Games That Weren't^®

A wonderful little preview, involving a well-drawn character called ‘Henry’.

It is a little frustrating to play this ‘Fred’s back’ style game, with some hard jumps and obstacles to avoid, but it looks quite polished with some neat graphics and sound. The preview I think only features 1 level, and quite a big one at that, though I can’t progress too far without dying.

Just why this was never completed is anyone’s guess. It doesn’t really lack too much apart from a bit of originality, and is better than the hordes of puzzlers which swamped the C64 scene at the time of this game being worked on.

It’s likely that this game was planned as a game to be sold by a mail-order C64 company, typical of many games after shops stopped stocking C64 games. Quite possibly early failures of other C64 games selling this way, convinced the programmers to hault all work on this game.

Recently contributor ‘Compounded’ found that the preview we have is incomplete. The text before the game starts indicates that there are two levels in the preview (1.2 and 1.4) , but after entering the door at the end of the first level, the screen goes blank while the drive attempts to read from the disk to get level 1.4. However, upon searching for a complete working version (Which sadly he could not find) he did find another version with a different level (1.1) which can now be found within the download link above. Thanks Compounded!

It is not known exactly what WAS planned for this game, though we now have some credits to look up. The team was the same as that behind Fly Harder, so was the game planned for release by Starlight?

A nice game, unfortunatly shown the door for some reason…

You’ve gotta give any coder credit for producing games on the C64 at such a late stage after its commercial death. Even the most boring to the most exciting deserve credit, this game included.

Unfortunately, it’s not a game which was going to encourage Ocean or Codemasters to come running back to a machine buzzing with life, though it was something for the game hungry C64 users who were making do with some stunning PD demo’s and that was that.

It’s a relatively simple themed game based on the classic Atari Parachute game. Here you have the title screen plane of Blue Max, mixed with some other hi-res graphics to symbolise your man trying to land on a moving boat target at the bottom.

Quite simple, and no increase in difficulty. The same happens time and again. So apart from some nice JCH music and fair graphics (With sprites not too far off from the Atari VCS version :) ), there is nothing to really see.

The actual plan for this game is unknown, its probable that a lot more was planned for this game, including some varying gameplay, even if just a speed increase as levels go past.

More information needed so that GTW can make up a better picture of this incomplete game.

"Helldiver" describes this game preview quite aptly…

Erm… Naff is the first word for this game, if you can call it a game.

I’m not sure if this was done for the heck of a few points to some cracking crew, or if this was ever intended as a game in its own right. But it’s certainly not classifiable as a ‘game’ just yet.

All we have is a rather poor sprite which just moves about, and thats it. Nothing to blast or see, apart from some plain informations and scores, not that they add anything to this abysmal preview.

A serious amount of work is needed here, and its unknown if it ever recieved this work or not. Lepsi are known to have done some nice little C64 games to keep the users happy in recent years, but this does not rate as their most promising preview.

Can anyone shed more light on this game?

Ummm….

Hawkeye 2 was something that original coder Mario van Zeist wanted to realise, with better graphics, sound and more added twists to the gameplay.

It was going to be released under the Thalamus label, but was never completed due to some disagreement, which is not yet known. Hopefully more talks with Mario will clear this up.

The game was never fully completed unfortunately. Music over the years was preserved and can be found in HVSC, written by Markus Schneider. We believe more tunes may exist somewhere.

Thomas Heinrich came forward recently and confirmed that he and Michael Detert did graphics. Thomas Detert was also doing the music with Markus.

After cancellation of the game, graphics were used in various titles such as Greystorm, Genloc and Darksword by X-ample Architectures.

However in 2010, Onslaught managed to recover a large amount of remains of Hawkeye 2 from the developers, mostly in the shape of the graphics done for the game. But most shockingly with news of the sequel to be completed (More on this in a bit), with the teaser preview came an original preview done from 1989 of the original game and graphics. Think Hawkeye mixed with Deadlock, and you get Hawkeye 2, and it is a very promising demo with some superb graphics and paralax scrolling.

As well as being left and right based, there are lifts in the game and small intersections. The game looked to be a large step forward in comparison to the first game. But this was all there ever was. We are proud to add a glimpse though after many years of hunting for it!

But the best news has to be regarding Onslaught looking to produce a proper brand new Hawkeye 2 game, based on the graphics with a load of improvements and extras. The game is being written from scratch and features around 25 lines of parallax scrolling with plenty of CPU cycles left free. Check the preview out from here, but it looks superb! The game in total will have around 12 levels.

Jazzcat also had this to say about the new development:

"We have been working on it for some time, (I am project manager and have been overseeing level design and storyboard). The game will feature 25-charline full colour parallax in both NTSC and PAL, obviously with some (very flexible) restrictions. It will hopefully feature 8-directional shooting, 32 sprites (might be scaled back to 24), delta sprite animation compression for long animation sequences of small pieces (think discharged bullets, muzzle flashes, reloading, etc), separate hair animation engine, based on jumping, changing direction, and wind sources. Of course there will be much more!

While we did start from the original Hawkeye 2 development disks from the X-Ample guys, H2-new features a 100% rewrite, using far less memory and raster time to allow the game to go beyond just a simple shoot and collect.

We’re all in full acknowledgment that good graphics do not cover bad gameplay; the gameplay has just as much design going behind it as the technical feature set. A website will arrive soon with further detail!"

So overall, Haweye 2 never quite managed to grace our screens back in 1989 like we had all hoped, but it does now look like we could finally be seeing the game in some shape/form, and we have the original 1989 concepts as an added bonus!

A stunning sequel promised, unfortunately never delivered…

A strange little preview by Thomas Miegel, involving somekind of space craft doing duties over various landscapes.

HAWK is based on INTENSITY by Andrew Braybrook – the aim is to rescue people. You control one vehicle, press fire to land somewhere and then the other vehicle moves to that point – but don’t collide with it!

The preview comes with a few levels, including a screenshot of a later level which is unplayable.

There is a fair amount actually in the preview, to indicate that not too much work was needed to finish the game off. The levels are however not all linked together, and you will have to keep reloading to see each level.

Graphically quite good, with graphics typical of a late 80’s C64 game, and some good sonics. A little rough around the edges, but otherwise a promising looking preview.

The exact release details are currently non-existant, though credit names will hopefully lead to some more information being dug up on this game. Possibly to find a later version, or even a completed version. Can you help?

Nice things going on here…