Games That Weren't^®

First Star are famous for some fantastic C64 games, such as the Spy vs. Spy and Boulderdash series and many more. Along with these fantastic titles there seems to be a few which got away too.

One such title that “got away” was Panic Button, where you control a factory worker who has to construct small houses together using parts from the conveyor belt. Not as easy as it sounds, with a huge amount of parts getting sent along the conveyor belts at one time. You have to be quick and get many houses built before the timer runs out.

It is a game typical of 1984, with simplistic graphics, but the great trademark First Star playability. It is essentially a cross of Toy Bizarre and Night Shift.

Strangely, although completed, First Star never released the game, and we are yet to find out why we are having to look at it via the GTW archives. Contributor Sean Everard (see comments) suggests that it may have been due to Tandy perhaps wanting to supress the C64 version to keep it a TRS-80 exclusive. It’s certainly plausible, though it doesn’t seem like a huge title that would have made much difference. Hopefully we’ll get to learn from someone at First Star about exactly what happened.

So, how did a release occur after over 20 years?

Well, First Star released a tribute CD called “First Star Software’s Greatest Hits” to celebrate all their releases around 2004, and put all their back catalogue onto the CD for people to play and enjoy.

Either way – we’re lucky that the game did sneak out in the end, and so you can enjoy the whole game for yourself! Case closed…

Although Pang actually did make it out on the C64, it wasn’t just Arc Developments who had a crack at producing the C64 conversion. Programmer of the C64 version of Speedball 2 and Turtles, Carl Muller tried to get the licence to produce Pang for Ocean by creating a quick demo to demonstrate that he could do it.

After about two weeks worth of work, this reasonable attempt was created and sent to Ocean, but the licence was turned down, and eventually Arc Developments got it.

So the preview was all that ever remained of Carl’s own attempt for the licence. A good attempt in its very early stages, but shaping up reasonably well. Graphically terrible, though Carl knocked up the graphics just to test and demonstrate the basic game principles itself at this phase.

A previously unseen prototype of Pang, all found.. case closed!

Another pacman clone, with a imaginative title of "Pacman X" :)..

A fairly early preview, as the game is not 100% playable.

The game is slightly modernised from the original Pacman, but not by too much. The graphics are still quite simplistic, and very green looking overall.

There doesn’t seem to be a great deal more to offer than the old concept.

There are plenty of credits within this preview, including Mikael Backlund, who has helped GTW in the past. Hopefully he will be able to help with enquires into this game.

One to hope finding in the future….

This was a bi-directional SEU with some nice graphics by Simon Probert (Simes of Cosine, currently in Australia) and code by Jason Kelk with no sound, although Simon was to do this.

The game progressed from some early code by Jason, whom is most famous for his work now with Cosine, and his Reaxion games.

The game was being developed for Firebird and their budget range, after someone at the company showed interest after seeing the previews they sent.

When a more complete preview was sent up, Firebird were not really interested and wanted games with BMX and Skateboards. Firebird suggested various changes to the game, and Jason didn’t want to make these changes. He felt the game would distance too much away from what he really wanted.

The game itself is quite good, and something which would have faired well on the budget range. It was a little hard to play, and probably needs a lot more, but Jason i’m sure would have had the ability to do so with the final version.

This is it of the game, and case closed. All you will see of a game which Firebird wanted to change too much for Jason’s liking.

Jason gives an account in his own words in Creator Speaks, extracted from his webpage, where he first released this game.

Grab it and check out a piece of Firebird history…

This interesting game is best described as a Uridium style shoot’em’up and was to be published by CRL in 1988 but the game company went bankrupt.

The preview features some nice music and graphics, and i’m sure it would have recieved fair reviews in the magazines had CRL lasted long enough to sell the game.

Well, Jukka has released it at long last to the public…. and its a great classic feeling game. I just hope that Jukka can find the full game from somewhere, if it was ever finished.

For now, read what Jukka had to say about the game he did the graphics for in ‘Creator Speaks’.

Unfortunately not snapped up by another game’s company.