Games That Weren't^®

Another surprise, but it seems there was an influx of Lemmings developments going on, and here we have a second official conversion which was being done by Jed Adams who worked with Mike Dailly (who created the first test demo).

Basically, Jed had this to say:

"There was ANOTHER lemmings game in developement that I was working on while at Psygnoisis. It was basically a tech demo that was written after i’d seen the Mike Dailly version.

It used characters for everything unlike the E&E version that used sprites for the backgrounds. I had 128 men running around and following terrain ( they weren’t lemmings because i couldn’t draw :) ).

It was canceled / halted when I was moved onto working on an Amiga Title ( sadly )."

A lemmings game with 128 men?… would it have worked had Jed been given full development time on the conversion? We will never know.

But what of the demo which Jed created? :

"Nah its GONE .. along with all my other cool stuff .. kicking myself for selling all my c64 / c128 stuff for 100 quid many years ago … :("

Sadly this could be a closed case, but maybe someone still has Jed’s disks after all these years. They could well come forward, as you never know. Maybe Mike has a copy of Jed’s demo just by pure chance.

We’ll have to see…

Can remains of this be ever found?…

Yet another Lemmings conversion for the C64, but this time an official conversion which surprisingly was almost done by DMA Designs themselves!

During the development of Lemmings, Mike Dailly who worked as part of DMA at the time got working on a very simple demo which contained a Lemming walking over a background, like with the original PC demo which was created. This was a test really to see if he could successfully convert the Amiga game to the C64.

Just before anything playable could be made, Mike was pulled off from the project to work on something else – likely to be on the 16-bit platform as they moved away from 8-bits.

Nothing else was done on the conversion, and DMA never came back to it. So an official DMA conversion was never to be.

We hope that maybe Mike will still have something of the original demo which he created for DMA, so we can show a very brief glimpse of what could have been. For now we should enjoy the fine conversion which did get released!

Can remains of this be ever found?…

If you don’t know about Lemmings, then you haven’t lived. Released on every machine under the sun and now enjoying a revival as exclusives on Sony’s PSP (curses) and Playstation2 (due to Sony owning Psygnosis (drat, drat and triple drat – I’d gladly pay good money for a Nintendo DS version)), this very popular and addictive game sees you trying to save the suicidal rodents from certain death. A favourite to lots of people (especially me – people who know me know that Lemmings is my 2nd favourite game)

I expect lots of people to say "But Lemmings came out on the C64 (although eventually)!" and I’d even say it myself as my old computer collection included this very game (on various formats).

Anyhow, Juned (who was the author of Koshimo) coded a one screen demo based on Lemmings in order to try and win the contract to code the game for the C64 from Psygnosis. Sadly, he didn’t get the contract but E & E Software did instead (although it was well done). However, his version used characters for a Lemming which looked dodgy – as many people know, sprites couldn’t be used due to limitations.

It is interesting to hear of another Lemmings related program for the C64 but like Carl Muller with his attempt at converting Pang, it’s very interesting to hear of someone else making a bid to code the game. One can only speculate on how Juned’s version would have been like but any game of Lemmings is worth playing in my opinion.

(I find it embarrassing to say that my 8 year old daughter can thrash EVERY level on Lemmings on the Amiga while her old man struggles on many levels! (she even thrashes me on the two player mode!))

Can remains of this be ever found?…

The source of this next entry is interesting as it was mentioned in “Illegal” pirate fanzine as something seen at PC 1988 show (or so it seems) by SSD of Cosmos.

We knew very little about the game and there seemed to be no information on the web about it. However, Andrew Partis highlighted an interview with Commodore Computing International and Simon Nicol, where Simon says that he was planning the game.

When Simon was asked about the title, he had no recollections – but then there was a Car routine effect which Simon worked on which may have been for this game or for Nigel Mansell GP.

More soon on this title we hope…

Legend was a rather nifty RPG released by Mindscape back in 1991 which has gone down as one of the best RPG’s on the Amiga. Originally though it was due to be released by Mirrorsoft before their collapse, and also on the C64 too!….

Development began to start with on the Atari ST after negotiations were concluded with Mirrorsoft, Amiga, C64 and PC versions were also expected. Z80 versions were never on the cards, as poor sales of Bloodwych on the Spectrum and Amstrad left the developers feeling that their day had come and passed.

Pete James produced the start of some graphics on the Commodore 64 and in an executable form which never really progressed beyond a rudimentary proof-of-concept demo. Pete James recalled to Richard Hewison that they found a way to make the characters look more colourful by having four colour characters but displaying a sprite behind them. Richard Hewison recalled seeing the demo back in the early days of development, as he was Project Manager for the game at the time before Mirrorsoft collapsed. He recalled seeing the characters walking into one of the isometric rooms, but thats about it. It certainly didn’t get any further before getting dropped – and was never really playable.

The reason given for abandoning the C64 version? … It was down simply to a lack of memory – otherwise it could well have been completed and released. Not sure though if Mindscape would have carried on with the conversion, as they never released Paperboy 2 or Captain Planet on the C64 like planned.

When asked if there were any remains of the C64 game, Tag said that he may still have some development disks – but packed away. Pete sady no longer had anything from back then. All hopes therefore are pinned on Tag digging out some disks, but Tag is very busy these days and it may never happen.

The Amiga version did surface and did very well. Later a GBA version was planned, but sadly never got released.

We just have to hope that we some day will see something of this game, otherwise it will be lost to time…

This will be a quick entry, as we know nothing about Legend of Fairghad apart from the fact that it was meant to be an adventure game. There seems to be no other version in existance and information is almost non-existant (A google search produced our own wanted list :) ).

So its an adventure game, with an unknown date… but likely to be from the 80’s. We have no publisher name and no idea of the plot. So unfortunately this is where this short and sweet review ends :)

Contributor Randall suggests that it may have been a sequel to “Legend of Blacksilver” by Epyx.

Do you know anything about this game?… Anything?!

A book and adventure combo which originally got a release on the Spectrum platform and can be found in the WOS archives at http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0006571

The game is a simple text adventure that was fairly well recived on the Spectrum, but "Flag", a GTW reader was skimming through some copies of Acorn User, and found an interesting article on the book/game combo’s that cropped up around 1984 time. They mentioned various ones that came out (Unorthodox Engineers etc) and then Legend by Century Communications.

The article mentions:

"And Century are about to release Legend, a piece of Tolkien-like fantasy fiction, in April. This will be followed later in the year by a version of the book with cassette and full-colour map of the kingdom.

Century took their book to a professional games designer, and then took the game to a programmer; in fact several programmers for the different micros. This entailed a heavy investment.

‘We plan to recoup our outlay by putting the game onto several machines, and each new one as it comes along. So far versions are planned for the BBC, Commodore 64 and Sinclair’s QL.’"

So as well as the released ZX version, a C64 version was being penned… but how far did it get?… It could have easily been written in Quill or similiar, but we have no idea what has happened to it.

No coder names as of yet, but we assume that it could be the same as those behind the Spectrum version. We hope to find out more soon!

Do you know any more?…