Games That Weren't^®

Quite an errie little preview this one, feeling in someways similar to Mastertronic’s ‘Scumball’.

A nice mixture of hi-res graphics and multi-colour, brighten up this early preview, where you control a space craft which must navigate its way through the underground caverns.

The preview is quite bugged, and can freeze your C64 up at some points. There are however only 3 screens to see, so not much to look at i’m afraid.

Another preview at the early stages of its development, featuring some promise. It was found that the game was quickly knocked up into a demo to take to a computer show.

The game’s final development was haulted when Chris decided for unknown reasons to call it a day. This as far as it got. However, Chris mentions that Andie wanted it to be a scroller, but because there was a time limit, the flip screen approach was kept..

Music is simply ripped from Driller.

But this is it, nothing else to find or report from… maybe some more comments from Chris and Andie themselves, but that is it for now.

Not a bad little preview… case pretty much closed.

Yet another game from the creators of Lemmings on the C64, Alter Developments, and this time a title which was to be their icing on the cake. A mixture of all the best elements of all the best C64 games out there.

A little big a statement you say, but this is what Alter Developments wanted to create. A mixture of Smash TV, Rubicon, Turrican, Myth and many others to create a game unlike any other.

The dreams were all well and good, and Zeppelin showed interest (but only would fully when Alter had fully converted the failed Championship Run conversion)… but sadly as with many a GTW… this one was never meant to be.

Once things hadn’t worked out with Championship Run, work came back to History Of The World, and it was decided that the C64 was a dying platform… so efforts were concentrated on the Amiga instead…. and so the game was shelved.

Niels Brouwers, the coder of the game, has kindly provided us with an exclusive set of previews of the game. These have never been seen before until now, and nothing was ever really mentioned about the game until Niels suddenly dug it out for GTW.

At the moment the remains show 4 crucial elements which make up some very bare bones for the game. The first most complete part is a sideways scrolling test demo with the main character fighting against very little… with some really nice backgrounds.

The second part features a full colour bitmap scroller which would have no doubt been used within the playable side on preview seen previous.

Following this is a overhead Alien Breed style character which you can control and shoot bullets around on a black screen. A character test demo is exactly what this is.

Finally there is a test rotation routine for a large sacre coeur, which was to rotate around the main player as an end of level enemy. You have to move it yourself, but it gives an indication of the style of enemies which were planned for this game.

That is it for the time being. Overall, it is a promising looking preview which although isn’t really playable… it looks exciting and it makes you wonder what might have been had some of the other elements been finished more. If Zeppelin released this, they may have had one of their biggest titles in their history… but sadly they didn’t, and so this now resides in the GTW archives.

We may see more soon, who knows… but read what Niels has to say about his game in Creator Speaks….

Case almost closed on this one…

A mysterious game created by Simon Birrell which was originally penned as a game for the BBC Micro. However, Virgin Games decided that they also wanted this title completed on the C64. The BBC game can be seen here btw…

The game involves having to shoot baddies with a balloon which you blow up and then let go of within a maze like structure. Not quite a horror game as you might expect! :)

The game was fully converted onto the C64, but for reasons unknown it never quite made it out. Hopefully Simon will be able to shed some light on this very soon.

For now there is not a lot of information on the game, apart from that it exists fully on the BBC micro and you can play it for yourselves.

Well, recently we checked out some disks from Simon and found a disk with remains of the game on. The game was made executable as much as possible by soundis. Unfortunately the game is quite bugged and isn’t really playable. This is mainly due not knowing what the game was coded in originally.

If the compiler could be found out (Which sadly Simon cannot recall) the source code potentially on the disk (and in downloads) could be made to create a version without the graphical glitches or bugs.

This seems to be all that was left of the game, so we are very close now to closing the case on this one!… But at the very least something has been found! :-)

A neat little game that for reasons unknown never made it…

After some impressive introduction screens, you are greeted with a preview which doesn’t seem to look like very much at all, until you get playing.

The preview looks a bit out dated, but plays fairly well in typical old-school fashion. In this ‘platform’s and ladders’ game, you must simply flick the switches and get to the exit without time running out. Not too much to do, but somehow quite addictive and worth a few goes.

A few elements would have hopefully been added to a final version of the game, as a completed version left like this would have recieved average grades.

The preview is fairly large, with a few screens to play on. Jack Alien recently contacted GTW regarding the game, confirming that the game was never sadly completed. The idea came from the classic "The Castles Of Dr Creep", and was started in 1994. Sadly, C Schramm lost interest in the C64 scene and the game was scrapped. Sadly the source code was also lost.

All that remains is the preview here, and also a intro screen which Jack Alien kindly donated to GTW, which was intended to be used for the final game. This is now included in the zip download above.

So, a good little game which never quite got complete, and never will sadly.

Case closed…

A SEU that was being developed back around 1991 time and for years has been wrongly attributed to being a game due for release by Electric Boys Entertainment Software around 1995 time.

It is likely that EBES picked up the then already abandoned game (developed by AMOK) and planned to resurrect it, in similar fashion to Defensive (which was a God and Hake game seemingly intended for Thalamus).

It is believed that EBES were to add RAMLINK support and include features such as video footage and more colourful graphics and more intense game play. Possibly in the same vein as Metal Dust. No work actually got started from their side, so all that remains is this cool sideways shoot em up preview, with some nice graphics and music.

TMR/Cosine highlighted that there was a preview out there which has been cracked and claimed to be a 106% version, because they debugged it and added a titles page, so its actually halfway to being a game. But where is this preview?… Well, thanks to Asphodel, here it is: http://noname.c64.org/csdb/release/?id=80372

Russ Michaels from EBES could not recall them taking on the game. Hedning/GP did some digging and research and confirmed that the game was from around 1991, as all the cracks of the game were from that time. He established that Amok were the people behind the game as pretty much every crack referred to them, which was a game division (of sorts) of Genesis Project at the time. It is believed that “Electric Boyz” released a crack of the game back in the day, and this caused the confusion (of GTW64 in particular!) of EBES being involved at a later date with the game.

So what happened and why was the original development cancelled? We hope to find out more soon and what was planned for it.