Games That Weren't^®

A collective entry of religious titles which have been highlighted by Hedning. One title which we can offer here is Acts of the Apostles, which we presume was released and is why we can play it now.

Within the code (written in BASIC), there are three other games mentioned:

• Mark
• Luke
• Ten Commandments

It isn’t sure if the games were released (in limited numbers) or never quite made it out. All we know is that they are currently not preserved. If you have any of them – please get in touch!

Back in the 1980’s, Atarisoft were doing official conversions for the Commodore 64. Typo Attack was one of them! The game was originally released on the Atari 8-bit computer range and was an educational arcade game for adults and children.

We learnt of this conversion thanks to Mat Allen, who documented the conversion briefly in Digital Press many years ago. However, we were not sure how far the game got, or why it was cancelled, but we guessed it was due to Atarisoft breaking up in 1984.

However, Phobos/Ready64 found a snippet in Video Game Update (August 1984 – see scans) which suggests that Jack Tramiel got Atarisoft to stop all C64 developments and focus just on Atari. It wasn’t the video game crash that caused the cancellation of titles. Thanks to Roberto Nicoletti and Phobos for the heads up.

After many years of no further progress, in 2023, Bertrand from AtariMania informed us of the following from an internal document:

Two “test reports” were initiated on April 30th, 1984 for “REV. 0” and May 11th, 1984 for “REV. 1”. No idea whether any more work was done on this title before Tramiel took over less than two months later.

This was promising, and confirmed that were was indeed a development under way at some stage for the Commodore 64 edition.

Then, out of the blue – Steven Yaeger got in touch via the comments and confirmed that they converted Typo Attack for the C64. Steve was only given access to the original Atari 800 version and a VHS of the game being played and was responsible for all the code, graphics conversion and sound effects.

It was also confirmed that the port was completed, and felt that Jack Tramiel’s take over of Atari was responsible for it being cancelled.

Steve thankfully had backed up all of his source code some years ago, and kindly dug out and compiled a final version of the game in cartridge format for inclusion into the GTW archives. NOTE: The game is in NTSC format, and it can crash on PAL machines in its original state.

It is an almost perfect conversion of the Atari original, and has been done very well indeed. It is meant as an educational title, so don’t expect something like Dropzone – but it is yet another important piece of our C64 history preserved.

So after 39 years gathering dust, the long lost Commodore 64 conversion of Typo Attack by Atarisoft has been saved and preserved for you to enjoy. Yet another case closed!

It is thanks to Fabrizio Bartoloni and BloodyCactus for bringing this game to our attention, and which may have been floating around for quite some time under our noses.

The Mermaid and the Crown was a graphical text adventure produced by the Australian company Mountain Valley Software that was ran by Brian J Betts during the early-mid 1980s. This was the only rare release where someone else designed the game, and Brian programmed it. The game was designed by Lesley McDowell.

A large number of games were released, though it seems this particular title may not have quite made it out – or at least hasn’t yet been added to the Gamebase64 archive.

Thanks to the CASA Solution archive, a link was made to a site which links to all the adventures, as well as scans of the inlays. Present was an entry for The Mermaid and the Crown, complete with an inlay scan. So did a limited number manage to sneak out?

If you click onto the publisher name near the top, then you will see a list of other Mountain Valley Software titles that were definitely not released, and were unfinished. Thankfully they were all archived thanks to Jacob from CASA Solution archive and other members of the forum.

We hope to learn more soon about this title, but for now – here it is. And you can also see a Twitch video run through of the game courtesy of BloodyCactus.