Games That Weren't^®

Some of you may have seen this game released on another label in Europe in the early 90’s, but what you don’t know is that this game infact was due for release on the Firebird label around 1988/89.

Sadly, the game was not complete in time before Firebird closed its doors, and the game was left without a publisher. Originally the game was called "Radax", but was renamed later for its proper release.

Therefore, the game exists in a complete state, but with another name. Though "Radax" never was to be.

Firebird sadly missed out on a nice little game, which would have made a good budget release, with its nice graphics and addictive gameplay.

But never mind…. its here, in full form… Magic Disk released it eventually, though really it was mean’t for Firebird software. The original Firebird preview is also in the download.

Hot stuff, but not hot enough to make it for Firebird in time…

We had it all, over a decade of quality C64 games for our beloved machine, but it all had to end sometime. As the C64 started to make way for its 16-bit counterparts, titles were rushed and often there were shoddy ports towards the end. There was the odd gem though which made the C64 proud towards the end of its commercial life, and Rubicon was one of those titles which clearly had a huge amount of effort put in.

Rubicon was dressed to impress, with an array of phenomenally good graphics and reasonable gameplay overall. It got good reviews from the magazines, but sadly never got enjoyed as much as hoped due to the collapse of Hewson, and delays with its release under their new label.

None of this deterred the efforts and imaginations of the game’s creator, and a sequel was put into motion almost straight after the first game was finished.

The sequel was started initially for the Amiga, but consideration also was given for a C64 version. The game was to be coded on the C64 by a new set of programmers, whilst the first game’s original coders would concentrate on the Amiga version.

Joachim Ljunggren, known as The Sarge to many on the C64 scene, was allocated to the C64’s graphics like with the first game. Joachim got set to work on the game’s graphics, whilst also drawing up a series of plans and sketches to map out the whole game.

Sadly once the sketches and plans were pretty much complete, the game was cancelled and never progressed past ideas and initial C64 screens. It’s not known exactly why it was cancelled on all systems, and hopefully we will find out more soon.

In later years, The Sarge was in strong co-operation with C64.com. It is here where The Sarge had a gallery set up for all his work, which included previously unseen screens from Rubicon 2, and a whole series of scanned sketches. Thanks to Andreas Wallstrom, GTW was given permission to use and show these sketches within our own preservation of the game.

The Sarge has been in touch a few years later, and uncovered a very rare demo of Rubicon 2. This included a Zoom effect which was unused in Rubicon, and may not have been seen before, included as a bonus.

This is a very very early development demo which demonstrates the game graphics moving left and right. It is possibly one of the only code demos ever made for the game, but there could well be more and I’m sure we will bring this to you in the future if it turns up. The graphics are amazing anyway.

A potentially stunning title which was maybe a bit too late in the C64’s life…

One of Simon Pick’s unknown games exists in the form of Revolution, which can be found on Commodore Format’s Powerpack from issue 1.

This game was actually meant for commercial release, and was showed around to various companies, but with no real response. The only company that showed interest was "Big Apple", and they wanted to change the game too much.

After Simon had to get a job, the game was abandoned as he joined Sales Curve. It wasn’t until Commodore Format contacted Simon and asked him if he had any unreleased games for the covermount of the first issue, that he sold them Revolution for £2000.

The big thing is that the game isn’t actually complete. There was to be far more added to the game, so technically its only a preview at heart, but released to Commodore Format as pretty much a full game. You wouldn’t have thought that it was a preview would you?

The game features music by Martin Walker, and features a ship based in a kind of shield. The screen rotates around the ship by pressing left and right, and enemies and rocks come hurtling towards your craft in the centre. You must rotate and shoot each object before it crashses into you.

Along the way you can collect powerups to help you progress to the next stage.

The game is very playable, and I thnk an original concept, based very loosly on Gyruss in its style.

It’s a big shame that no-one took on this game, as Simon i’m sure would have finished it off a treat. Although this is all that remains of Revolution, it is still a great little game and a game which Simon says is one of his best. Read more on the game in "Creator Speaks", where Simon gives his own account on his masterful little game.

Also check out the game instructions which were kindly put into a text file by James Monkman and can be found in the download.

A great little revolution of a game… case closed.

What we have here with our next GTW entry is Miles Barry’s first C64 game which was started while Jason Kelk and Nigel Smith were crashing over his place for a week.

The majority of superb graphics were done by Jason (TMR) Kelk, with a main sprite and paper based level designs by Nigel. Infact, its been recently found that the walker sprite is actually by Robin Levy and was borrowed from the early Armalyte previews that did the rounds! Jason is fairly sure thinking back that Nigel had originally shown them the same sprite editor.

Originally the game started out as an advert in Zzap64 by Nigel, as he wanted to have this particular game written. Miles contacted Nigel and joined forces with to create this game. Both Miles and Jason took over the project, and controlled the majority of it once Nigel arrived at Miles house for the week. Unfortunately the game was not to last really past the week that was spent on it. It is possible that Nigel went on and finished off the game elsewhere according to Jason.

The game therefore consists of a well animated Ed209 based sprite which walks left and right on a horizontally scrolling screen with some smart initial looking graphics. It is not playable as such, with no sprites to look at apart from the main character and nothing really to do. It is at a very early stage.

The loading screen itself came after Jason arrived back home, and was inspired by Ed209 from Robocop.

The game, if finished, was to be published by Diamond Bytes, which was rumoured to be a software house offspring of Commodore Disk User, which didn’t get very far. Apex Images was infact Cosine and Nigel, but the name soon died out as they discovered that there was an Apex already out there.

There is no more of this game to be found, apart from possibly any other bits of work from Nigel himself, or even the paper designs he did. Maybe if Nigel can be found, he can shed some light on this title and maybe even tell us what happened next.

An interesting title which will be examined more in the future….

Nice early development of a promising title…