Games That Weren't^®

It was thought for many years that “Miner Willy Meets The Taxman” and “Megatree” were the same game, and that the first title was the working title for “Megatree”. Well, after attending a Q/A session with Matthew Smith at a CGEUK 2004 at Croydon, Matthew startled listeners when he talked about “MWMTT” and revealed that it was actually a separate game in itself.

In this title, Miner Willy has to travel back and forward in time and try and avoid the Taxman at different periods of history, collecting coins to pay the Taxman at the end of the game. Not much else is currently known at present, but we hope to speak to Matthew Smith at a future retro event to find out more.

Certainly, the Taxman part was thought to be a feature of Megatree, but it seems that over the years, the press mixed up the nature of the two titles and they combined into one GTW.

No doubt, although this would have been a Spectrum game first off, it would have had a C64 incarnation coded by another programmer. Matthew had no part on other machines at that time apart from the Speccy.

As far as GTW can tell and from what Matthew has said so far, it seems only bits and pieces of the Spectrum game were ever started. It is hoped that some of Matthew’s work disks and tapes will be recovered and something can some day be shown – but it will only be of a Spectrum conversion.

In 2021, Martyn Carroll revealed for Crash Magazine that Derrick Rowson was tasked by Alan Maton to create Taxman after JSW 2. Derrick produced a preliminary demo of a single scene stretched over four rooms and laid out in the style of Jet Set Willy, but played more like Manic Miner.

As you explored each of the 4 rooms, the action would carry on as you moved onto another room. So for instance, if a baddy followed you, then they would appear in the next room with you. Rather than flick screen, the game had a sort of scroll effect to move between rooms when Willy got to a certain point (a half screen jump).

Interestingly, as he worked on the demo – 6502 programmer Tom Lanigan sat with Derrick and got effectively a lesson in Z80 and helped Derrick on the game. When Tom left, he took a demo with him to show off at Odin to get a job. Odin asked Software Projects why the game was being demoed, and the shock of it being out there would cause Software Projects to decide to cancel the game.

Sadly Derrick no longer has the demo, but there is a faint possibility that Tom still does. Hopefully it will some day surface, but we don’t expect there to have ever been a C64 version started, but we are prepared to be surprised.

Yet another Edge title. The game was advertised in magazines such as CVG in 1986, and was brought to GTW’s attention thanks to Lee Theasby who kindly provided the advert scan.

The game was an adventure RPG which was in the same style as the Gargoyle games from the looks of things. The game saw a release primarily on the Spectrum platform (See WOS at http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0003975), but typically the C64 version never surfaced as promised.

A recent contributor had found that in Soft, #5, September/October 1987, pg. 8, there was news that this Spectrum-game from 1986 was said to be converted to the Commodore in 1987. Well that was the plan at least. Pennysoft (British converting team) said that the game should have been ready in August/September 1987 but the team had some problems, which delayed the release. Furthermore, if those problems weren’t solved, the public had to wait until November or the beginning of December 1987 to see the Commodore-version. Sadly, nothing more was ever heard.

It is very likely that Pennysoft could have been converting straight from z80 code, and hence had speed issues which were hard to solve. We need to find these Pennysoft guys and find out more about what happened… but its a big lead and hopefully it will lead us to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow (If it is gold that is…).

So for now we seek to find out more… Do you know who Pennysoft is?…

Don’t laugh, but there was infact going to be a licenced game based on the Milk Tray adverts!

It’s true, and none other than C64 Audio legend, Chris Abbott, was to be behind this game, musically at least!

At the time of first writing about the game, nothing was really known about the game itself at all… though Chris confirms that nothing was ever started with the game. The game never got past the licence agreement, and so it was cancelled early into its conception.

Retro Gamer 79 confirms the game as being planned by Superior Software (Who Chris worked for briefly) and it was actually better known as “And all because”. Reasons for scrapping were also confirmed.

Then Retro Gamer 116 had an interview with Martin Edmondson, who confirmed that he worked on the BBC micro version. He states that the game got quite a long way through before it was discovered that Superior Soft didn’t actually have an agreement in place with Cadbury. So the name got pulled first, but there were already a lot of cues inside the game which were tailored specifically to the advert which Milk Tray were running.

Ross Sillifant then found a snippet in CVG 74 in 1987, which talked about the game and gave some more details. Apparently the game was to focus on the key action parts from the adverts and carry out crazy stunts to deliver a box of chocolates. The game was to consist of 5 levels, including actions such as skiing, bike riding, powerboats etc. The final level would feature the man in black delivering the chocs to the lady waiting. It was meant to be released in January 1988, but never was sadly.

Apart from this, there is nothing more to say on this game. Case closed for now…

An interesting entry which was mentioned in Home Computer Weekly 1983 – By Anik Microsystems, a Northhampton based company.

This was advertised as follows:

"ea. cont 10 action games: Selection of standards (p-man etc) plus new amazing games."

This was it, and apparently there was two packs which could be purchased. We assume that the games were all connected and that you played them to score points on a leaderboard. We need confirmation on this, as otherwise it may well be a kind of Cascade 50 compilation.

On doing some research for Anik Microsystems, they had a fair few C64 titles that never surfaced, and even Spectrum titles. In total, only two C64 games got a release and are currently in Gamebase.

We’re currently doing what we can, but there is a long way to go with this one!

Does this exist?…

Thanks for Barry Hart, we can confirm that all the Micro Math games were released and can be found under Hayden Software at Gamebase64:

http://www.gamebase64.com/search.php?a=5&f=1&id=3111&d=18&h=0

Case closed!