Games That Weren't^®

Pimania was an adventure game released very early on back in 1982/83. If you managed to crack the game and interpret the clues correctly – you could work out the time, date and place where someone will be waiting to hand over the "Golden Sundial of Pi" – worth £6000 in gold, diamond, lapis lazuli and obsidian.

The game had mixed receptions – not sure who ever got the prize either :) …

The game only really got a release on the Spectrum, BBC and Dragon 32k… though the C64 was mentioned in one particular advert. However, in other adverts the C64 option to order was removed. So did the game get cancelled on the C64?

Automata never released any other games on the C64, so maybe they decided to stick to the other platforms?… Seems strange really. Hopefully we can find out some of the developers who did the game and find out exactly what happened.

For now, we need more info – do you know anything?…

Part of an educational series, Picture Parts is one of around 6 which is sadly missing and one which may have been released, but is very possible that it didn’t quite make it out.

We’re not 100% sure what happened to it, and what it was about, so we are lacking a lot so far for this entry. It was based for young children, and we assume was some kind of jigsaw game which aided learning.

Do you know any more about this title?…

Text adventure from Kayde who went into administration at the 26th August 1983. Did Spectrum releases, tried to do C64 and Vic 20 ones, which never seemed to surface.

The game in the advert (Two adverts were submitted by Peter Weighill) was described as follows:

“An Alice in Wonderland type adventure game for youngsters. You’ll meet magical characters like the rabbit and the mouse, travel along coloured roads, collect everyday objects that may have an unusual use. And you wake-up, you’ll find yourself back at the picnic”

We don’t know how far the game got exactly, but do you know any more?

Can you help?

Pharaoh’s Pyramid was a fairly popular game for the Atari in the early 80’s by Master Control Software, and was a rather enjoyable Q-Bert clone. In the advert, it was stated that a Commodore 64 conversion was coming soon … but what happened to it?

Well, the game never surfaced and is now at large. The publisher never seemed to release any other software on the Commodore 64, so maybe they abandoned the platform early on in favor of the Atari?

We don’t know how far it got, but we learn that the game was being converted by one of Randy Platt’s childhood friends at the time, but never quite made it.

It is believed that the conversion was never finished, and it seems unlikely that anything will be found of it – but who knows. Strange things can happen!

Yet another Ocean title which seems to have got lost along the way from its translation from other formats. In particular from the Spectrum/Amstrad in this case.

Phantom Club was a Knightlore style game from the creator of MOVIE, another game which never quite made a C64 translation. The difference with Movie however was that this game seems to have been penned for a C64 release and was mentioned a few times in a few magazines from 1988. The ACE magazine review lists the C64 as a format for its release, and the advert as well confirms this. See scans below!

The following portion of the games eventual review (from a Spectrum magazine) defines the game as follows:

“You have to be careful which clubs you join these days. Phantom Club is not a club to be recommended in more ways than one. Plutus, our hero, joined up and before he knew it, all the other members – a bunch of superheroes – had fallen under the evil influence of their wicked leader, leaving Plutus to restore order by reaching the rank of Ipsisimus. For good to triumph over evil he has to complete ten perilous missions in the Phantom Club HQ. (Should have joined the Kit- Kat Club Ed)

The game opens to a rather rough rendition of The Antiques Road Show theme tune (Two million pounds? But I only paid 50p for it! Ed) and then you get a touch of Deja vu. The highly detailed Filmation-type graphics will remind you of Movie because both games were written by the same chap. The graphics are definitely the strong point and judging by the sheer quantity of different sprites, objects and backgrounds, they must occupy vast amounts of memory.

But your task is pretty awesome, if not tedious. To begin one of the missions you’ve got to knock up at least 40,000 points by shooting super-heroes and picking up bonuses, but as each baddy only collects 50 points when dead, it might take you ’til Xmas next year. The trouble with Phantom Club is that once you’ve been everywhere and done everything there isn’t much left to tickle your fancy. You can while away the time by filling baddies with psychic bolts or drawing maps (there are over 550 rooms) but the novelty soon wears off.

If you want a lot of chocolate on your biccies, don’t join this club.”

Overall, this doesn’t paint a very pretty picture for the game, and with it being a relatively unknown title, it might not be worth a huge search. However, it is lost.. we lack information on it, and we’d like to preserve it. If Cisco Heat was lost, we’d preserve that… and that WAS shite.

Do you know anything about this title? Can you confirm its existence?

Yet another unreleased Codemasters game! … But this time from early on in their life in 1987. Phantomas was to be a conversion of the released spectrum game where you control a robber in a Manic Miner/Dizzy kind of game.

The game saw a sequel released, which oddly Codemasters released under a different name of “Vampire”, and which saw release on the C64. Perhaps it was renamed because the C64 edition hadn’t been released, or just to tie in as a horror themed game. What is odd is that the Phantomas 2 release in Spain has the same Vampire sprite, but the ZX Spectrum release of Phantomas 2 has the original character.

This original first game conversion however was being completed by Mark Greenshields, who previously developed the excellent Split Personalities, and worked on the mixed received 19 Boot Camp.

According to Darren Melbourne, the conversion was very faithful, and was actually completed! So why did Codemasters choose not to release this faithful conversion? Bizarrely, Darren says the finger points to the fact that it was too much of an exact Spectrum clone, without any upgrades to take advantage of the C64 hardware. For this reason it was canned.

Yes… one word springs to mind… Dizzy… but alas… this was seen differently.

Mark suggested that he wasn’t paid for the work, so never got the final game. It’s believed that the original game didn’t sell very well and for that reason Codemasters decided to ditch the game.

Can this ever be found for GTW? Mark offers hope that he may still have it, but its unlikely.