Games That Weren't^®

Mentioned in TGM March 1989 Complex was to be a new Palace Software game on the C64 in 1989, and was mentioned in the March issue of The Games Machine. They described the game as follows: “And for future-shock fans, there’s Complex – a police-training course of a distant century, with 2000AD-style comic book graphics actually created by a comic artist.”

Very interesting. So was this a futuristic Combat School of sorts that never was? Well, we can’t really tell from this very basic description but there seems to be no evidence of the game on any format anywhere. Did this get caught up when Palace went under? Titus certainly never picked it up when they took over Palace, so this may be lost in the midst’s of time.

Maybe you know something about this game, or have even seen an advert somewhere? Just who was behind this game, and how far did it get?

In the articles linked in the gallery below, Jo Walker is mentioned as having done animation for C64 Barbarian. So, it seems reasonable that he was also involved in C64 Complex too, if there ever was such a version. The article implies that he was doing Complex for 16-bit. The game is also mentioned as late as 1991 in Swedish magazine Datormagazin, issue 5 1991, page 54:

“In the year 2061, Earth is still a wonderful planet – for criminals. Maintaining law and order has become a job for experts, and becoming an expert is only for those who pass Complex, the police training camp. Here, the prospective police officer must throw him- or herself between platforms and bull’s-eye the bad guys, while sparing innocent lives.

The game animations are in a league of their own and the character controlled by the player consists of 120 different frames. I’ve personally played an early version of the game, so I can confirm that the animations are of a very high standard. The game is also very fast, despite the version I saw containing more on-screen objects than the final version.

The player is awarded points by how he or she behaves in cornered situations, how many innocent lives have been lost and so on. Jo Walker, e.g. Barbarian II and Demoniak, is designing the game and 23-year-old Sean Pearce, e.g. World Games, Hardball and Platoon, is doing the programming.”

Looks like we need an ST/Amiga page for the game too! The question is, was a C64 version ever considered at all – Ross doesn’t think so (see comments), and we agree at the moment. It’s looking like this was vapourware!

Another brief entry for an Arcade conversion which never was.

Combatribes was a kind of Double Dragon beat-em-up by Technos which we think was being converted by Storm. It did make a transition onto the SNES, but sadly not the C64 like planned.

Rob Whitaker was unaware of this game, so we are not sure how far it ever got at present. Hopefully someone will step forward and own up to working on this game so
we can tell more about its development.

For now we await and attempt to find out who was programming this game,

More soon we hope…

The only information we originally had on this game comes from a CES show in Chicago, USA in 1987. Basically the game was to be a chess game, with the background being shown as a landscape.

Avalon Hill made its name as a board game company, and is famous for its historical war games. They still operate today and are a subsidiary of Wizards Coast.

Combat Chess was not quite a game of chess like you might think, certainly not with a chessboard – but had chess like rules across a landscape map. We know this thanks to the Atari release which did manage to make it out.

As for a C64 edition though – it isn’t known how close the game was to being released, or even completed. Presumably it had reached a demo level if it was announced at a CES show, but beyond that we couldn’t say. Avalon Hill’s computer games were not massively well regarded at the time and it may be this reason that the game was pulled.

As the company is still around today, there is a chance we may find out more about this game from someone still at the company or perhaps from a fan, but if not, then it looks like Combat Chess will be another MIA for the Commodore 64 at least.

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.

Do you know anything more about this title?

Originally billed as the sequel to Psychedelia, Colourspace took Jeff Minter’s light show program to another level… but only on the Atari (and BBC we think..). The amazing limitless abilities to create various light effects to accompany your music collection was very engaging stuff and you could even save your shows and play them back.

Jeff felt that it was the perfect program to demonstrate the capabilities of the Atari, and so no C64 version was originally planned.

That all seemed to change when Zzap #23 had a news item about a C64 conversion…

“Jeff is re-creating the successor to Psychadelia for the good old CBM. In fact the result will outdo earlier versions of Colourspace – LIGHTSYNTH development is ongoing.”

Although lacking on colour compared with the Atari, two years after the original version… Jeff felt he could better the Atari version on the C64.

Sadly the news item was the last that was ever heard about the conversion, and the idea faded into obscurity.

Today, Jeff is quite prominant on the net and a lot of his titles feature for download… but Colour Space strangely does not exist in download or even word.

We spoke with Jeff in 2013, who said:

“In the end we just went for the 16-bitters when it came to developing CS further, they were more powerful and colourful.”

And that was that – no C64 version was actually produced, and thus it is case closed!

Advertised in many magazines, this was a title being sold by Anik Microsystems… however only two Anik games exist and seem to have been released on the C64.

The advert describes the game as follows:

"A fascinating game of logic that is highly addictive"

The game was being sold very cheaply at around £4, compared to the higher price of their titles in Gamebase. Maybe this was a simple BASIC game that was being sold for quick profit?

We know very little more about this than the above, a lot more research needed and hopefully we will find some of the people who used to work for Anik.

More to come soon hopefully…

Cobra was of course released on the C64 by Ocean Software in 1986, but Paul Hughes was a bigger fan of Joffa Smith’s awesome (and far better) Spectrum effort.

So much so that just before joining Ocean, Paul started converting the Spectrum title to the C64 just for fun and managed to make very good progress.

Once at Ocean, he showed his proud work to a number of people, including Zach Townsend. Paul realising he may be offending people, quickly put the game away and it gathered dust.

In 2010, GTW helped preserve some disks and found some bits of code remains for the game. There is however more to find we believe, and Paul even may wish to complete it as a tribute to the late Joffa Smith who passed away in 2010.

Sounds overall very interesting, and could be something very good to check out in the future…

Could anything of this be found?…

Club JR’s is a text adventure game for over 18’s which was advertised in RUN magazine in the US, where you date up to 13 women and live through a dating lifestyle.

The game come on approximately 3 disks, had a game map and printed documentation. You could even buy half the game for about $7 and buy the rest later if you wanted.

At present nothing of the game seems to have been preserved, so we are not sure if this is game that never got fully released or if it is just not backed up yet.

Can you help at all?