Games That Weren't^®

An old CNET style game with simple rocks to avoid in this sideways SEU.

By the same guys who created "Crackmania", also in the archives and incomplete. This game doesn’t seem to be built for the purpose of selling, but as a training lesson in programming.

The game lacks a lot, but as you will find with "Crackmania", progress was made from this game.

Dangerzone confirmed recently by Chris as a demo uploaded to compunet to show how to use the rock sprite multiple times using a raster split interrupt. It was apparently just a different type of demo for the time. Although it was nothing ground breaking, Chris liked it. No doubt this would have been pitched to a publisher.

As this is a full game, there is no game to chase up.

Music is ripped from Hades Nebula by Ben Dalglish.

Simplistic example of programmer’s early work…

Another title which was the casulty of the Zzap Megatape article , “How to become a Megastar”.

This was not a SEUCK game, but a two player Bi-plane game in similiar style to Combat from a side on view. There was not too much talked about regarding this game, but a lot was infact talked about regarding the bugs in the game. Sadly according to Ian Osborne who wrote the original feature, it was unplayable due to some bugs in the programming, so we never got a true description or details about the developers.

Dying High is a simple two player combat simulation, focusing on the bi-plane action from Combat. Not a top down view like most Combat clones have been. The game was a result of around a single days worth of work just for fun, and was produced because the developers had a passion for this kind of game.

How did we find out about this mysterious game once printed in Zzap?… Well, it’s thanks to Craig Grannell that GTW found a credit, when pointed to the letter pages of issue 90 of Zzap, where a developer of the game wrote in to fight back against Zzap’s “bugged” comments. Here is a quick snippet of what a certain Martijn Althuizen had to say…

“The article says that the game Dying High has a bug in it, which simply isn’t true. You probably figured out by now that i’m part of the team that made the game and to prove it isn’t bugged, I only have to quote some of Ian Osborne’s words: “We once got a two-player only aerial dogfighter (Dying High), where the second-joystick option didn’t work, making the game unplayable!”

First of all, if its a two player only game, why in the world would there be a second joystick option? Secondly the game doesn’t even have a second Joystick option, so how can it not work? Therefore I suggest Mr Osborne tries inserting joysticks in both the ports and then enjoy the game which is really fun to play (and hopefully put it on the Megatape after all).”

Zzap responded by saying it definitely didn’t work, and they may have had a bugged copy sent (corrupted on the disk). They offered Martijn the chance to send again with other games, but I guess it never happened.

We had a quick attempt to see if we could track down Martijn (Martin in the letter), and by pure chance found an old email which still was being used. Martijn has since helped us to document this game fully, but even more excitingly is that we were sent the full version of Dying High (Why oh why do I keep trying to call this game Dying Hard!! ;-) )!

And so at last, after 14 years gathering dust after Zzap’s rejection (what bug?), here it is for you to check out!

It is a 2 player only game, and although simplistic, it is an enjoyable bi-plane game with some nice touches (Speed variation and splatting into skyscrapers). All it needs really is a computer drone, but there is plenty here to keep people happy. Plus many people have contacted GTW over the years to ask about the Megatape games mentioned in the Zzap article, including Dying High.

One quick note to make is that there are two versions of the game which we have now put in the archive. The Zzap version contains a credit for Zzap 64 magazine, and also a Red Player 2 plane, like in the scan shot we have online. The second version seems to have been made before passing it onto Zzap, when it may have been pitched to another company first. The Player 2 plane is grey in this version. Apart from that they are the same game.

An additional bonus with uncovering the game seems to also be with the music, which contains what seems to be previously unheard tunes by Jeroen Tel, and what don’t seem to be in HVSC at present. Overall making this GTW a nice finding.

A big thanks has to go to the efforts of Craig and Martijn. We hope to hear from Harold (The game’s programmer) too about his game and hear his own story.

Found at last, and case closed on this long lost Zzap game…

Every so often, the C64 scene will spring up a few surprises and quite often its when an ex-C64 programmer decides to unleash the contents of one of their work disks. Dux is a shining example of this, and is the work of Luc Van Den Borre, whom you may not have heard of, but you would have thought you had heard it more after seeing this lovely little title.

From what seems to be heavily inspired by Hunters Moon, Dux also has that little hint of Time Pilot ’84 about it, and there is one thing for certain, there are no ducks! See Luc’s explanation in Creator Speaks, but certainly I was expecting more a Dynamite Dux clone at first… Narrow mindedness is my strong point it seems! ;)

Now what is so surprising about Dux is that its actually finished and a very well polished little game. Certainly it stands up to its 1988/89 birth date, and would have no doubt fared fairly well in the C64 commercial charts.

Sadly although the game was almost complete, some bad stuff happened in Luc’s family, and it affected the development and finishing off the game. A very tragic and sad story, which we will not go into, but this is the reason why the game never got pitched to any publishers. It sadly gathered dust, and by the time Luc came back to programming, the C64 was long gone.

The game looks very nice, and features some awesome explosions, matched by some very tough gameplay. It is a 8 directional scrolling game, flying over various terrains. Your ship can build up with some additional armoury and weapons, and all of this is needed to get past all the asteroids and lasers dotted around over the landscape.

Sonically the game is quite limited, but features some good sound effects. Presentation is brilliant, with a neat little interluding screen before your ship zooms off for battle.

Really, you are treated to something quite nice, but its a bit sad that the programmer never really got full credit for this work. Maybe track his site down and send him an email if you like it. Certainly this is a rare thing to occur and see a game of this calibre escape the commercial eye, but sadly these things happened.

Its seeing the light of day, its got no ducks, its great…