Games That Weren't^®

A year passed since the death of the commercial UK C64 scene, and Commodore Zone and Commodore Scene had taken over where C-Format and C-Force had once stood. Games were few and far between, but for those reading, each new release was as exciting as a Gold Medal game reviewed by Zzap. The C64 scene needed games!

Colony was announced in 1995/1996 to the delight of many readers of both magazines. It wasn’t until the preview was unveiled on the covermount of Commodore Zone, when the true realisation of the game was found.

Colony is what can only be described as a cross between Phil Nicolson’s Deadline and Defender. Featuring little men which you have to protect and save for your Colony (Hence the name).

Although not a wholly original concept, Colony incorporated some amazing techniques which had only really been seen in the likes of Mayhem, with its impressive colour mixing and fast parallax scrolling.

The original preview went down well, but suffered from criticism for being too hard. No problem, some constructive criticism for Jon. However, after numerous tweaks and a bit more work, Jon decided to call it time on the project. Possibly for a realisation that the game could take time, and not reap much back. It was slowly being realised at the time that a realistic good profit could not be made anymore with new C64 software. EBES had already been there and failed for instance.

After struggling to get the game complete – Jon decided to hand the project over. Colony was handed to Oxidy/Ambush designs back in 1997. However, it was reported that Jon had lost some of the source code and they needed them all to finish the game. It seems they never got all of it… :-(

In recent times, Jon himself has shed some very detailed light upon the subject of his unfinished masterpiece, which he critisizes quite heavily. He details about the various new C64 techniques which would have blown any gamer away as much as Mayhem did on its release. But as John says, “All ‘if’s and but’s”. .. Even Russ Michaels of EBES and Jon Wells were said to try to help the game’s progress out in various ways.

Still, Jon manages to paint a picture of a game which can stir the imagination and excitement of any C64 game enthusiast. Read more about the game in Johns own words on the Creator Speaks page.

To almost conclude, the game only made it to the stage of a few extra tweaks and a few completed levels. But not much but the previews which you can download from here.

Recently Jason Mackenzie was instrumental in uncovering further parts of the remains of the game, and as well as the original preview, there has now been uncovered a full-hires colour picture and a superb sprite test demo to now seemingly complete this entry.

Well, not quite….

Allan Bairstow was another person to have a load of Jon’s disks, and sure enough GTW were loaned the disks. Upon examing the contents, we were not disapointed!

We found another rare preview of the game… a earlier preview than the rest, with the ship movement in place (rather unsmoothly) and no enemies over a different colour landscape. This file is separate from the D64 in the zip… you may need CCSC64 to run it… as it needs compressing we think to work in Vice (or at least an AR cart plugged in).

But also a fair bit of Source Code was discovered. We asked Jon about putting the source out, and he has given us the thumbs up. You can now download 3 disks worth of source code, bits and pieces.. sfx, graphics and other bits we don’t know much about. These need looking at carefully, as there could be unknown bits on there…. we hope to go into more detail to what they are very soon…. there could be a lot of unused material there… but have a look for yourself!… and help us if you figure it all out! :)

In 2009 Vinny Mainolfi helped in uncovering yet more remains when he backed up an old Commodore Cracker fanzine disk. On here was a special preview with a different title screen and a slightly different preview with no sound and different panels. So yet more to check out!. We learn from this that actually Parallel Logic were originally going to be releasing the game!… this must have fell through when PL left the C64. Jazzcat has kindly taken the relevant files and also some clean note files and previews uncracked and given us an extra D64 to add to the download archive.

In 2019, the project was resurrected and rebranded as Parallaxian, where there was an unsuccessful kickstarter campaign. The enhancements were looking very promising, but unfortunately it seems that development has been stopped once more for now. A preview was released without permission though and it was reported the game was fully cancelled – which according to Jon is incorrect.

Hopefully we will eventually see something of the game eventually released, but much different to Colony that was started almost 30 years ago.

Collapsar was a cheeky little game which passed a certain resembalance to a classic Braybrook title.

Not quite as polished as the original Uridium classic, it was the fact that it was a clone that scared potentual publishers off the title.

Created by the people behind "Lunar Jailbreak", which controversially got released on the Commodore Format powerpack.

The game was pitched to companies, such as Codemasters who all were scared off by its resembalance. Due to the non-interest, the programmers didn’t fix the bugs which existed in the game, and it got shelved.

Recently Neil Kendall got onto the C64 scene, and started to convert his old disks, and explained the real story of Lunar Jailbreak, and also promised more unreleased titles, including this one.

And that is it… this is the final version of a long lost title which was too similiar to Uridium. Worth a blast though :)

Nice clone, but its downfall… Case closed…

As well as converting the phenominal Lemmings for the C64, Alter Developments had plenty of other projects which they wanted to bring to the C64. The promise after Lemmings was so much, but we saw so little in the end…

One such title which never saw the light of day as well as Troddlers was the C64 conversion of the Amiga budget title, Championship Run; a racing title released by Zeppelin Games.

Now once Remi Ebus talked to GTW about a particular F1 racing game which got scrapped, and one which was in GTW. Well, this is it!

Never seen before until now, GTW presents an early glimpse of a conversion which sadly never was to be. Alter were assigned the conversion to try and prove themselves to Zeppelin in the hope of getting more contracts in the future for other games.

Enthusism was pretty present in the development, but not enough time was really allocated, and Alter ran out time. Zeppelin canned the project after this, and terminated any chance of Alter doing any work for them.

A shame… but we later got to see Lemmings to prove their worth.

This is a simple F1 racing game which isn’t really playable at present. It is a mere look at what was shaping up. A nice ambitous looking F1 sim for a budget label. Recently HVSC uncovered Adam Gilmore’s unused set of tunes for the game, so we have added the SID file to the archive for you to check out. The tune in the demo is a test tune by Geir Tjelta.

According to Niels, there is a much later version somewhere with cars driving around, but we are yet to see this. One for the future I think!… but good news that this is almost a case closed now…

A rare Zeppelin games title to have a glimpse at…

In the days of playing Dizzy and first collecting Commodore Format from issue 11, the next issue (12) featured a mammoth cover tape with loads of demo goodies. This and issue 11 are fondly remembered as the time the webmaster really got into the C64 scene properly.

One demo was a specially created demo for Commodore Format by David Dewar of Silver Wing PD and Entropy. I have always remembered this demo for one reason, and that’s due to a strange part in the demo with some eerie music, and a still screen from an up and coming game promised.

Nothing much can be said from the still, apart from that it looks like a Skeleton with a sword who must fight gargoyle type creatures. After the still, follows a list of features to expect in this strange new game, which unfortunately hasn’t been given a name. But the list of features planned sound very mouth watering…

“Biggest main character ever on a 64
Superlative graphics and animation
Atmospheric in-game soundtracks and FX
Challenging on screen sequences
Fast addictive gameplay and much more!”

Well, apart from its appearance in Commodore Format, nothing was ever heard about this mysterious game and that was that. All that currently exists for us, is this still image from the CF Demo.

David got in touch with GTW, and the mystery surrounding the game was solved. The game was being produced, and came from an idea David had developed whilst still at school.

The working title he tells us was “Spooky”, which featured a fully animated Skeleton, which walked around and fended off flying Gargoyles. Although we were only treated to a still of the game, there was going to originally be a lot more happening.

David tells GTW that the trailer was to have the skeleton walking around with the gargoyles attacking, though so not to allow any of the game ideas to be stolen, David cut this feature out so to focus on the idea of it being a CF demo and to save some of the game away until it was more complete.

The game was started before the CF demo, and several levels were created and were playable. Though the game was put on hold whilst the CF demo was done, and then never got started again after that. David went on to produce enhancements and music for Shaun Pearson’s wonderful SEUCK efforts, and Silver Wing PD eventually faded away and David moved on.

I scanned the demo to see if there were any remains of the game, such as additional sprites, and there were none sadly, though strangely it seems that the Skeleton was a set of sprites placed onto a still image. This skeleton in the demo is in hi-res, but in multi-colour, it seems to work quite well too.

Could we someday see what may have been? The answer is possibly, though sadly Dave was not able to find anything of his development disks with the game on.

He did mention though about sending a demo to Tony Horgan at Commodore Computing International, and a screenshot was apparently printed. It would have been around 1990, so can you help us find this screenshot? We sadly haven’t found it yet!

One more thing, but a GTW forum post was made recently mentioning a possible link to an old Amiga game called “Blade Warrior“, and check out the link…. Looks a bit familiar doesn’t it?…. We asked David, but didn’t hear anything back.

A wonderful looking platform game, which looks very much like a 16-bit console game. Probably in the same league as Mayhem, with a touch of the style used in Yoshi’s Island. It was originally developed to prove that hi-res graphics without colour clash could be done on a C64.

The game plays ok, though a lot is missing, and it seems the game’s creators have emphasised more on the graphics than they have with anything else.

The preview consists of one fairly big map, which you can scroll along, before it gets to a blocked end, where the map may normally loop. Also within the preview are some lovely coloured hi-res overlaid creatures, including a rather cute large blobby character, all done up in a nice hires overlaid effect.

Although very promising, the game was stopped here and that was the end of it. The developers ran out of steam on the C64, and moved onto pastures new.

Check out Creator Speaks for more info about what happened and how the game was born.

Wonderful eye candy, which sadly remains a walk in a gallery.

The title pretty much says it…. You guide a ball around in a large cave, and thats about it.

Well, that isn’t just it.. but it is where this preview goes. A game which was being produced for Commodore Fever, which again got scrapped for unknown reasons.

Commodore Fever had a number of games which they were planning, which also never made it.

Recently it was found out thanks to Patrick Ceuppens that the game was started actually over 10 years ago. Patrick did the graphics for the game after being asked to do so by Stephen who programmed the game.

The game was originally to be called "Caveball 2", as a sequel to a never released game called "Caveball", but as the first game never got released, it seemed sensible to just name the game "Caveball".

Sadly its still not known why the game was never completed, Patrick was unable to help on that one. It seems that interest was lost, but Commodore Fever picked up the game and tried to carry it on. Sadly they never finished it either.

Contacting the programmer behind the game will maybe establish exactly why their game was never completed… For now, why not read Patrick’s own account of the game in "Creator Speaks"…

A load of balls at the moment….