Games That Weren't^®

Many of you will own Outrun Europa on the C64, but not this first version created back in 1988/89. This version was under the name of Outrun Europe and not Europa. It was also a rather different game.

Outrun Europe was originally drawn up for U.S. Gold as an unofficial sequel, and was started by Neil Coxhead who had joined Probe Software at the time. A design proposal was presented to U.S. Gold, who accepted it and allowed Probe to continue with their work on the project. GTW has the proposals which you can download below.

Outrun Europe was fully completed, but nearing the game’s completion, SEGA launched their own sequel entitled “Turbo Outrun”. U.S. Gold now had the dilemma of whether to release their own unofficial sequel, or to put that on hold and convert the Turbo Outrun game.

U.S. Gold chose the latter, so Probe were moved onto the development of Turbo Outrun instead with Steve Crow and Mark Kelly at the helm this time. Apparently one of the reasons was also because it was a bit naff according to the programmer, Neil Coxhead. Bits were apparently used from Outrun Europe to build up Turbo Outrun though.

When Turbo Outrun was released, attention turned back to the delayed Outrun Europe game. In comparison to the awesome Turbo Outrun, it was deemed now not good enough. It needed to be re-written.

Neil by now had more experience since the first game, and re-did the game and design from scratch. It resulted in a far better game released in 1991. The first version was never seen and would gather dust for many years.

Many years later, Neil sold all his development disks on Ebay, where a cracker/collector known as Mr Fox brought it along with several other disks. Video of the game in action was provided to GTW, with the promise of the game being fixed up and eventually released.

From the video clips, we can see a few bugs, but also Jeroen Tel’s music included – along with sound effects that can be put on. It does look good, though some parts of the game’s movement is a little jerky and plain.

The interesting bit about the music is that Turbo Outrun’s intro music was in fact meant for Outrun Europe. The proof is in the music demo download below, submitted thanks to Martin from Stadium 64. Also it is documented in the HVSC STIL file that some tunes used in Outrun Europa were actually intended for Outrun Europe. This is all but confirmed now by the video clips, as this intriguing story draws to a close.

Unfortunately it has been almost 20 years since the video clips were made, and there has been no progress on making the game available after several attempts.  It seems that the collector has no intention of making available, which unfortunately we see from time to time.  Hopefully some day we may find something of the game via other means and release properly for people to check out and enjoy.

For now, check out the official game proposal download below which Probe sent to US Gold to get approved. You will find that it proposes a rather different game to Outrun Europa which was eventually released.

Quite possibly one of the strangest goings on behind a Ocean release, coming in the form of the rather bizarre release of Operation Thunderbolt.

It all stems back to Zzap! 64, and issue 57 in particular. Zzap reviewed the game and it seems that it wasn’t complete either. This was confirmed by Paul Hughes, one of the game’s eventual programmers for the final version that was released. Zzap reviewed a half complete version which wasn’t that playable, it just looked bloody good with the sprite multiplexing.

One of the reviewers, Robin Hogg, explained that the review may have been written through “Rose Tinted Specs” at the time. Either way, the game got a rather undeserved high mark, when it wasn’t that particularly great after all.

Paul confirmed that the version seen by Zzap was being coded by junior programmer, Trevor Brown. Apparently the game looked really good but never moved that much. After struggling badly and not progressing much further, Paul and a team including Richard Palmer and Johnny Meegan had to write the game from scratch in no more than 12 days. Incredible, and possibly even more incredible that even though the game wasn’t great, it was written in this time. Trevor Brown was sadly let go in the end.

Most of the music and graphics were reused from the original (with some modifications and simplifications in places), and just coding was done from scratch. The sprites in particular were much more detailed and larger in Trevor’s version, but were possibly too large/detailed to be usable in a busy game like Operation Thunderbolt, hence the issues.

Artist Brian Flanagan, revealed that the game was around 60% complete from around a 6 month period overall. He suggests that a deal was struck by Ocean with Zzap for them to give the game a good mark in exchange for Zzap obtaining exclusive access to one of their big up and coming games. It seems that Trevor’s demo was shown to the Zzap reviewers, and it was deemed good enough to be passed off as a good game from the rolling demos and was therefore “reviewed”.

Robin Hogg however knew nothing of any deal being struck, and feels they just reviewed what they felt was a good game. It was a blip on their normally high standard reviews, but it seems that in the background there was promotions involved for the up and coming Batman licence. You can read Robin’s side of the story also in the “Creator Speaks” page, as well as details from Brian Flanagan.

To be honest, it seems that the guys allocated to the project should not have been in the first place. It was too big a project for two people just starting out in the industry. Had there been someone more senior on the project to supervise and help, Trevor may well have got the game out and could have established himself at Ocean. In the end, the struggle was too much and it was not to be.

Trevor moved on to pastures new, and has yet to be tracked down to talk about this game and give his side of the story. We would be interested to hear from Trevor and find out more, so if you are out there Trevor, please get in touch!

Of course, it is the controversy over the Zzap score which people will remember more than anything. We would love to get hold of the demos that Trevor produced to see exactly what Zzap saw back at the time and reviewed. Can you help us find them?

Now I bet you didn’t expect to learn that Obliterator was also a planned C64 title?… No?… Well, if you’re an Amstrad user you have probably played it already, where as us C64 users have suffered without a conversion of this popular Amiga classic.

There was always the odd rumour that Obliterator was being worked on, but we never got to see or hear anything of the title. That is, until Lee Cawley set the record straight and with some hard evidence.

Obliterator was in production at Lothlorien with Chris Caress (Coder of Bosconian) and Lee Cawley (Graphics man for Motos and Bosconian). This was at a time when Lothlorien was on its last legs and production became an uncertainty as staff were not paid. In particular, Lee was not paid and started working at home at one point.

Chris confirmed that the game was complete as far as the maps were concerned, with collisions and room to room transitions working. The main player was complete, fully animated and bullets were done as well as the collision detection. The Amiga edition had terrible scrolling, and for the C64 it was requested to make it smooth scrolling. This was achieved, but was quite slow and made the gameplay much more tedious according to Chris.

None of the enemy logic was in place, but Lee had got all the artwork complete and animations working. There was also music, but no sound effects. So overall, it was almost finished and was shaping up to be a very faithful conversion, featuring almost nigh perfect porting of the main character, and only some compromises had to be made to the squeezing in of the enemies.

Sadly, as Lothlorien went downwards, they got rid of Lee to try and save the business and the game was supposedly going to make it out.. though it never did.

15 years after the cancellation, Lee dug out his old disks in the hope of finding more of this enigmatic conversion. He found the loading screen, which for the first time can be seen in the shots page, but nothing was found of the rest of the game. This is the first and merest of glimpses you will see of Obliterator at the moment, which you can download below.

Chris Caress was later traced thanks to Lee, and he was been asked the big question about the game’s final existence. Chris spent some time checking his old Einstein disks which would have had the code on, but sadly it seems that there were only mere scraps of source code remaining and nothing to really show to the world. The only remaining hope now seems to be with Lee Cawley and if he manages to find anything else of the game – its been so many years now that it is seeming more and more unlikely.

Rumour has it that the musician Mark Wilson converted the music, but was not paid for it. We have added the tunes which Mark did, which could well have been officially asked for, and would have been used in the official game. Chris does recall there being music in the game – so it is plausible that it could have been Mark’s music. Mark himself could not recall if the music was sent to Melbourne House for use in the game, but hasn’t ruled out that this happened.

Why was the game never released? Well, it was never properly finished, and because of the troubles at Lothlorien – development was stopped and never resumed. A shame, as it was looking pretty good.