Games That Weren't^®

A very quick entry for a title we know little about, but which was highlighted by contributor Hedning.

This is a game which was meant to have surfaced on the cracking scene back in 1987 from a guy called Doctor Bit (Who may be known also as Dr Bit in CSDB), whose real name we don’t know.

Nothing ever surfaced it seems apart from this tune:

http://csdb.dk/release/?id=97338

We are unsure what type of game it was to be or anything like that. We assume that it would have been some kind of space SEU.

Do you know any more about this one?…

Not much known about this pack i’m afraid, apart from that it was to contain games like Snakes and Ladders, and possibly other board games.

We think there was some adverts for this compilation briefly, but we are needing confirmation of this.

Because we don’t have any information, we can’t say too much about the game. Maybe the game compilation idea was realised to be too weak for release?… Or the programmers did a runner?

We don’t know, but yet another title in the archives we need to start digging for information.

Do you know anything about this game?…

Sadly not much is known about this particular game pack which was announced by Beyond Belief.

We can only assume that it would have been a budget pack of 3 simple games, but we need someone to confirm this.Contact has been made with Jim Smith who used to run Beyond Belief, but we never heard any more from him.

A shame really, as we are quite curious to learn more about these other C64 titles.We’ll try anyway to find what we can, but don’t expect too many miracles too soon for this one :(..

Will anything ever turn up? ..

Game Hunter is yet another mysterious Anirog title which seems to have gone astray since some initial mentions in magazines and adverts.

We’re not entirely sure at this point what the game was about, and there seems to be no other versions of the game on other platforms.

Considering that the partners of Anirog have sadly passed away, it could be very tricky now to try and find out who was behind this title. It could be a bit of a slog!

Very early days, but does anyone have any scans of the adverts?

A bizzarely named game which was reviewed very quickly by Peter Staaks back in 1997 in one of the main fanzines at the time.

It was a pacman clone which had a preview released apparently and which Peter gave some feedback on. Apparently it was nothing too special.

This is all we know about the game at present, so do you know any more?

Could anything of this be found?…

Galactic Conqueror was described as a an action and strategy game by Titus Interactive. According to sources, the game was in fact released in 1988 for Amstrad CPC, Amiga, Atari ST and DOS.

The Games Machine magazine in March 1989 mentioned that the Spectrum and C64 versions were coming soon along with the Amstrad version, but it seems that only the Amstrad version made it. Not surprisingly, as the Amstrad was much bigger in native France than the Spectrum or C64.

The game had mixed reviews, and the Amstrad version was a bit crap… http://www.cpczone.net/game/376 . But did a C64 or Spectrum version ever get under way?

Thanks to Martin/Stadium64 – we learn that the manual for the CPC edition includes loading instructions for the C64 and Spectrum versions, suggesting that there could be something to try and find in the future.

With past records, we doubt much was ever started, if indeed anything at all. Though we must chase all routes and see if anything *did* get started before we can close the case which TGM has made for us.

Do you know anything more about such a conversion?… Get in touch!

It was thought that this possibly may have been released as Combat Crazy, due to the fact that the game has a tune in it mean’t for G.I. Hero, and also G.I. Hero and Combat Crazy sound like two similar styled games. However it was found not to be the case.

G.I. Hero was a game originally released for the Spectrum and Amstrad. It received poor grades and even in play testing the play testers thought the game was a joke.

It sounded impressive with the use of Mike Singleton’s technique from Dark Sceptre to have large sprites walking around on the Spectrum without colour clash, but it was still a rather shite game. At the end of the day, it was merely a simple maze game where you walked around with a rifle and shot a few random soldiers. You had to get out of the jungle alive, and finding your trusty dog would help you out.

Adverts were released for G.I. Hero, but it sounds like the game was so terrible that they decided wisely not to release the C64 version which was slightly delayed at the time. We assume that is the case based on information told by Richard Hewison.

Richard also had this to say which shed light on the game further…

“I got in contact with a C64 artist for info on a published Rainbird C64 conversion (Weird Dreams) and it turns out that he also did the graphics for the C64 conversion of GI Hero.

His name is Steve Hall and I’ve told him you’re interested in any info he might have. He was doing the graphics for Daisysoft (aka Delvin Sorrell) and as soon as he mentioned this I vaguely recalled Delvin’s involvement in G.I. Hero. ”

So it seems that we have some leads now, and could possibly find something of the game.

We got in touch with Delvin (now Patricia Curtis), and she informs us that the game was ported across from the Spectrum along with Steve Hall, and the port was actually complete. She believes she was actually given back a mastered copy of the game at some point too, though feels it could have been the Spectrum edition.

It is great to hear that the game was completed – but sadly it seems very much that this has been lost in time. Patricia confirming that she no longer has any of her development disks. Steve was the same as well sadly, so it could almost be a case closed :(

Even though fans of Giana Sisters (The banned Mario clone) were treated to an official sequel in the way of "Hard n Heavy", an unofficial sequel was planned back in 1994.

This sequel was planned by none other than Cyance, otherwise known on the demo scene as Reflex. These guys as you may remember, produced the groundbreaking "Mathematica" demo and also under Cyance, produced the cool "Centric" tron game.

It is not quite known the exact plans of the sequel from the German crew, but it was never really heavily publicised on the scene.

All that currently remains at the moment are the game tunes by PVCF, which are sampled based covers of the original tunes, along with some neat sampled SFX.

Certainly from listening to the tunes, and observing Cyance’s previous "Centric" game, Giana 2 could have possibly been something special.

Details from the developers have sifted through to GTW, and the game was never released or finished due to some copyright constraints. The game never got past the alpha phase, where it was playable but lacked all the levels and features.

Sadly the game could well be lost, as the developers have apparently not got the game any longer, which is a huge shame. Quiss looked through all of his disks and confirmed he could not find anything, PVCF also had nothing sadly. Maybe someone got hold of a copy, someone else in Reflex we don’t know. But it looks like only the music ever survived this gaming tragedy.

Check out Creator speaks to hear more.

Case closed we’re afraid…