Games That Weren't^®

A small play area, some nice graphics, some fair playability and some great music… This is what this preview consists of.

You control a smartly animated bird which flys around and collects objects, while avoiding other flying creatures.

Its not too much fun to play, though promising because of the production stage it has reached.

CP Verlag were to sell the game, though 1995 was a time where the C64 sales were falling quite dramatically, so it may have well been caught up in all the downfall of the C64.

You can get to see an early version of the end sequence too, so you can assume that the game was almost complete.

The game was eventually released in full in 1996, after CP Verlag had gone under. Here is the full game, as well as added to the main archive: http://csdb.dk/release/?id=106862

Case closed!

“Starting life as a humble molecule in the Pre-Cambrian age, you progress through this exciting ten-level game to the Dawn of Early Man – if you are clever enough!

Create the ideal fish, play a new kind of ‘Snap’, judge climates for your gradually evolving creature. An original combination of puzzles, arcade action and computerized board games.”

A C64 only title which sounds very interesting indeed, but one which has never surfaced. It shows up as missing within Gamebase, so it is known about – but did it ever get a release?

Well, it seems it did!… Bo Gøran Kvamme has an original of the game, so it was released – although in limited numbers it seems. Full cover scans are missing at the moment, but we have added photos of the tape and cover thanks to Liqmatrix and Edwin Drost. Edwin has shown photos of his own tape, and Liqmatrix found an ebay auction where the game sold in 2022 that had some photos.

Check out the game both here and also from C64tapes.org where the game was originally preserved by Bo!… http://c64tapes.org/title.php ?id=5524

So this is no longer a GTW, but we’ll keep the entry until fully recognized in Gamebase64. Case closed!…

Another puzzle game, but a rather intriguing one… “Infection” was a game to be released by Virgin Mastertronic back in 1989, but the game never got a release although it was completed on Amiga, Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, PC, C64 and Atari ST.

It is thanks to pressibus.org and the hard work of Alain Beyrand with his excellent article that we can tell the story of what happened…

The game was originally started by Wise Owl Software in 1988 by Craig Galley and David Crummack who came up with the concept which was a twist on Reversi. Everything got quite far, although the AI was a bit limited to start with. “Infection” was initially being produced for the Amiga, ST and C64 only. The game was primarly programmed on the Amiga according to Craig, and regularly ported to the ST and C64 platforms. However things were to change…

The following year in 1989, Virgin bought all the rights for Infection for a cash sum from two of the Wise Owl guys due to the likelihood of the coin op version, and oversaw the development of Infection. The project gained a project manager in the form of Andrew Wright. Andrew arranged firstly to get some improved AI produced by internal developers, which Craig and David then added in. Additionally Andrew contracted David Whittaker to produce the music for all the conversions. Another 3 additional platforms were also added to the conversion list in the shape of the PC, Spectrum and Amstrad (But not to be handled by Craig or David and branched out to other developers).

Although Virgin liked the game and were excited by their budget game prospect, they felt that with a coin op version in the wings a budget version would’ve devalued a possible coin op version. The budget version was pulled just before release much to Andrews (Wright) dismay as he had lashed out his budget on great music, artwork, everything was ready to go.

In 1990 Virgin later struck a deal with 7Up and recycled the Infection game into a new title called “Spot”. Additionally the game was also licenced to Leland Corporation, whom took the game and brought out an arcade version called “Ataxx”, which was very faithful to the Amiga original. Rights these days to the game are a bit confused as a result. Sadly it meant that the original “Infection” title was laid to rest.

As years went on the Amiga, Spectrum and CPC versions surfaced onto the internet. The Z80 versions only surfaced thanks to their programmer Mark Incley. However, the C64 version was nowhere to be seen.

We got in touch with David Crummack who sadly didn’t have anything of the C64 conversion, but told us where we could find Craig. After a bit of hunting around, we managed to find Craig and we were stunned to learn that he had backed up all his disks some years back. He had helped preserve the Amiga version, but also found the C64 source code too. However, he didn’t know at the time how to get it compiled and left it. After GTW got in touch, we arranged to fix it up, but Craig surprised us by getting nostalgic and having a play again with the source. He managed to compile it again, and so here it is in its full complete glory!

“Infection” on the C64 is a great game, and certainly a lot more polished than “Spot”. It features some great presentation, a 4 player mode, level editor and a previously unheard tune by David Whittaker! (A huge bonus for HVSC!) … Certainly this would have done well had it been released.

Thanks to Christopher Drum, we learn that Graeme Devine, developer of 7-Up Spot, also included the game as a microscope puzzle in The 7th Guest. The puzzle was notoriously difficult, so it was removed from the iOS release, but then it was released as a standalone game called 7th Guest: Infection, which would bring everything full circle to the original name.

It’s a shame it never quite made it in its original form, but at least it has now been fully preserved and people can enjoy it at last… only 20 years late I guess! :)

This is certainly another great finding for 2009!… Enjoy!

Case closed…

Imperium was a game by Jörg Schließer which was mean’t to be published by the Tronic Verlag, and like Captain Stark has not been seen anywhere.

This game was told to be a SF-RPG, described as unique on the German RPG market. It received very high ratings.

The aim was to guide a party of 4 characters through a mission, which was divided into three levels. The screen arrangement was as in Ultima. There were lots of sounds and little graphics and lots of features mentioned.

A shame that a finished RPG doesn’t seem to have made it, and the reasons are so unclear to why Tronic Verlag let this game go.

Or did they actually release it?…. A full game is here to download, but can anyone claim to own an original?

Well, contributor LDX#40 confirms that they bought the game back in the day from German magazine ASM. The game came in a plain white box with just an ASM sticker on it (as you can see in the scans – same label as the disk). LDX#40 has very kindly made scans of the disk and manual, which you can now find below.

A good little RPG from Tronic Verlag…