Games That Weren't^®

Jon Wells is probably one of the most talented but unfortunate C64 programmers towards the end of the C64’s life. Ultimately, Jon is a great programmer, but sadly his time on the scene came as the C64 started to die out commercially.

Breakthrough is one of Jon’s many titles which he was working on to try and save the games scene back in 1993-1996. Infact, Jon refuses to allow his games to die, even today and therefore this is why many titles by Jon are not in GTW (Which is a regular question i’m asked by others on the scene). Jon insists that one day all his titles will be finished at some point.

So why include Breakthrough?… Well, this is the first version which Jon created back in 1993, and was put on Commodore Format’s Power Pack. Jon later scrapped this and tarted up the game considerably, and later more impressive shots were seen in later issues of Commodore Format.

What makes Breakthrough particularly special is the fact that its a SEUCK game. A SIDEWAYS scrolling SEUCK game, and one that doesn’t require you turning your TV on its side (Ala. (c) Shaun Pearson :) ). No, Jon hacked the SEUCK code and managed to make it go sideways instead, adding a new dimension to SEUCK titles and new possibilities. Well, if I hadn’t had told you this fact, you may have played this preview and not believed for a second it was a SEUCK.

This worked by Jon building the maps in the same way as a Vertical SEUCK map, but with a screen at a time built for each screen of each level. So in effect it was like having a series of still screens. These still screens all bolted together from left to right, and created the sideways scrolling routine for Jon to use.

Breakthrough was certainly just that. Of course, SEUCK is limited with its use of power-ups, but Jon was a master of adding his own coded power-ups, and even added large baddies which exploded together and not in annoying chunks.

The game featured some very good quality graphics, and where colour was a limitation, Jon just swapped in new colours at intervals. If completed, it would have been a good SEU. The game also featured some stunning music by Feekzoid, which I assume will still be used in the updated version. Sound effects are typical SEUCK based effects.

I can only assume that this version was scrapped, as Jon was not happy with it. I’m not sure, but there were rumors that a new version was being done without SEUCK. Jon confirmed that it was always going to be a SEUCK effort.

Around 2008, Jon Wells released Sideways SEUCK which had some bits from Breakthrough previously unseen which was released as a demonstration of the tool. This we have added along with a screenshot.

Jon confirmed around 2008 that this game was scrapped and will never be completed. We had hoped that we would be able to bring bring you the later version of the game which was screen shotted in Commodore Format in about 1994-95 (See gallery). This was still within the SEUCK engine. The later screenshot looked a heck of a lot better, and also featuring what looked to be weapon power ups. Very nice. However, Jon confirmed that this was merely a mock up screenshot produced for Commodore Format, with new graphics done by Mike Arrowsmith. When Mike had to finish for his University studies, the game was abandoned and the mock up graphics never used.

And so that was it… unless the mockup graphics some day show up to add to the archive – this is very much a case closed!

Hmmm… not too much to say about this game, apart from that its a quiz game with a simple logo and some questions, where you get points for each one you get right.

Not so much a "Brainstorm", with little to offer and not up to the standards of other C64 quiz games. It needs a lot more if it were ever to be a successful game. This was possibly something for a disk magazine, though this is not clear yet.

More information needed and details on who created the game, before any progress can be made finding more on this one.

Oh.. but the game got a good rendition of a song which I can’t quite pin the name on.

Good music… classic tune… game lacks.

Brainleak was an arcade adventure type of game being developed with a point-and-click based system implemented into the game via a series of icons.

The game apparently had a very complex plot, which unfortunatly Jason Kelk does not remember. Information is a little thin for this game at the moment, apart from its existance of it being done on the C64.

The game was being done by Chris Young, who did Quota, which readers of C-Zone may remember. Chris tryed to sell it to "Bubble Bus", who unfortunatly fell through at that time.

When we got hold of Chris, he had the following to say:

"For our development environment, we started off with the Zeus assembler, then got the Commodore Disk based Assembler and then an amazing, for the time, PC based cross assembler.

Brainleak would have been done with Zeus. I got as far as some backgrounds and a little guy, who looked a lot like the man from ‘Mission Impossible’ wandering left and right. There was an elaborate back story which I can’t remember anything about! I do know it was originally going to be called ‘Mindprobe’

I did remember showing it to Bubble Bus at one of the Commodore Shows but it would have just been an early demo."

For reasons currently unknown, development stalled on the game and eventually it was shelved. GTW asked Chris if he would be able to dig out the game, but we had developments much sooner when borrowing disks from Chris’ brother Matt Young (Who worked on the C64 conversion of Bubbler) and found a disk with a rather oddly named file called "Roy.G.Biv". Jason Kelk confirmed to us that this was the name of the main character from the game "Starring Roy G. Biv…" which must be a recollection of part of the storyline. We had found a preview!

It seems that this was all there would of the game, though we are still hopeful that Chris may recover some more of the game. Overall its a simple proof of concept but one which was looking promising for its time. One other interesting thing that we did find was a disk sleive with a handdrawn picture for the game. We have scanned and included this in the archive!

But Jason Kelk tells GTW64 that the version we have found is the post-Bubble Bus version of the game. The original Bubble Bus version had a Shadowfire style control panel at the bottom, which was later scrapped in this later version which we have here. So there are some big variations out there still to be found. We have to hope that maybe Chris will still have his C64 disks.

A big thanks to Dave’s contact for tidying up the file (Credit coming up soon!)

It’s still a bit early days, but another game almost saved we think and only some loose ends to tie up it seems!