfaced, and we are now hunting for the game. The back of the Spectrum release shows some rather C64 ish looking screenshots, but these may have just been the CPC ones.

So what happened to this one?… Do you know any more?… Who was the developer behind it?

Potentially this was originally thought of as vaporware until we had received confirmation that it wasn’t. This was thanks to early adverts for Space Ace by Empire/Readysoft, which reported a C64 version as coming soon.

Additionally though in recent times we have knowledge that indeed a deal was being thrashed out for a C64 conversion of Space Ace by Empire software. With a ton of game design document information and notes recovered by Paul Cawley and scanned in. Check out the downloads for a massive PDF showing a ton of information and specifications for the C64 edition being proposed.

Basically, Empire were trying to arrange conversions for not only the C64, but also the Amstrad and ZX Spectrum. We know at least that the C64 version was being pushed for UK based development during late 1989. They also wanted the game to be kept to around a 512k product to maintain portability at a later date to the Nintendo Entertainment System.

The document carefully explains what key sections would be focused on and converted, and how they could be converted – i.e. using vertical scrolling, switched perspective etc. It wasn’t going to be trying to emulate a laser disc game at all, but do something akin to Drgaon’s Lair, and make an interpretation/demake of some of the scenes.

Later adverts (and at least the ones we have seen) do not have C64 listed, so it was clearly scrapped off the list early on. It seems that discussions got stuck in a bit of a loop between the owners of Space Ace and Entertainment International UK, who were trying to negotiate the 8-bit conversions.

Things dragged well into mid-1990 and the owners of Space Ace got a bit fed up and even started to pitch to other companies to do conversions. They wanted to ensure that development was started asap, so they could get a Christmas 1990 release. It never happened, but we don’t know if anyone actually started any kind of conversion or if an agreement was ever made. The information ran dry at this point.

Readysoft did eventually release a C64 title in the form of Wrath of the Demon, which has a kind of laserdisc feel in its graphics for some strange reason. Maybe because of the large cartoony graphics. Maybe a proof of concept was done with Space Ace in Wrath of the Demon’s engine to start with, was scrapped and Wrath of the Demon grew out of the C64’s proof of concept?… A bit far fetched speculation?

More I feel is yet to be uncovered on this conversion, and something may well have been started – not only on C64, but Spectrum and Amstrad platforms too!

Sophistry is not to be confused with the other entry within GTW which was for Hewson and a Quix clone. CRL’s Sophistry game was to be a isometic 3D game in the style of Bobby Bearing, and recieved glowing reviews on the Spectrum … http://www.ysrnry.co.uk/articles/sophistry.htm

The Games Machine mentioned that a C64 version was being started, but we never heard any more. We are guessing that the game was going to be a straight spectrum port, but the speed issues as with many conversions for this type of game was a bit crap and the game scrapped as a result.

Clem Chambers suggested that they may not have been able to find a developer who could port the game at a decent speed from the Spectrum. It’s clear that a C64 version was planned, but it could not be recalled if this was actually started or scrapped when a suitable developer could not be found.

Maybe you know something?

This was one of the first games to be released by newly set up team, Arcanum developments. This team consisted of Mark Kelly, his brother, Robert McGowan, Barry Leitch and Alan Mac.

The game was being done for Hewson, and was to be a Quix clone featuring cool looking graphics. It was rumoured that Firebird weren’t really happy with the idea of a Zolyxx clone being produced, so they came down on Hewson like a ton of bricks and the game was promptly cancelled.

However, Richard Hewison sees it differently and that there wasn’t really any pressure from Firebird at all. It is suggested that Hewson saw the issues with the on-going court case with Telecomsoft over Morpheus (and Magnetron) and this influenced their decision to ditch the game. But there is a little bit more to it aswell, which seems to be the overall answer. Essentially the developers were quite young at the time, Robert McGowan had the following to say:

“At the time, me being 16 and xenon being about 14 I think, neither of us really had the mathematical skills to work out the fill routine in stix (basically an algorithm to subtract successive squares and pick the smallest possible enclosed area) so we just started working on whatever we liked (for me that turned out to be the scrolling shoot-em up called Marauder which Hewson actually sold)”

Eventually the team broke up, and no-one really got paid… the game was canned as a result. It is not known if the game still exists today, but we hope to find out soon by getting in touch with Mark and seeing if anything still exists anywhere.

Barry’s music still exists, and can be found here to download and have a listen to. Barry described it by saying “It’s shite! :) “… but its still a small piece of the game which has survived.

Time will tell, but more research needed at the moment…

More soon on this we hope!…

Originally we didn’t know a great deal about this game, only that it would have been the sequel to the released game and featured more from the popular series.

However, news has recently surfaced on the World of Spectrum about the sequel from Clockwize and confirmation of the conversions. Taken directly from the World of Spectrum entry, Dean Hickingbottom recalls…

“The ZX version was ported to the Amstrad CPC. There are also CBM64 and Atari 8 bit versions. This game was never released due to a dispute between Alternative and Clockwize.”

Nothing seems to have been mentioned in the likes of Commodore Format, like with Thomas The Tank Engine 2… so how far did the C64 version get?

The note from Dean seems to suggest just that and it was merely a dispute with Alternative that prevented the game from seeing the light of day… Could we therefore be eventually seeing a full version of this game?…

We could indeed – the game has been confirmed as being completed and a master disk produced and hopefully in the future it should see the light of day. The inlays were even produced, but sadly Dean doesn’t have any of them. Developer names have been confirmed also!

Sadly Alternative do not wish the game to go out, so we may have to just put screenshots up for now.   We also have learnt that there were actually two versions produced.  An earlier edition by Keith was not quite good enough, so it was redone by Dave and Dean.

More soon we hope!

A huge hit on the MegaDrive and other SEGA systems. In the early 90’s, SEGA signed a deal with U.S. Gold to allow them to convert their titles to other computer systems, with titles such as E-Swat and Alien Storm seeing release.

Sonic was actually amongst the planned games for the C64 and other platforms, and U.S. Gold were eagerly awaiting Sega’s permission to start work on converting it over. Issue 77 of Zzap!64 in particular had a small article about upcoming games, which included Sonic.

U.S. Gold waited and waited, but Sega decided that their blue hedgehog creature was far too popular. People were buying a MegaDrive just to play the game, so they kept it as an exclusive to their platforms. It was only in much later years that Sonic would appear on platforms such as PC and the Nintendo Wii.

It is intriguing to know if any conversion was ever started, but it is highly unlikely. Could it have maybe been something close’ish to the SEGA Master System version perhaps? Interestingly, some Amiga mockup screens were produced, but its not yet known if they were just fakes produced in Deluxe Paint.

At least we had Mayhem in Monsterland!

We have to find this one!…. According to the game’s creator, this was heavily inspired by one of my favourite Vic 20 games of all time, Myraid by Rabbit Software.

This was infact released on the C16 by Bug Byte, and according to Stephen, should have also been released on the C64 too, but for reasons unknown … Bug Byte did not release it.

It is a frantic shoot-em-up which will be very worth finding again, and Stephen offers hope that he may still have something of the conversion on some old disks. Stephen some day will be digging these out for us to try and find some of his long lost games.

For now, check out the C16 conversion at http://plus4.emucamp.com/software/Solo and just hope that we may see a C64 version sometime soon.

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

Information is a bit scarce, and all we knew was that the game was to be a horizontally scrolling game like Rubicon/Hawkeye. Well, the game did surface on the Spectrum at least, but on Your Sinclair’s covermount… http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0004635

The game was a flick screen shooter which wasn’t that bad, but unfortunately Beyond Belief never quite took off as a label and sold off some of its complete titles to the magazines at the time. Commodore Format for example got Shellshock for their covermount.

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. We are wondering just if any C64 conversion was ever started … we certainly hope so!

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

More research needed…