Games That Weren't^®

Wasn’t Liverpool The Game released in 1993? Yes, it was – but it seems that Grandslam had a previous version underway in 1989, a long long time before its eventual release. But what a difference though between the two!

This earlier version had a Emlyn Hughes perspective, but then the final game from 1993 had a top down Microprose Soccer approach to it.

Looking at the magazine screenshots that snuck out, the first version looks a bit crowded and not quite as good as the final edition. Your Commodore magazine however oddly reviewed the game and gave it 92%, suggesting that it had been complete.

So after that review, why did Grandslam not release it? Many years after we first set up this entry, Dave Spicer shed some light on the game with the following:

“I can give you a little bit more info about the 1990 version of Grandslam’s Liverpool game. The last person to work on the game was Paul Rogers, who previously wrote Time Solider for Smart Egg Software.

Paul inherited a semi-working version of the code and was given the unenviable task of trying to turn it into something workable within a very short time period. I supplied a few sound effects, purely as a favour, although I’ve no idea if he actually ended up using them.

Paul’s whereabouts these days is anyone’s guess… Maybe you can track him down?”

No exact reason why the first version was never released. As the game was completed, it could have been reworked into a budget football game if it were that bad. The Amstrad version was actually released. The Amstrad release is is odd, as the ad described that version as ‘under consideration’ whereas none of the confirmed versions surfaced.

Your Commodore speculated that Grandslam went under, only for them to reappear later (possibly after a takeover). So its likely the C64 edition was caught up in all of this. Your Sinclair reported in 1990 that Grandslam had brought in the receivers, so the CPC version must have just sneaked out before then. We guess someone must have came in and saved Grandslam, as they lived on for many years after and eventually did release another Liverpool title.

Well, we got hold of Paul Rogers, and he confirms that it was a case of “don’t worry, most of the work is done” from Grandslam when he was given the game to finish off (which someone else had started and left).

However, the game was in a right state and he ended up having to restart things again with the same design and sort the mess out. Paul goes on holiday at somepoint, and when he gets back he finds a load of suits saying that the company has gone into administration – and so it was left incomplete. Grandslam later reappeared and had the game done from scratch in 1993 by Arc Developments.

So there we have it! The first version was never complete, and Your Commodore therefore reviewed something that was never complete. That’s pure 92% gold, and up there alongside the 100% rating for Last Ninja 3 shortly after its big spread on System 3.

So what about the game? Well, Paul managed to find his disks and got the game up and running in 2020, and we’re hoping to see digital back ups at some point to be able to add onto the site. Exciting news and findings, so watch this space!

After sampling the great Rolling Ronny game from BONESPARK, they had much much more in store for our beloved C64’s back in the early 90’s. One such promising title was a conversion of a stunning Amiga German (thanks Teki!) shooter called “Lethal Xcess”.

BONESPARK were nominated to convert the game to the humble C64, which was to have 150 animated objects on the screen at once, 100 different sprites and 30 screens long levels made up of 3 charsets at a time.

Sadly the cause of the game’s death was not its impossibility of being converted, but the fact that development time was underestimated. At what was first predicted to take about 3 months to create, turned out to really add up to 12-13 months worth of work. BONESPARK simply did not have the money to go on for this period of time. Mario doesn’t really agree with this, and feels the game could have been done.

So after reaching level 2 with the game, it was finally cancelled after 20% completion.

Currently, remains recovered are a whole first level map courtesy of Oliver Lindau, who first put us in touch with his website and bits, a sample set of enemies and animations and the remains of the game’s music composed by Thomas Detert in .SID format.

Playable forms of the game exist, and although limited, these would be interesting to view from a GTW perspective. Hopefully Oliver may be able to pass on any playable elements of the game, or even Mario himself. At least now in late 2008/2009 we start by seeing the actual level 1 graphics released with the Bones Park editor – which you can now download from here.

The good news is that the programmer is quite happy for the game to be put out in its preview form. It is just a case of the disks being dug out with the previews on. This could be a little while yet, but its good news that you may get to see the promise of this exciting conversion. This may not happen though if Mario decides like he says to possibly FINISH the C64 conversion if he digs out his C64… in that case we will be waiting a bit longer for Mario to realize his dream.

Mario tells GTW that a lot of elements were taken from Rolling Ronny which were unusued. Not gameplay elements, but technical bits of code which were never used but developed. This would have possibly been the greatest SEU ever seen on a C64 had it been complete.

Within the screenshots we have added another shot which was scanned from a magazine, showing the actual game in action. As you can just about see, the game looked to be very action packed, and the magazine seemed very impressed with what they saw.

What has to be done now is for GTW to preserve as much of the game as possible, and archive it here where it belongs. A huge shame it never saw the light of day, and had it done, then no doubt it would have been a huge success.

For now we live in the comfort that the game will surface in some form at some point… IF Mario’s disks are still working. Oliver however does have all the graphics he did, so not everything is lost. There is hopefully more to tell in this story we hope…

A sad loss for the C64 in its dying days…