Games That Weren't^®

Ground Zero was yet another text adventure created in 1984 by Artic Computing. Advertised for the likes of the Spectrum and the Commodore 64 in various magazines, only the Spectrum version seems to have surfaced.

The C64 version is very much at large, or even missing completely as a result of never getting completed (Gamebase64 have an entry listed as missing). We’re not entirely sure why, as a text adventure is relatively simple to convert and there were the likes of the Quill and GAC available to do the job.

So what happened?… did the Spectrum version not sell very well?

Contributor Strident commented: “Ground Zero was a Quilled game on the Spectrum, so it should’ve been a very easy title to port across. It was actually produced originally by the author, independently of Artic.

Before its publication by Artic, the adventure’s author, former journalist Colin Smith apparently planned to sell his house to raise capital to launch the game. “I thought that participating in the game would bring home to people the horrors of nuclear war more powerfully than any film or book,” Colin explained to a reporter at the time, with the game intended to highlight what he considered the ‘inadequacies’ of the Government Protect and Survive civil defence scheme.”

At present, we don’t believe that Artic sold the C64 edition at all, suggesting that nothing was completed, but was something started at least?

Among ZZAP!s best-known features is issue 16’s “The Musician’s Other Ball”. This was an interview with Ben Daglish, Tony Crowther, David Whittaker and Rob Hubbard, talking about composing music for games and how they got into it.

At the end of the article was a box listing musical credits for all the composers. Within Rob Hubbard’s list is a credit for the forthcoming “Gremlins”, an arcade-style game and not the Adventure International text adventure, even though Adventure International is referenced. Is it possible that Rob’s music was intended to go into the adventure game, but was dropped? Not quite – please read on.

There was a Gremlins arcade game, based on the Atari 5200/7800 game and released in 1984. However, it wasn’t known originally if Rob’s music was intended for this game or a separate release. However, Mat Allen confirmed that the game was indeed released by Atari for the C64, disk only and therefore was not the same game.

Chris Abbott in 2015 got in touch and confirmed as well that Rob’s music was not for the AtariSoft game, but another Gremlins title contracted and invoiced by an “R. Gibson”. This was the very same Roy Gibson who went on to found Canvas with Ian Weatherburn. The work was commissioned in 1985 for Rob to do, and was one of his earliest commissions.

Rob remembered producing a set of tunes using banjo style instrument sounds and there were a number of western tunes… “I remember doing some tunes with a small town America theme. I went out and bought a book on how to play blue grass banjo! I was dedicated back then! They must have been from the Gremlins game.”

Therefore the tunes from Final Synth Sample 1 were from the game which is currently unreleased and have been there all along. All the tunes were intended for the game, and the SFX could well have been too! (Tunes were later used in Shoot Out by Martech).

We learn thanks to Zzap64 issue 6 that it was being worked on just after Monty on the Run, as it is mentioned by Rob that he was working on a set of tunes with grass banjo effects and that it was his best work yet (see scans).

With the game itself, Roy tells us that it started as a side scroller game prototype (most likely side on platformer) for Adventure International UK. Nothing particularly innovative was attempted. Roy recalls that there was some confusion over the licence, and all that he can remember is being disappointed that they didn’t go on to completion. The initial prototype is all that is thought to have been created.

It might be possible that Adventure International UK decided not to do a non-adventure game, and rejected the idea – but its hard to confirm these days. However, an article with Adventure International in Your Computer magazine confirms that there was to be an arcade game due to the success of the adventure game. There was also news about there being a second adventure game too – so another GTW entry!

Sadly Roy feels that there are no copies of his demo still existing, as he jettisoned a great deal of stuff when he moved to the US in 1987. He may still find something, but it is looking unlikely after all this time. At the very least, Rob’s music is preserved and we now know a lot more about this once mysterious Gremlins game. We hope some day to present something more!

Before Actua Soccer came about, Zeppelin almost beat Gremlin to it with this state of the art soccer game. We say state of the art, but we are assuming it wasn’t that good because I haven’t heard of it before until now.

Volker Malter came forward a while back with an interesting link showing the game cover, but then an image from an old auction which showed the same box with a C64 label on it. It could possibly have been a manufacturing mistake, but it will indeed be worth chasing up and finding out if there is any truth in the possible development.

It would have been a very ambitious game i’m sure. Maybe it was packaging used also to house Graeme Souness Soccer on the cheap towards the end of the C64’s life?… Possibly.

Well, contributor Boris Kretzinger has helped to confirm that the game was just a repackaged version of Graeme Souness International Soccer, after purchasing a copy of Vector Soccer with the C64 label on it. Check out the scan shots. The game is exactly the same and no different, so Zeppelin were just saving money and using the same box.

Case closed!

An interesting title which has been flagged up by Mikael Lundvall. This was to be the last game produced by Swedish company Greve Graphics and was going to be released in 1987, but surprise surprise it never happened!

Details on Wikipedia regarding Greve Graphics state that the game was “Only 5 copies but not complet (sic)” …. so 5 originals were produced and distributed out … but the game was never officially released.

Mikael very kindly translated details which were published in a swedish article which explains more about the game:

“During 1987 the company (Greve Graphics) developed a game called Goremium. Before the planned release 5 original disks were produced, but the game was never officially released.

Two players could play the game simultaneously. The aim of the game is to defeat Rinevald and his evil sons, each having their own evil power, Dirvania (fire), Jilvod (water) and Transvaj (earth). After that, the players face a giant dragon in order to save their princess. The players control a space ship each. Throughout the game the ships can be expanded.

The players can also connect their ships to, by joint effort, become more powerful. The game used the, at the time, new “double scroll” technique to give the game more dimensions. The border was also being fully used to maximize the game area. 48 sprites were used at the same time, and the giant dragon, the final boss, consisted of 13 sprites.

The space ships can, if fully expanded, consist of 13 sprites. The game was planned to be released in the USA during July of 1987, and then in Scandinavia in September of 1987. The game was not to be distributed by American Action or any other Swedish company. The price was going to be 249 SEK, for both the tape and disk versions. This was the last game by Greve Graphics but it was never released. The people behind the game later on moved on to work for other computer companies in Sweden, among others as programming software for the PC.”

This is all that is currently known about the game at present, but it did say in the article about references that Swedish magazine Datormagazin referred to it as “Gorminum” in some article but it didn’t say in what issue or if there were pictures or anything. Thanks to Martin/Stadium64 – this has now been added to the scans!

According to GiantBomb.com: “GG spent a lot of money and time on the game “Goreemium – The Rise of Nothingness”. It was never released, but several playable demos has been around on trade shows with many people stating “looking extremely innovative” (it was among the first games in the world were user directed a team with different skills to solve complex tasks)”

A translated article here suggests that the game could et will be completed and Lars HÁ¥rd said the following about the game itself to give some more info about what it was like:

“Yes, we worked on Goremium quite a lot in 1987. It’s a two player game with quite heavy AI requirements, which is unusual for a C64 game. It’s basically a space shooter where the players can upgrade their ships and rebuild them in order to make them more powerful. The game was very graphics heavy, giving us 48 simultaneous on-screen sprites, but the main idea was to use advanced AI to enable automated team handling. Unfortunately, Goremium never got completed, and by that time we’d grown tired of the game industry.”

Lars is open to the possibility that some day the C64 game could be resurrected and released – suggesting that they may still have the actual C64 work. Watch this space perhaps!