Games That Weren't^®

Pegasus and the Trials of Perseus was yet another early C64 game that got some heavy advertising, but never seemed to quite make it for reasons unknown yet. There were various adverts in magazines at the time, and even a review!

As described by the review (if it was indeed a review at all – see the scans and the same matching screenshot as the advert), the game puts you in search of the treasures of the gods. You have the favor of Olympus as you ride Pegasus, the great winged stallion. On your steed, you soar skyward to perform heroic deeds. Following the riddled advice of Zeus, you then fly over the rolling hills of Greece towards the temples of the Titans. When you dismount, sword in hand you must fight Cyclops, Medusa and the Centaur.

The game also had speech synthesis throughout and various 3D effects and looked pretty good in its single static screenshot.

So what happened to the game?…. we aren’t quite sure, but Tymac did release a few titles for the C64. Maybe they went bust just before it got a release?

Do you know more?

Pegasus had its beginnings in the basement of a kebab shop in Gravesend in Kent, where Chris Neary, who had done the graphics for The Evil Dead in 1983, along with Duncan Rigden and Stuart Brown, got together to make ‘the best game ever’.

The concept centred on a Wizard who transformed into a Pegasus to fly across a landscape, while being grounded when in Wizard form. When you were in your Wizard form you could enter houses and descend into an Underworld.

Sadly Stuart didn’t have the same enthusiasm for the project as Chris and Duncan and when he left the project faltered, until it was shelved and the programmers went on to other things.

The most interesting thing to come out of the project is the fact that a very similar concept was released by Palace Software, who Chris had worked for before starting Pegasus, that went on to become a huge seller and a classic of the 80s 8-bit home computer scene. It’s name? Cauldron.

Cauldron features a witch, who flies on a broom or is grounded in a similar way to the Wizard in Pegasus. The fact that some of the graphics Chris made for Halloween, another Game That Wasn’t, were reworked for Cauldron without his knowing adds to the mystery.

That said however, if Chris had already left Palace by the time Pegasus was conceived it’s hard to see how they could have stolen his idea, but the similarities are thought provoking.

Sadly for us though, it seems nothing remains of Pegasus for us to judge for ourselves the similarities, unless Stuart Brown has some code or Duncan Rigden, the artist for the project, has some archived concept art.

Do you know any more about this game?…

Paranoid Pete is a space harvesting action game which was released on the Spectrum way back in 1984. Personal Computer Games advertised the game and clearly you can see that a Commodore 64 version was in the pipeline.

Although the ZX Spectrum , and BBC micro versions did surface and get a release, the C64 version never quite made it due to Ubik going under due to all the problems that occurred. Hedning recently found the reason why in Popular Computing Weekly 6-12 Sept 1984:

“Weetabix acts against Ubik

TYNESIDE company Ubik’s game Paranoid Pete will not now be appearing in the shops. Weetabix complained that the characters portrayed in the game resembled its own ‘Weetabix men’ used in advertising too closely.

“When we first started work on Paranoid Pete we were working in collusion with Weetabix to produce a game based on their characters,” said Ubik’s marketing director Danielle Allan. “But when the game was complete, Weetabix weren’t happy with the result. “In order to be able to bring out a game ourselves, we changed many aspects of it, but Weetabix were not satisfied and it has now been shelved.

However, Ubik do have two more games scheduled for release in October. Razzmatazz is based on the ITV children’s programme of the same name, to be brought out under licence on the Spectrum, with a Commodore 64 version to follow, and a comical game for the BBC provisionally entitled The Professor. Both are expected to be priced around £5.95.”

So shortly after being released on the shelves, Ubik were ordered to stop selling the game. Was the C64 version even in production when Ubik were told to stop?

Rob Hubbard in a video interview once mentioned that he programmed a game which featured the Weetabix character, which the company didn’t get permission to use and hence the game was scrapped.

Considering that Rob also coded a game called Razzmatazz, and that Ubik were based in Tyneside … it was originally certain that Rob Hubbard was behind the C64 conversion of this game. However, it was later confirmed that Rob had worked on Paranoid Pete 2, which later turned into Razzmatazz after the Weetabix legal issues. This is why Rob recalls doing a game with the character at the start, but this was changed to a strawberry with legs.

So, although we thought Rob was involved in the original game – it seems he wasn’t. There is a possibility that his Casio tune was to be used for the game, but that is to be confirmed or removed as a reference in HVSC.

We know that a C64 version was in the planning for the first game at least, as an advert from Popular Computing Weekly clearly has the format listed. We may have to find someone from Ubik or another developer who may have something of the game, but it is looking bleak. At the very least, the tunes seem to have been saved!

However – Anonymous Contributor makes a very good point that in the advert it states “Amstrad version available September”, but there is no such claim for the C64 edition. This gives the impression that the C64 version may have already been ready and on sale? Did it therefore sneak out before the clamp down from Weetabix?

Well, it could and maybe it should have happened… but Parallax was due a sequel from the Sensible Software boys, and certainly this was very much on the cards.

The previous game was left rather open at the end once you had completed it. It never really had a ending to it, like the game was "to be continued" or something along them lines.

In a Zzap Sensible Software Interview, Chris Yates talked about Parallax and the possibility of the sequel…

"The reason we left Parallax open is because of the option of Parallax II. You hyperspace to earth, but it’s a multi-earthable hyperspace – we’re into that. We could do another bit, where on your way back to earth you investigate another alien planet… accidentally."

Gary Penn: "So you will do another Parallax?"

Chris Yates: "It’s on the board at the moment, but it will depend on how well Parallax was received. If people still remember it in a few months’ time then I suppose so…"

Well, as we all know, the game was definately well recieved, but the project never materialized. It seems that Wizball took precidence, and by the time this was complete… Parallax was long forgotten about.

We assume that pretty much nothing was ever created for the sequel. The ideas were all which existed, and probably are all of what made up Chris Yate’s words when questioned.

Craig Grannell recently spoke to Jon Hare who had the following to say…

Craig: "Were there any plans for a sequel? I remember reading about tentative plans at the time."

Jon Hare: "I really don’t remember anything about Parallax 2, so they were extremely tentative plans! We were pretty much into Wizball right after Parallax."

Craig: "So ‘tentative’ as in ‘putting a number after ‘Parallax’, then?"

Jon: "Pretty much!"

So unfortunately this looks like a closed case and nothing to find…

This is another game which Zeldin was working on.

Thew game only in planning-phase (some grafix, animations etc. were done).

It’s not quite sure what this game was about, though I hope Zeldin will explain more. Was it a update of Andrew Braybrook’s classic?… not sure yet :)….

Hopefully Zeldin will allow us to upload some screenshots of the graphics and animations… maybe allow us to create a GTW c64 disk image slideshow?

Lets see what happens….

A very popular arcade from Atari in 1986, converted fairly well to the C64 by Elite around the same time. Mindscape were this time handling the sequel, which never existed as an arcade title.

Paperboy 2 this time featured the chance of controlling a “Papergirl” too, and riding on both sides of the road at different perspectives. Slightly more ambitious and sadly moving too far away from the simplicity of the original.

The game surfaced on all platforms, including the Spectrum and Amstrad, though as with Mindscape’s other game “Captain Planet”, Paperboy 2 was never seen on the Commodore 64. No review, no preview, just a blip on Commodore Format’s time scanner for about a month.

It was advertised throughout issues for a while, but this sadly was it. No-one has ever seen how the game looks on the C64.

Nick Bruty confirmed that Probe were only ever contracted to do the Spectrum and Amstrad versions of the game. This of course is really strange – as the C64 had the stronger market of the 3 machines.

Did Mindscape have a special deal with an existing C64 developer to do Paperboy 2 and Captain Planet? Or did they just make a misguided decision not to do a C64 version at all for either game?

We spoke to David Amor and Richard Leinfellner, who worked at the Mindscape UK headquarters at the time. They could not recall anything about a C64 conversion, though it is possible they could not find anyone who could do a conversion quickly.

With the Spectrum/Amstrad version, Probe were able to knock something out very quickly. Possibly a coder was found, but maybe due to the game bombing on other platforms, they decided not to pursue the C64 version and quietly scrapped it. Mindscape certainly left the 8-bit platform well alone after both games.

Commodore Format’s Neil Grayson spotted that Commodore Format had ran a competition with Mindscape to win a disk drive and a copy of Paperboy 2 on disk (see scans). So it is clear that there was a serious conversion under way – but by who and why was it never released?

Surely there must be a link also with Captain Planet that was also never released too?

Do you know anything more about this conversion?

Panzadrome was to be a neat little tank action game (top down approach) by Ram Jam Corporation on various machines including the C64. It was based in a maze type arena, going around and blowing up various other tanks on an island. Tanks are controlled by a central computer which must be destroyed.

The game was published by Ariolasoft and actually released on the Spectrum and Amstrad, but RamJam hired a programmer specifically to convert the game to the C64. Sadly after two months, the programmer claimed to have accidently left the source code and all his other development disks on a train. There was no time to get another version started, so it was cancelled.

We are not sure if the programmer’s story is true, but maybe you picked up the disks from the train? … ;-) …. Pretty much it seems that this one never got very far and has been lost to time, but there is always a remote possibility that something exists somewhere.

Do you know any more?

A report on the ECTS (European Computer Trade Show) of 1989 was featured by Computer Action magazine in their July/August 1989 issue, with discussion of many forthcoming games.

Inevitably, at least one of these did not come to fruition. Panic Stations from Gremlin is one example – it was also planned for the Spectrum, and probably other computers.

Panic Stations was to be a shoot ’em up in which you play a robot, trying to bring peace to a space station by destroying other robots. You had limited ammo and energy, but could collect a hover-car to travel around in (which sounds intriguing).

The screenshot in Your Sinclair shows a side-on view with a small map at the bottom, although it is not clear exactly how changing directions would be incorporated.

No game fitting the description was ever released on the C64, but graphic artist Andy Elkerton got in touch with GTW64 to confirm that he drew all the graphics in his first ever game project. The game was being developed by John Darnell of Star Paws fame for Gremlin and was actually completed. Andy described the game as pretty light hearted, where you would control a character exploring a space station, blasting away at droids which had gone out of control. There wasn’t too much to it, and not a lot of replay value – so Andy suggests this may well be why Gremlin didn’t release the game in the end.

The question now is if anything has survived of the game, and only John Darnell may now hold the key!

Do you know any more?