Games That Weren't^®

Probe software quietly had in development a game for U.S. Gold called ‘Magic Sword’. This conversion was in fact based on the Capcom arcade of the same name, which was a poor hack and slash affair, in no good comparison to Golden Axe.

As to what the C64 version was like, seeing as it was Probe working on the game, its likely to have been as good as their other games.

Unfortunately, there is no information to build up a better GTW description… anyone know any more about the C64 version?

Thanks to Karl Kuras, we’ve added some brief confirmation about Probe’s involvement on the conversion for now.

Magic Carpet was to be a Intellivision game conversion to the C64 by the Mattel Electronics France offices. It was scheduled, but apparently never worked on, though it was given an id of #7860 on diskette.

The game was about piloting a magic flying carpet and was apparently scheduled based on a written proposal – with no working prototype of the game ever being seen.

The Intellivision version never surfaced, and the C64 version was rumoured never to have been ever started. So its unlikely that we will find a full game, but we could find something of it at the very least!

More soon on this one!…

Yet another Demonware game which appeared in the Early Warning scanner pages of Commodore Format. With a rather interesting title, it sounded like something quite special.

Nothing was really known about the game, but Games X magazine did a sneak preview of the title – showing Amiga screenshots of a game which looked pretty good (see gallery). The general basis was of a gap being bridged between space as we know it, and limbo state of hyperspace. Your faithful friend Spiff has been kidnapped by aliens and you now have to rescue him.

Contributor Daniel found that German magazine Playtime 91/1 mentions in a feature about Demonware, that the game should have a “50s Film-Noir” style with the Retro Future of the 50s. The game was also compared to Heart of China and Rise of the Dragon, with control of the game accomplished by using a series of pre-determined expressions and commands that could be cycled through and selected. So an interactive adventure overall, which would have been very welcome on the C64.

Seems possible that Demonware closed its doors after poor sales, and the games went with it. It is likely also that the C64 edition was never started, as they may have been waiting for the Amiga/PC lead versions to be completed first. Maybe someone will surprise us?

Additionally, with the Amiga/PC version expected to take up 10 disks – was a C64 version realistic? Or was a much cut down version planned?

Hopefully we can soon hear from some ex-employees about game and the others. But after speaking to one of the developers of Gem-X, they didn’t recall any other titles that never saw the light of day apart from Gem-Z.

Do you know anything more about this game?

In an interview on C64.com, Andy Jervis mentioned that he was working on a Mad Max type game for CRL back in the day:

“I started a Mad Max type game on the C64 for CRL. This involved you driving the tanker of fuel while being attacked by motorbikes, buggies, etc.

I can’t honestly remember why we stopped that one. Last thing I worked on for CRL was a conversion of The Rocky Horror Show from C64 to PC. This never saw the light of day as they went bust. ”

We are not fully sure if anything of this game has ever survived, but we hope to get hold of Andy Jervis to find out more and see if there is a disk lurking in a draw somewhere.

Robin Harbron recently suggested that the game could be related to Road Warrior by CRL. We need Andy to confirm this, but could be a good hunch!

Clem Chambers spoke to GTW64 and suggested that this was probably nothing more than a concept that didn’t get much further. This does not however completely rule out that nothing was ever started.

Nothing of the game was mentioned in the press as far as we know, but then we still hunt a name for this game which may lead to more clues.

Do you know any more about this game?

Sadly we know very little about this entry so far, but hopefully you do?

The game was found out about thanks to HVSC recently digging out a series of tunes by Adam Gilmore. This one was titled Mad, but without any credits or company names. Sadly Adam cannot recall what it was for.

The game was estimated to have been developed in the early 90’s and could well have been a Zeppelin title. Research though has found no links to other platforms or titles with that name, so it could be very hard going trying to find anything of it.

Early days – do you know any more?…

Mach 3 was a pseudo 3D racer which was released on the Amstrad (http://www.cpczone.net/game/2087), MSX and Spectrum (http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0002959), but it seems not on the C64 as stated to be coming soon by TGM in issue 03/88.

Even though the game was a bit crap, we still want to try and find out what happened to the planned c64 conversion. It might be another case of Titus-syndrome, where the Amstrad was deemed more popular in France, and hence the C64 version wasn’t deemed relevant.

However, strangely the Spectrum version was not really reviewed in any of the key UK magazines and may have only had a limited release on a compilation. Maybe Loriciels thought the game was bad and decided to ditch any C64 conversion they may have had underway (No doubt probably starting that conversion as it was the least popular platform in France etc).

We know little more about the game at this stage and its C64 release, but hope soon to learn more and maybe find out if this was more than just vaporware on the C64.

More soon we hope…

Mission Shark was found out about thanks to HVSC recently digging out a series of tunes by Adam Gilmore. This one was titled Mission Shark, but without any credits or company names. Sadly Adam could not recall what it was for.

With a big thanks to Avram Dumitrescu, we have now established that it was a Zeppelin based game which was due in 1991 and got a release on the Atari platform.

The game is a flip screen shooter where you control an army bloke running around and shooting things. The inlay describes things better as follows:

"Mission Shark – operation code RED.
Briefing…..
Parachute into occupied territories at 04.00 hours …. Identify and gain access to enemy’s high security HQ …. Confront aggressive forces and eliminate any potential opposition….. Retrieve movement information from high security areas.

Destroy main holding zones … Retreat…. Helicopter liaison for base return.

Intelligence…. Sources acknowledge that enemy defence units are prepared for imminent agent infiltration….."

So there we have it… but who were behind the C64 version (The same as the Atari maybe?) and why did it never get a release?… What happened?

It’s still very early days, so we need your help. Do you know anything about the C64 conversion?…

Well, Andy Roberts does – as he confirms he was behind the C64 graphics. So there is a game, but confusingly Andy mentions that the game was a Operation Wolf clone. The game was being developed by a Scottish developed named Kevin Mackintosh and Andy was helping do all the graphics. However, after producing a quick loading screen and some game graphics, Andy heard no more about the game, never got paid and that was that. He is hopeful that he still has all the graphics, so some day GTW hopes to be able to show these. More details from Andy about the game can be read in Creator Speaks.

As for the game itself, we do not know what happened, but hope now to find Kevin to dig deeper on this game… Getting there slowly!

Do you know any more?…