Games That Weren't^®

California Games 2 was the long awaited sequel which was supposidly available for mail order release in 1991 or 1992 by Tenex Computer Express. It is not certain if any copies leaked out to anyone in the public or not. The game was never marketed in the end.

This sequel offered five new events. You could maximize your cruising time over the California countrside in Hang Gliding, choose your ride and your course in jet Ski, master a barrel roll off the lip of a wave in Bodyboard, then freeze your toes off in snowboard. Once you’ve mastered the others, you’re ready for Skateboarding. Land yourself in the Hall of Fame or Shame.

A list of programmers and people who worked on the game, although not certain if these are C64 related, are as follows:

Programmers: Gil Colgate, Darrel Fetzer, Kevin Furry,Jesse Taylor
Graphicians: Art Koch, Matt Crysdale, Paul Vernon, Collette Michaud, Joel Mariano
Musicians: Chris Ebert, Bob Aron, Chris Griegg
Producer: Matt Householder
Additional Design: Tom Schumacher

Sadly Matt Householder confirmed our worst fears…

“I’m sorry to report that California Games II was never completed on the C64. I was directly involved in every finished version of CGII, excepting the Amiga. The C64 version was started prior to the 1989 bankruptcy and massive lay-off, however. So, some C64 art/code may have existed at some point. But, if so, I’m sure it has been lost. You should have seen the dumpsters full of trash — piles of floppies, cartridges, tapes…

Regardless, the Snowboarding and Hang-gliding events were conceived and designed after the bankruptcy. So, any C64 version wouldn’t have included them. We designed and coded from scratch all the events’ gameplay after the bankruptcy. ”

GTW as a result originally closed the case… until something quite fantastic turned up…. again thanks to Wayne Billingham!….

Wayne confirmed something which GTW never knew…. Tiertex were ALSO doing a conversion of California Games 2… most likely after the collapse of Epyx and their conversion.

This sadly was also never completed, but about 2/3 events were completed and playable. The code was being done by Paul Cole, who coded Strider 2 for Tiertex. Apparently it wasn’t looking and playing very good, and so it was scrapped.

We recently got hold of Paul who had the following to say:

“Sadly I don’t have the code for the C64 Version of cal games II.

We started development either in 89 or 90. At Tiertex they were working on the Amiga and C64 versions of the game. Most of the events had had some work done upon them, but the game was pulled from higher powers (US Gold)

I don’t recall any reason for cal games 2 being pulled, just that all versions were stopped.

We started the project from scratch we had a copy of the graphics supplied to use ( Amgia I think ), that we ran through a converter to produce rough graphics to start with, but no previous code was used. ”

Wayne has created an astonishing possibility that we could see something of the conversion!… Wayne is sure that he has all the graphics he did… and at the very least we should see something of the game soon for the first time ever…

See what Wayne has to say in Creator Speaks… but the question is…. what do we search for now?…. There seems to be TWO versions out there somewhere, so our search doubles…

Now how is that?…. two possible routes to finding this big GTW title at long last…

Can it really be found from Wayne?…

Yet another Hewson based GTW enters the archives, this time with a C64 conversion of the Amiga game by Chris Hinsley.

The game was a platform shooter that was reviewed by Zzap!64, but didn’t score particularly well – getting 45% overall. The review mentions that a Commodore 64 version is coming out, but not until later in 1989. Thanks to Martin/Stadium64 for the heads up about this.

It was confirmed by Hugh Binns that he did all the artwork and maps for the C64 version of the game, that had a very metallic look. Hugh assumed that it was never released, and recalled the coder being some called Grant.

We got in touch with Grant Harrison, and he knew of the game and suggested it was likely Vakis Paraskeva who was the developer.

The game is rumoured to have been completed, though confirmation needs to be made. There seems to be confusion to why the game was never released – but perhaps the poor Amiga review was good enough reason.

If you know anything more about the conversion, please let us know!

Esprit Software seem to have a extensive track record of trying to produce games which pushed all the barriers to the limits. First with Search For Sharla, then with Flonk… now with this particular little game. And with one common shared element, they now sit in the GTW archives.

Crystal Beacon was another title in development for the C64 by Esprit Software. This was to be a kind of 3D Paradroid style of game, with some very impressive precalculated and lightsourced walls running at 50fps. And it would have been full screen too.

So as you can see, some fairly impressive details already..

The game was to involve running around a 3D maze, chasing after robots and hunting them down. Apparently with the light sourcing effects, the game looked stunning.

The C64 conversion was in development by Pete Dabbs, while Lance Mason handled the ST conversion which was also in production.

Interest in the game was quite high, with a number of publishers looking keen to take on the game, but sadly ESP did not have the funding available to continue the project, and so they had to take on some conversion work. The game as a result was shelved, and after all the commotions of other releases, it remained shelved.

Pete Dabbs recently spoke to GTW about the game and originally informed us of its existance. He offered also the possibility of the game still existing in some form on disk at his house, though there is to be confirmation. Pete last time was rumoured to be obtaining a XE1541 cable to check some of his old disks.

Paul Crawley recently added about the game:

"Another one of our games that never quite made it, mainly because Thalamus didn’t want to pay for it, they wanted the game they just didn’t want to pay any development costs, the game was called “The Crystal Beacon” the concept if expended today would still make a hell of a game!"

If anything is found, then hopefully GTW will be able to bring you the remains of this very promising game. Maybe even Shara too if there is anything.

More soon we hope!…

From what began as a simple Vic 20 game called Cosmonaut (A scrolling shooter), a sequel was born from the Ramshaw brothers who did a lot of work in the early days for the likes of Melbourne House.

Cosmonaut on Mars was to be an action packed sequel with the hero traversing horizontally scrolling landscapes and cave systems. Aliens bounced aroundthe the planet surface, while tentacled creatures would reach up from the lava in the lower levels.
The game was progressing ok, but was not much fun to play according to Mark Ramshaw, who also informs that Melbourne began asking for changes, such as to the pacing of the game.

Also at this time, Cliff Ramshaw was about to start college, and drifted away from coding in assembly when he started to enjoy the life of a student. The game was then put away to one side and never returned to. Cliff lost interest in programming, and that was that.

Software Projects apparently took an interest in the game, but nothing materialized from this and so the game remains unreleased to this day.

It is thanks to Mark that we know about this game in the first place. The question is if the game actually still exsists!…. Well, it could well be possible that one of the brothers have a disk somewhere with the remains of the game, though its unlikely these days. We will endevor to try and find out more though and bring this lost title back to life.

More research needed, including a chat with Cliff himself to find out more…