Games That Weren't^®

A platform game, where you are given the chance of actually creating you own levels. Good, but unfortunately the game itself lacks a lot of thing to make it that playable.

Apart from some simple graphics, a simple main character and a pre-set level – there isn’t much to do other than navigate through created levels. There are no enemies to fight to have much of a playable game at all.

It seems this preview is at quite an early stage in its life, and would likely have included enemies and more graphics in a later build no doubt.

Anonymous contributor has done a lot of digging – most of which follows now. Firstly, they suggest that the game could be of Austrian origin, with “Neiw” backwards being “Wien”, which is German for “Vienna”. The preview intro is also by Varsity, and says that, concerning Ragon Software: “This company’s distributor is Karasoft”.

Karasoft does not seem to be around anymore, but is frequently mentioned in the archives. They seem to have been an Austrian distributor active in the late 1980s and early 90s. An example from Happy Computer issue 1, 1988, page 2. The Gauntlet 2 ad has the following fine print: “Distribution in Österreich: Karasoft”. The same company is mentioned in several ads in the same issue.

In Aktueller Software Markt magazine, issue 8 1986, page 53, a Madness ad mentions the company as being stationed in Wien: “In Österreich: Karasoft – Wien”. Amiga Magazin issue 12 1990, page 8 then had the following to say about Karasoft:

“Karasoft describes itself as the oldest software company for computer entertainment in Central Europe. Accordingly, the selection is mainly for games from Activision to Sublogic and joysticks from Competition to Suncom. But Karasoft also offers educational software from the German Eureka, the American Fisher Price and the Austrian Ingenio.”

The ads all run between 1986 to 1993, giving a possible span for Neiw.

So who’s behind Ragon Software? Further research needed, but possibly an Austrian programmer located in Vienna in the late 80s to early 90s. And in order to have a distributor, as the intro claims, it is likely that Ragon has already published a game or two. As Anonymous Contributor suggests, it is hard to see how Karasoft would be interested in a preview from someone unknown.

A huge thank you to Anonymous Contributor for that amazing information!

It’s unknown if a later version of this game does exist, and there will be trouble trying to find out, as there are no credits to the game to follow up. Another tough one for GTW.

If you know anything about this title, please do get in touch.

Mentioned as a future title from Linel in Your Commodore issue 73, Necronom was a R-Type clone which saw eventual release on the Commodore Amiga back in 1991 by Linel and later on Amiga Fun magazine around 1992/93.

The game got mixed reviews, with Amiga Format slating it – but Amiga Power’s Stuart Campbell loving it and finding it a good stop gap after playing R-Type 2.

So what of the C64 game? Well, as you can expect… Linel never mentioned a conversion again for the C64 and no screenshots or anything ever surfaced. In 1992, Linel/Genias released Catalypse, but that was it.

Contributor ‘Nemo’, found a review of the Amiga/ST game in a Greek magazine called ‘Computer Games’ in April 1992, which reviewed the game and also stated a C64 release on the formats list. Seems very likely therefore that something must have been started!

The Amiga credits list a familiar name – Michael Tschögl … so did he do the music, and did Andrea Pompili by chance also code this before Catalypse? … Well, not quite! After porting a series of disks for Darren Melbourne, C64.com passed these onto us and we got to work checking the contents.

On one of the disks was a graphical slideshow from Chris Edwards, who worked for Pantheon Software (who did titles such as Superkid). A good few screens were from an aborted conversion of Necronom (as well as a loading screen), so we can confirm that Pantheon Software were behind a conversion.

So what happened to their conversion?….. Did it get far? Hopefully we will get to learn more soon from Chris Edwards about the development and if anything happened to survive. We believe that it never got much further than the concept artwork.

Necromancer 2 is a strange game which is a clone of Ultimate’s classic 3D games, such as Knightlore and Alien 8. What is mostly strange about this game, is that it also runs on a Vic 20 too.. this got me really, though I couldn’t get it working.

It’s not quite in the same league as the Ultimate games, though it seems Carl was emulating their technique, and did a rather good job too.

The game simply involves you to collect 3 objects and take them to a special treasure room. The rooms are rather small in size too compared to other isometric 3D games, which may be down to the fact that the game is for Vic 20 too, though Carl mentions that the game may need to be decompressed first to play properly.

Not much else is known about the game, so hopefully Carl will shed some more light in the near future.

A great little bit of code, sadly never released.

A very smooth and nice little racing game at a very early stage.

The game features a Lotus looking red car, that drives along a very smooth rasterbar road. The actual road itself is very detailed, with well animated white lines and pitstop lanes.

The sound is quite basic, with some simple engine sounds and that is it. The game comes with no titles, and the game area features no real details, apart from a half screen display for the driving.

After some waiting, a lead at last for this intriguing racing game.

At first we thought it was Lotus 2 early preview, but it seems that Samar were infact been behind this car racer.

Recently a later version of the game had been released, with a texture mapped road which looks quite impressive for the C64. It’s a little slow, but what do you expect. It seems to have taken a few strides since its original form which has been on GTW for a while now. There are even some 3d wireframes there which look as if they would have featured on the tracks. This version is claimed to be at 20% completion. And it is likely said that Samar will never finish it.

Rafal of Samar got in contact with GTW, and has conducted a special "Creator Speaks" with one of the guys behind the game. It seems the game was done because Stinger simply wanted to see a better car racing game on the C64. It certainly looked like it was on the right tracks, featuring road effects similiar to Lotus 2 on the Amiga.

Rafal also uncovered another rare preview of this game, which actually includes a split screen version of the game with two cars. At the moment they are not separate, but apparently there was a preview that DID have separate controllable cars… but it was sadly lost.

It seems that the game had a lot of ambition, but was a little bit too much to expect from the little humble C64. Who knows. But its a promising preview, sadly that didn’t get very far.

A neat and detailed little racer…