Games That Weren't^®

Our next brief entry is for a game being worked on by Screen 7, a company who also did Jaws and a few others on the C64.

The game was to be based on the TV series, Crossbow and was mentioned in Zzap issue 56.

Thanks to Martin Smith, we can confirm that the game was a side on viewed game and was actually released on the Amiga, PC and Spectrum platforms, where as the C64 version sank without trace.

The game seems quite naff, and I don’t think it did particularly well. Screen 7 seemed to disappear without trace around 1989, which could be the reason the C64 version died out without a release. Maybe the C64 version was taking longer to develop, and just missed the boat before Screen 7 sank.

Well, thanks to Andrew Fisher for sparking a connection – but this was a game written by Kevin Oxland for a company called Intelligent Designs which sadly went bust before it could be released. Kevin recalls writing code for the navigation around the forest amongst other things.

Sadly Kevin no longer has any of his old work, so it could be that this one is lost for good. Maybe you know more about it?

Crossbones was originally a game which had very little known it, apart a mention way back in 1987 in “Happy Computer” magazine.

It was in an interview with Brian Fargo and Bill Heineman of Interplay where they first mentioned that they were working on a pirate game called “Crossbones” for Activision, and it would come out in the autumn of 1987.

Nothing else was ever heard about the game and that was the end of that.

Bruce Schlickbernd was a producer on the game and got in touch to shed some light. He confirmed that the C64 conversion was well into production and infact was almost complete and fully playable at the time it was cancelled.

Why did it get cancelled? … Well, Sid Meier’s Pirates! game beat them to it, mainly because Activision were messing around and asking for things to be changed and tweaked all the time and delaying the release. Had the game been left alone and finished, Activision may well have beat Sid’s successful game by a month or so.

Unsurprisingly, both games were very similiar with cannon fights, sword fights and sailing around a vast ocean. The main difference between the games was that whilst sailing on Crossbones, you remained in a deck level view of the seas (referring to a map to get an idea of location). The game covered basically the same physical area as the Caribbean.

There were broadside views for ship-to-ship fights. The general closeness of the game unfortunately gave reason for Activision to cancel and prevent them potentially being taken to court and accused of copying Pirates! (which no doubt they would have done). It was a shame the game couldn’t have been changed enough to prevent any court cases.

The C64 conversion was done by none other than Troy Miles, who programmed Necromancer on the C64. Unfortunately Bruce no longer had anything of the game and sadly neither did Troy…

“I don’t know how much help I could be concerning Crossbones. It was never released and I don’t have any source code or artwork from the project. It was over 20 years ago on a machine I haven’t developed for in an equally long time. In fact, I very surprise that you found out that it existed.

We were working on it for Activision. We were actually pretty close to completion, when they canned it. It wasn’t the only project which ever got canned, it was a pretty frequent occurrence in those days.”

Huge progress and steps into finding more out about this game though, and exciting one! Could this be another enjoyable Pirate game to discover? Time will tell.

Our next entry is based on a sequel of a popular Cricket game which was planned by D&H Games, but never quite made it
to the crease.

There was to be a sequel and international version, and this was advertised by the company briefly. You would have been able to save players from the first game to use in the sequel and international version. But it was never to be. It seems D&H games went by the wayside, and their sequel also went under.

It is likely that the developers were the same people who did the first game, Adam Parker, J DeSalis and T Huggard. Maybe someone can help us track these guys?

More soon we hope on this one…

Yet another Titus title which was mentioned in a schedule list from 1990 for the C64 on Tape and Disk (And later cart!).

We know very little about the game though sadly – as there is no sign of any documents or release on any other formats. But it seems obvious that it would have been a take on the Crazy Cars franchise, but with bikes.

Maybe they decided actually to stick to cars?…. Maybe the Crazy Bikes game turned into Crazy Cars 3??

Do you know anything more about this title?

Back in 1996, an enthusiastic Wayne Wormersley got working with Jon Wells on a title called Crash Course.

The game was to be a sort of update to the classic Spectrum/Ultimate title ‘Trans Am’, or at least based on the game due to its 8 way scrolling. Wayne worked very hard on a graphics set for the game – Wayne recalls about the project:

"Crash Course was meant to be a collaboration project between me and Jon back in 1996. I did the graphics for a full level and a bitmap screen to advertise the game which isnt quite complete. Jon originally suggested doing the game as an 8 way scroller like an old Spectrum game whose name escapes me but then decided that he was going to use his 10TH DAN scrolling routine for the game. This game didnt get done due to me being so slow, I was incredibly neurotic ( I still am ! ) about getting the graphics absolutely perfect.

The graphics are in Saracen Art files I think there are about 16 files in total with bits and bats here and there. Jon has a utility that will grab the graphics form the screen and dump them in to a character set. Perhaps someone could approach him and suggest he completes this game, the graphics are rather nice even after all this time….."

At this stage we are unsure about how far the game got code wise, but we believe not much was ever started. And we believe that after all this time the game is likely to have been cancelled unfortunately. The idea of a C64 version of Trans Am would have been very welcome (And i’m sure Jon would have done a great job, considering he was a fan of the game).

We hope to find out some more soon about the game, its plans and how far any code got. We are now to chase a few leads to see if we can get hold of the graphics to show and preserve on the website.

More soon we hope!

A first version of Crackdown was indeed in production, with code being done by Mark Kelly before he later went on to working on Golden Axe.

We are not sure quite what happened here, but we know that Bob Stephenson was apparently providing graphics for the game. Hopefully we’ll get a confirmation about this soon.

It seems that there were problems in this first production, and US Gold later called in Arc Developments to get the job done from scratch (who produced a rather good effort).

So the question remains to what happened with the first version, and what was it really like? We are still struggling to find out where Mark Kelly got to, but if we find Steve Crow, we might be able to find out more.

Watch this space…

Cow Pat Frisbee V1 is another creation from Richard Bayliss and another game not to be completed or released.

However this game did eventually get a release which was much different from this earlier version that Richard had planned.

Richard had the following to say about the game:

"It was originally a kind of horizontal scrolling game where you had to control someone, throwing cow pats at enemy cows that kept going across the screen. It was purely simple, but wasn’t working 100%. I had done a bad job when I was working on this prevvy. Sadly the game does not exist no more, so I am unable to show it to you. "

So sadly it seems that the game was a little over ambitious at the time for Richard, and the game was then simplified and finished off as a result. Out there in silicon heaven is a rather different looking game, and sadly one which may never be found again.

Case closed before it begins…

Covert Action was a new Sid Meier game from back in the early days and following the success of Microprose’s earlier Pirates game. The game was announced as a title coming soon for the Commodore 64 back in 1988 in Power Play magazine.

Wikipedia describes the game as follows based on its Amiga and PC releases which did make it:

“In the game the player takes the role of Maximillian Remington (or his female counterpart, Maxine), a skilled and deadly free agent hired by CIA , investigating on-going criminal and terrorist activities.

The gameplay is similar to the 1987 release Pirates! , by the same developer, Sid Meier , in that the gameplay is made up of several self-directed, distinct, and unique modes of play. The controls are relatively simple and uniform, and the sound and graphics, for the period, are widely considered at or above par.

During the course of a game, the player will be tasked with installing wiretaps, infiltrating enemy safehouses, intercepting and decoding secret messages and interrogating prisoners. The plots are uniformly without distinction, as is to be expected with randomly generated text-based plot elements. This allows for a less structured story to unfold, and enhances the game’s replayability. ”

From a web interview with Sid, it was found that Sid started the game, but stopped to work on Railroad Tycoon – started the game again but then stopped to do Civilization. It seems that maybe the C64 version was certainly being done or was to be done, but after being sidetracked on another project, when Sid came back Microprose may have already sidelined the C64 as a publishing platform. The game eventually got a release in 1991, by then I don’t think Microprose had any interest left in the C64.

However, it has been found that Sid took over programming duties from Roy Gibson, as Roy confirmed that he started a conversion – but found it way too ambitious for the machine and couldn’t get it to work. Sid then had a go, but it seems Railroad Tycoon got in the way, and that was that.

Sadly it seems that nothing will ever be found – as Roy confirms he has nothing of the game, and it is unlikely that Sid kept anything. We hope to hear from Sid soon though and get more details.

Do you know anything about this game?…