Games That Weren't^®

Our next GTW entry comes in the form of a Slapfight style vertical scrolling shoot-em-up which was being produced by Paul Hughes.

It was originally assumed to have been produced for Ocean, but we find that in fact the game was meant for Rainbird Software back in 1988. You’ll find out how in a bit.

The game name was criticised by Paul himself, and feels it was quite crap. Not sure if the game name would have been changed somewhere down the line. Epsilon has stuck ever since though.

The game never got fully completed, and it seems that Paul and Dawn got dragged onto other projects – meaning that this was shelved.

Paul gavs hope by stating that the game is most likely on a few ST disks in his parents attic, and once he gets a chance, he will be having a dig through and converting the remains for us to put out and show the world.

Recently we had confirmation from Paul that Dawn Drake did all the graphics, but sadly these were assumed lost when Dawn sold Paul’s C128 setup to Martin Holland who sadly passed away in 2003. Martin was thought to have had all of Dawn’s disks, but it seems there was a mis-communication. It was found in 2012 that Martin had borrowed some of Dawn’s disks to just test out until he found his own.

The disks were returned to Dawn, who when questioned about another game in the archives, mentioned she had a bundle of disks which GTW64 could take a look at. That we did, and we were very surprised to find some early builds of Epsilon.

One preview unfortunately would not start correctly – but Martin Pugh very kindly fixed things up, and the preview shows a slightly different build with Terra Cresta sprites. There is also a high score mode tucked away which they unlocked. You can check things out for yourself by downloading the previews here. We also added Paul’s source code that he added to his own site in 2018.

It is hoped that maybe some day we can find more of the game – especially as it is such a promising looking game. Graphically it feels superb in places, especially the hi-res ship version. Sonically it is strong, but just features test music by Jon Dunn at the moment, ripped from another Ocean game – seems to suit it well though!

More soon we very much hope for this one!

Enemy or NME was a side scrolling shooter that was graphically awesome according to project manager Darren Melborne.

This was a game to be based upon the R-Type inspired mechanical/organic style of the day the title featured great graphics and an outstanding multi plexar.

This particular game got to the demo stages and was looking rather cool, until for whatever reasons (still unknown), it was unreleased and scrapped at an early demo stage.

We have been speaking with the programmer, Stuart Cook and sadly doesn’t believe he has anything of the game- its also been well over 20 years and details about the game are very sketchy as memories begin to fade.

Could the remains be found? Well, as we wait to see if Stuart can find anything – we got processing some disks from Darren Melbourne in early December 2015 and found a loading screen, a very early rolling demo and a test sequence for the ship.

Here is also a concept loading screen done by Ned Langman that was recently dug out from his archives:

Certainly the game looks great – apart from the test sprites! But it sounds and feels like there is something far more complete out there. That was the last of Darren’s disks though, so it is looking to be down to Stuart now to find more!

Can Stuart dig out his lost gem?…

After what was an abysmal conversion, Electric Dreams were seemingly keen to make up for some reason.

Instead of just forgetting about the conversion, a PCW show (Zzap issue 32) had reports from Electric Dreams about working on a new revamped version of the game.

We weren’t sure originally if this would have been from the same perspective, or from a new diagonal perspective which was adopted by the Master System version. It was likely that they would have had a better programming team, or the same team with new techniques to improve the conversion.

In 2011 we had a very interesting email from Kevin Tilley who (based in Australia) had a copy of the Big Box 30 compilation by Beau Jolly. Previously I had found there to be a rather different version of Wonderboy in the compilation (with an enlarged main sprite), but Kevin’s version had a very different version of Enduro Racer in place too.

A crack of this version seems to have existed for quite some time, but has been tucked away without much fuss and named “Super Enduro Racer”. The game seems unfinished with a number of glitches, but it is fairly close to completion and upon closer inspection, we noticed the words “By Orlando” written at the start.

Now Orlando is better known as Nick Pelling, and we needed to find out more. Nick has had a connection with Enduro Racer from the very start – even being credited to the game conversion that did make it (when actually it was Doug Anderson who was behind the conversion!). Was Nick behind a reworked version of the game, or was this entry actually a V1 rather than a V2?

The game feels much much better than the final version, featuring rolling hills, better graphics and better looking sprites. Speed is a bit slow though, but you can see the promise. There are about 5 stages in total too – though you can drive all over the place, and the collisions aren’t quite sorted.

Nick Pelling got in touch with GTW64 in 2014, and confirmed that he did work on a new enhanced edition of the game and this was likely it. It was an enhanced disk only edition which was intended for the US market (simply as sales of the 1541 were low outside of the US). Nick believes it was cancelled fairly close to completion and was never properly released – with no payment being made for the work.

So how did the unfinished game come to end up on a random copy of Big Box 30, when no-one else had that version? Nick believes that it was likely a simple mistake from someone within Activision who grabbed the wrong master disk – why for the Australian version we do not know. We may never know either!

Then in July 2022, contributor Martin Smith found an advert for an Elite 6-Pak Vol.3, including Enduro Racer – but with a note to say the pack would be containing a new version that had been developed in the US. This must have been the edition that Nick created – but did it ever get to feature on the pack? By the looks of it – it didn’t.

This is very likely all that was ever produced, and we’re very lucky to be able to experience it. If Nick had been able to properly finish the game, we could have had something quite special.

Brought to the attention of GTW by Commodore Zone magazine from their Star Wars special edition.

“Empire Strikes Back” is (Surprise Surprise) based on the famous Star Wars film, but is not the official game, but a rather groovy looking Defender clone.

Fans of the Atari 2600 VCS version of “Empire Strikes Back” by Parker Bros, will instantly recognise the game, with the addition of great music and cool graphics. This is essentially a conversion of the VCS game, and not the arcade (Which was vector based).

Currently GTW lacks information on the game, apart from some credits which you can find to the left. Rob Hubbard’s music has been ripped from another game, so you can assume that Rob was not to be the main musician. Maybe they had someone else in mind for later?

The exact details of the plans for the game is also quite shady too. Nothing suggests that any company were due to sell this, and only contact with the developers can shed more light.

Until then, enjoy a gorgeous parallax scrolling preview of a promising Star Wars game..

Princess Leia is going nowhere just yet…

A very obscure title which was mentioned and only had the title of “Sideways SEUCK game”. Now this was not long after the unreleased Breakthrough, and we assume that RR Software may have come up with their own tweaked SEUCK engine.

What was the game like?…. According to Commodore Cracker 9, the game was half finished at the present time and they were unsure whether to release the game due to the threat of piracy. If released the game was oddly to be released with a wordprocessor, another game called Little Dome Folk and Supportware Pack 1 as a bonus. The game would scroll partly sideways and partly upwards.

We don’t know much about the style of the game, but apparently the title would feature extra lives enhancements and the proposed release was to be September 1995. It never appeared.

Well, thanks to Vinny Mainolfi – we’ve been able to preserve the disk with the demo on … GTW64 has updated the SEUCK demo to open up the rest of the game. The sideways trick was just the sprite bullets on a static screen trick which Alf Yngve used many a time. The game itself was very simple, but then Rowan was very young when doing the game.

We believe this is as far as the game got before being cancelled!

More research needed!