Games That Weren't^®

Information had been a little bit vague on this game. It was uncertain for a while if this were meant as a joke, or in fact was a real Lemmings conversion attempt.

All there was, was a simple attempt at copying the main game’s introduction sequence.  C64 musician Lars Hutzelmann (The Blue Ninja) got in touch however to say that this was indeed intended as a proper conversion, which André Bürger (Smash designs developer who did games such as Turrican 3 and Crush) was doing to try and get the gig with Psygnosis back in the day.

André had asked Lars to produce some tunes, which Lars did (although not covers from the original Amiga music). Lars never saw any code, but was told that there was a working prototype in existence with sufficient Lemmings running on the screen. The project was cancelled when another team was found to be working on the conversion officially for Psygnosis.

In August 2020, we found a preview segment showing the development (sadly with no in game screenshot) in Zzap Italia! This has since been found and recovered by Marcin “Tenchi” Świętoniewski, who contacted GTW64 in September 2022. The preview has the extra picture, but also credits for the development afterwards.

Marcin recalled seeing the intro on a pirated Lemmings tape that had a mish mash of around 21 random stages out of order. It started with the original game intro, then ended with the V1 preview that we can see here.

Whilst Marcin was trying to locate all the previews of Lemmings to add to his collection, he wasn’t able to find the AEG one and then stumbled across our page here. After two days of searching and checking almost a thousand files, he eventually found it! So its with great thanks to Marcin for his incredible searching work that this complete version can be added to the archives!

Marcin later updated our download for us to include the music tune releases from Lars. Hopefully in the future we’ll learn more soon from André about the development and if perhaps the prototype with the lemmings walking around still exists.

Thanks to contributor Vaz, we learn a bit about the demo in the Zzap Italia snippet:

“Psygnosis themselves are working on the C64 conversion, and that, as it looks, means quality. The material in our hands (which for now consists in a demo not working yet) doesn’t allow us to write a judgement, not even a brief one, about this conversion, but I think that since Lemmings is not a difficult game, technically speaking at least, there won’t be any problems to have it working on Commodore’s little one. A release date has not been planned yet, but I think it’ll be out on december”

Legendary Deed is another powerful RPG game in similiar vein to those created by US Gold around the same time.

The preview is unplayable, but shows a series of screens which build up the game. Graphically, all looks nice and suitable, making a good looking and exciting RPG game.

This was likely to have been based for a big release in the commercial world, but fell through for some reason. Possibly the company went bust, as did many at that time.

It’s unknown if the game reached a playable stage, or how much was actually completed.

The preview does not consist of any credits, so this one is going to prove a tough search for the GTW team, and any help in finding out more on this game will be very helpful.

Can anyone do the good deed and tell us about this game?…

A wonderful sounding project was announced to the C64 world when Legend Of Kyril was being planned for release by Crystal Software. A potentially stunning RPG game in the style of Johnny Reb and other RPG’s was on its way from the ambitious Crystal Software.

After months of progress and publicity, the game never got around to being finished and Crystal Software folded quickly on the C64.

A series of demo’s sneaked their way out, and show exactly what was to be of the game. Not greatly stunning as compared with other games, but impressive anyway.

Featuring some old style hi-res graphics, and some nice multi-colour in the main game, the actual’s game’s engine was apparently complete and the game was playable.

Battles could be fought and won, but this is something we may not see for a while yet, unless we find those behind the actual game to find out more.

Recently in 2010, ex-CEO Alex de Vries got in touch with GTW and had the following to say:

“I used to be the CEO of Crystal Software back when it was developing and publishing games for the C64 and Amiga platforms before making the transition to PC only. The Legend of Kyril was actually an Austrian project we signed up as a last effort to see if we could sell decent volume on the C64 if the quality was there for the title. Our involvement was purely in sales and marketing and we were never involved in the creative side of things. I wish I could remember the names of the developers but it’s just too long ago.

Code exists for some but I have moved halfway across the world since those days so I don’t know whether anything survived. I don’t have a copy anymore in any case.

We packed it in after 1996 and cancelled all projects for the C64 in Q1 1997. Titles we did (re-)publish were McRat, The Zinj Complex, Target, It’s Magic, Colorzone, Riddles and Stones and a few others. Not the greatest stuff but it was fun while it lasted.”

So it seems lack of support was the reason this one never quite made it. We then later found more details from various fanzine sources:

From Commodore Bi Monthly advert:

“A great strategy game with some fantasy RPG features. Many digitized sounds and hi-res graphics make this game the best of its kind ever! It will probably be ready by the end of the first quarter of 1997.

You can reserve your personal copy from our first production run of 100 copies at anyone of our subsidaries. No price has yet been set but you can cancel your reservation any time you like if it turns out to be too steep.”

From Zine 64 – Issue 9:

“This looks to be one of the best games to hit the C64 in a long time…. Supporting all types of CMD devices and REUS, this is the ultimate strategy in which you lead your troops into battle against enemy warlords…..

Find magical items, build strongholds, develop new weapons and troop types, the list goes on…. To be honest I can’t wait until ‘Zine 64 reviews this one”

And also this scan was recovered with more details about the game and is worth a read!

Recently in 2011, Helfried got in touch with GTW64 who had the following to say about the game:

“I might be able to shed some light into this case as I used to be in contact with the author of the game, Markus Pfingstner. In fact, the first game preview you are already offering for download lists the following game credits at the end:

The very same authors created the game ‘Kampf um Thurn’ which was published by a German disk magazine:
http://gb64.com/game.php?id=4035&d=18&h=0

Legend of Kyril was the successor of that game but supposed to be technically way more advanced comprising VIC magic such as AGSP and UFLI.

My role was to design an IRQ loading system for the game which was supposed to be compatible with various disk drives (1541, 1581, CMD FD, CMD HD). (Btw, the second preview in your download file already contains a very first version of my IRQ loader. An improved version was published later by 64’er magazine.)

I also started looking for a musician but no one was assigned to the task as game development slowed down after some time. If I remember correctly, Markus mentioned in one of our last phone calls that his new girl-friend and his studies of computer science were distracting him from finishing the game…”

Joerg Droege reveals that the game was 80% complete, with the final 20% not being done. Joerg has spent many years researching about the game, and at some point in the future – this entry will be updated to fill in the many missing details we are not yet covering. We hope to see some developments too on this one being recovered.

One still on the battle field…

A terrible preview, with awful graphics and no playability.

There is a simple grey blob thing at the bottom of the screen, with some naff score bits on the left, and nothing to do.

It’s not known what this game is about at all, or what was planned for it.

It would have to feature a heck of a lot more than this to be any good. Its unbelievably poor.

Does anyone know anything about this game?…