Games That Weren't^®

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!

Elaroo is based around an elephant who bounces around various platforms on a pogo stick, while collecting as many coins as possible and bouncing on the heads of enemies to get bubblegum.

I can’t quite make out which game this reminds me most of, though I’m hazarding a guess at Nobby The Aardvark. The graphics are large, and very colourful with some smooth and fast scrolling to match with the bounce of the pogo stick. Musically the game is well catered for, with some nice little jingles and sound effects.

Altogether, this preview consists of around 4-5 levels, each with a bonus level (repeated for each level). The bonus level features an extremely fast scroll, where Eleroo must fly around and collect as many coins as possible, while avoiding a giant creature (like something out of Super Mario World).

In the screenshots is also a quick grab of what seems to be an unreachable level, as the game ends before you can start it, and restarts from level 1. I’m not sure if a programmer can unlock this level or anymore from this preview, which could possibly hold more than it allows to be played.

Juned Wahab and Shaun Pearson were behind the game, and Shaun tells GTW that the game’s main character was derived from CJ the elephant in slightly larger form. Thalamus took a big interest in the game, but sadly Juned Wahab lost interest and it was never completed.

So, it seems that all that exists is the preview here, but Shaun did supply GTW with a demo which contained the unused game logo, which we have taken a screenshot of and stored in the shots pages.

Maybe Juned has a later version of this game, possibly with the unreachable level?

A new GTW which has plenty more to be added in the near future.This is a very promising platformer game with some very nice graphics.

At the moment nothing is much playable, and you’ll only be able to see the game running briefly with one screen. We don’t have much background of the game at the moment, but hope to find out more soon to do a more detailed writeup on the title and even get hold of some more graphics and pieces of the game to show people what might have been.

Also we don’t quite know why the game was never finished, it is possible that lack of time played a huge role in this game’s downfall, but lets await the developers views about this title. Antonios recently gave GTW some new shots of the game and bits and pieces, which we have added to the shots section. And recently in 2009 we can see a glimmer of more, as Antonios passed on a map of the game and a sketch of a guardian that was planned. This can be found in the scans section!… More will be coming soon!

Its been noted recently that the game seems to be based slighly on the old EGA based Duke Nukem games from the PC, however Antonios stated that he started designing the game in ’93 and didn’t know about Duke Nukem at the time, so any familiarites were purely co-incidental.

For now, check out the non-playable download and screenshots recently added to see for yourself….

Another obscure title in the archives to be solved…

Exodus was to be a side scrolling shoot em up that owed it’s inspiration to Battlestar Galactica. A kind of cross between Defender and Uridium.

The game was previously unknown by many until Darren Melbourne shed some light on the game out of the blue. This was to be a game published by Nexus, who were most famous for their American Football game, Hades Nebula and Nexus the game.

This particular game consisted of a variety of levels. Each level was to feature ten massive craft that the player had to defend from swarms of invading enemies. Flying back and forth amongst the fleet the player had to control both himself and his wingment to combat enemies, repair damaged craft and safely see them through the jumpgates and to safety. It apparently looked very impressive.

The game was shaping up very nicely very early on and was hoping to be published by Nexus, but sadly Nexus went into administration and the game sadly never got published as a result. The game was stuck at its very early stage of development

It was never sold on to anyone else, so sadly Exodus was to rot away. A huge shame, as Ned’s graphics were reportedly excellent in the game, and would be very nice to see. Sadly Ned no longer has anything of the game, and neither does Richard who got in touch recently about the game.

So who would have a copy of the game?… we weren’t sure, but we recently found a set of source files which seemed to have the remains of the game. Certainly the charsets are in place, but the map graphics and sprites may be missing. How much can be reconstructed?

Well, Jani Tahvanainen has painstakingly put the game together and has helped us to present a preview showing the early title screen, an asteroids sequence and the main game. It isn’t fully playable, but another one saved and certainly worth a look. The main ships within the game are very impressive, all constructed from just the one character set as Darren originally mentioned – just scroll from left to right to see the variations.

Also, here is some concept artwork to show the ship which Ned had visioned:

Thanks to Jani, you can now check out what is probably the last remaining version of the game. This is pretty much as far as the game ever got sadly, and we may never know if it would have done well – another one saved though in its final state.

Case closed!

A new GTW entered into the archives, kindly fixed up for GTW from the work disks of Harold Klink and Martijn Althuizen.

Enemy Scout is both a sideways SEU and a sideway run-along game in its early stages of development. There are a total of roughly 4 levels with some varied versions and two title screens unlinked.

The SEU part looks quite good with its score panels, but the screen area could possibly have been too small for the gameplay. The 4th level where you take control of an excellent space man running along a landscape, looks much more promising and would have no doubt been excellent had it been completed.

A lot of work was done on the game, including various bits of graphics by Martijn. Sadly interest was lost in the game and it was only ever really a demonstration of graphics and various techniques. As the C64 died out, the guys left the C64 and moved onto other platforms.

One of the title screens seems to suggest that Elite were approached to launch the game, but it was found that the game was never submitted to anyone.

All the sources of the game were examined, and this is what GTW found… the remains of Enemy Scout. A big thanks to Skeletor for examing and piecing everything together! A promising looking title which could well have provided a good blast, but at last can be examined by the public to see and think what might have been. You can also now check out the game’s sources, thanks to Harold for giving permission to put them up.

A promising title which sadly never was to see the light of day…