Games That Weren't^®

A game which has been debated a lot whether it was even in development for our beloved C64. Batman 3D was unreleated to the movie, and was an isometric Ultimate style game by Jon Ritman and Bertie Drummond. It got rave reviews on the Spectrum and Amstrad, and was only really bettered at Ocean by Head Over Heels by the same guys.

Although the C64 version of Head Over Heals did surface, very strangely Batman 3D did not. Head Over Heels was done much later by Colin Porch, so around the time of Batman 3D, Colin may have been at Software Projects. This rules him out for this conversion.

But what about any confirmation of actually anything planned?…. Well, Issue 13 (pg 92) of Zzap 64 had a column called “The Shadow”, with the following….

“ANOTHER MASKED CRUSADER TAKES TO THE BINARY BY-WAYS. Bat Man, the crime fighting entrepeneur of Gotham City whos truthseeking talents are akin to those of The Shadow, will shortly be appearing along with his raucous young chappie sidekick Robin, on the 64 courtesy of Ocean. Sadly Ocean’s binary interpretation is not based on the early seventies Neil Adams Bat Man – it is more of an ‘Adam West’ portrayal and takes place in a 3D Ultimate type world. The Caped Crusader cassette hits your screens in May (1986) at a price of £8.95”

This all but confirms that at least interest was made in a C64
conversion. But who was doing it? We are guessing that whoever was, could not get the conversion to run at good speed (As Head Over Heels also ran into speed issues which Colin did best to solve), and so it was cancelled and seen as an unviable conversion. Not all of the Ultimate games were converted to the C64, even though they did C64 titles. Were Isometric games
really that hard to do?… Well, on the evidence of Spindizzy…. not impossible.

Later in Zzap, quotes were made saying… “The only bad news is that Imagine/Ocean have announced there are no plans to release [the C64 version of] Batman or MOVIE [the isometric 3D games on the Spectrum] in the near future – due to programming problems.” . Ah ha… so again, another confirmation that the game was indeed in production, but also sadly confirming that it was a struggle with code that lead to its demise.

So, with this particular GTW entry, we are not looking for a complete game by any means… but possibly only a tech demo of sorts with maybe some ported graphics. Screenshots could likely be taken from the Spectrum, and be said C64 graphics. Chances of a coloured version like the Amstrad are unlikely… but you never know…. Maybe Ocean did attempt a full colour version before the days of porting Z80 to 6502 line by line.

Paul Hughes who worked at Ocean had this to add about the game, a coder’s perspective and about the viability of a conversion…

“64 Isometric Batman – doesn’t ring any bells with me – Gary B will no doubt have the inside dope on that (I think it was just before either Colin or Myself joined Ocean).

Isometric – in the style of HOH, Knight Lore and Batman was a pain in the ass for a 64 – as everything is bitmapped and masked and drawn by the processor (of which the 64’s 6502 was s-l-o-w) – the z80 on the spectrum was clocked faster and had the advantage of using the stack to “pop draw” the masked sprites.

Spindizzy, I believe used a clever combination of hardware sprites, character sets, and masking sprites of a lower priority than the charset to enabled the isometric blocks to occlude and clip against each other – I used a similar technique in my scrolling 64 spindizzy demo many moons ago. Worked perfectly for Spindizzy but it would be a huge stretch to get it to work precisely for something like Batman or HOH – too much sprite priority hell with not enough sprites!

Colin did it just like the speccy – fully bitmapped, masking everything which is why some screens on the 64 needed redesigning to speed things up.

All that said, Mike Webb pulled it off with hardware sprites on Solstice on the NES (bloody nice that was!)”

Well, after asking Gary Bracey about the game, he couldn’t remember much of the C64 version and was sure Colin did the game (Of course, Colin denied ever doing anything on the game)… So it seems possible to suggest that Jon Ritman had a go at converting the game to 6502 himself, but couldn’t get on with it. Jon did seem to say in an interview that they found it tough converting to the C64… so that could be a bigger indication if ever I saw one. We’d need to ask him directly though.

I feel that this game has a particular story to tell, and could be one to look out for. Is it likely we could find this more than Batman Returns?… Who knows… but the journey begins.

Can you help us find this game?…

This was to be a baseball game written by Garry Kitchen for Activision, and was getting quite far and looking good according to Garry. The game itself had a new playing perspective; over the pitcher’s sholder looking in at the batter.

The game was shaping up well and Garry showed it internally at Activision but then got derailed onto another project which became The Designers Pencil.

Within a few months, Al Miller and Bob Whitehead left Activision and founded Accolade – developing Hardball on the C64 which was a huge hit across the world. Ironically it featured the new playing perspective which Garry had in his Baseball game in development.

It is not known quite yet if anything of the game has survived, but we are hoping that Garry may have kept something of it which he might be able to share with us on the website. Otherwise this could well be a case closed before we even start searching!

Will this ever see the light of day?…

After the success of the first Bart game on the C64, and a bland conversion of the Arcade game in the US… Bart was ready for one final fling on the C64, and so to for Ocean on the 8-bit wonder.

The sequel was to feature Bart, controlled on skateboard with a flying cape, to roam around ships, the great wall of China and other world wide locations, solving various puzzles along the way.

After seeing this game on the Amiga, which did make it, this wasn’t as fun as the original game. A lot was lost, and a waste of a possibly awesome sequel.

After a long blip on C-Format’s Game scanner, the game never surfaced. And sadly was never to be…

It was discovered that the producers of the game were non other than Arc Developments, whom produced the fantastic first Bart Simpson Game.

After two months of trying to write an 8 way scroll routine, and virtually getting nowhere with it (With other’s at Arc tied up with developing other games), the programmer (Whom remains nameless) was sacked.

It was then the game was sadly canned with mutual agreement between Arc and Acclaim, agreeing the game would never see the light of day.

Richard Underhill tells me that we never really missed anything, as nothing was done. So there is nothing to find, and no hope of finding a 30-70% complete version. It never even made it that far.

So there you have it, a C64 mystery solved…. and therefore….

Case closed …

A very short entry for now for a game that was one of many that never quite made it from Crystal Software back in the later end of the 90’s.

This game was to be a platform game about a Sea Horse called Barry.

We know little more about the game, but ex-CEO Alex de Vries of Crystal Software had the following to say which explains why all of these titles never made it:

“I used to be the CEO of Crystal Software back when it was developing and publishing games for the C64 and Amiga platforms before making the transition to PC only. The Legend of Kyril was actually an Austrian project we signed up as a last effort to see if we could sell decent volume on the C64 if the quality was there for the title. Our involvement was purely in sales and marketing and we were never involved in the creative side of things. I wish I could remember the names of the developers but it’s just too long ago.

Code exists for some but I have moved halfway across the world since those days so I don’t know whether anything survived. I don’t have a copy anymore in any case.

We packed it in after 1996 and cancelled all projects for the C64 in Q1 1997. Titles we did (re-)publish were McRat, The Zinj Complex, Target, It’s Magic, Colorzone, Riddles and Stones and a few others. Not the greatest stuff but it was fun while it lasted.”

Commodore Bi Monthly mag also had advert for Crystal Software and Electronics which said:

“A funny little game for the younger C64 owners. It will feature a cute little Sea Horse on his quest to free his family from the evil mantis and his crab minions. Expected to be available early December 1997.”

Zine 64 (Issue 9) stated about the game:

“The evil mantis and his crab accomplices have kidnapped Barrys family…. Your mission is to rescue them although it’ll be very hard going… One very agile sea horse against an army of crabs, you’ll need your wits about you.”

It has recently come to light that the game is due for release on iOS and Android devices. Full details can be found here: http://www.pc-software.com/?p=186s

Do you know any more about this game on the C64?…

Possibly a little too late in the C64’s life, but we have had reports
from our very own Andrew Fisher that Barcelona ’92 was infact in production on the C64 as well as the Amiga for US Gold.

Who were the candidates behind this conversion?…. Software Creations. Strangely we have never heard this game mentioned before and would have never thought a C64 version was on the cards. As far as we know there has never been any publicity in magazines talking of a C64 version.

Andrew will no doubt shed more light soon on the information of the production. We don’t know how far it got or who at Creations was working on it. It was a conversion of the amiga game, but apparently much delayed…. maybe too delayed into the C64’s later life?

Simon Hadlington, an ex-games tester and producer at US Gold recently tells GTW that no C64 version was ever started… so it seems sadly that this was the case. Simon was the producer for this particular game.

So sadly our search comes to a premature end… No C64 conversion to be found, and another case to close…

Case closed …

One of the most infamous of GTW games comes in the form of a well sort after game called “Bamboo”, from the creators of Hawkeye.

To introduce the game, here is a clip from Finnish computer magazine “Mikrobitti” in December 1988, thanks to  contributor Seppo Aikas:

“Boys without brains, who programmed the game Hawkeye, are making a new revolutionary game for the C64. The idea of Bamboo is to rescue your beautiful girlfriend from an evil witch. Like Hawkeye, the boys are pushing the C64’s graphics to the limit. The amazing effects are possible thanks to a 8-directional bitmap scroll-routine coded by Mario van Zeist. Bamboo smoothly scrolls in its 8 directions for its example graphics made with Koala painter, at the speed of 1-100 pixels per screen refresh.”

Jori Olkkonen wrote this text, who is rumoured to have known the developers, and had seen a demo of the game running due to his knowledge of the game’s technical details.

Commodore User also described the game as “Featuring a cute main character, with the game based on the Ghost n Goblins/Wardner style of play, and featuring some technically clever hi-res scrolls, whatever that might mean.”. A demo was apparently to be shown at the PC Show in 1988, but seems may not have happened.

Then finally, the following was later written in an issue of Games Machine magazine:

“Crazy Dutch programmers The Boys without Brains – creators of Hawkeye – are delving into their Commodore’s insides to find a game with the (tongue-in-cheek?) title of Bamboo. Although little is known at present, it’s a massive shoot-em-up with a nifty eight-way directional scrolling routine. Plans are afoot for a Christmas release if the dykes hold, and we’ll bring you the full preview very shortly.”

Zeldin, a past GTW contributor, informed GTW of his contact with Mario van Zeist in the past, who proclaimed his new game as being far superior to Hawkeye.

Contributor Jan Schulze found some information in ASM magazine issue 7/89 which stated that Mario van Zeist and X-ample were hired to make games for Digital Marketing. Regarding Bamboo, the snippet stated that “a hero had to travel through five levels – a fairy-tale land, a cave, the realm of the dead, ancient Japan and a future world. In these levels, the hero had to solve puzzles, find secret rooms and rescue friends.”

The article also confirmed that Thalamus WERE to publish the game.

The game never surfaced as you may have guessed. How far did it get, and does this amazing sounding game exist in any form? We hope to find out soon from Mario and Jacco. We’ve added Thomas Detert’s music for the time being, which is quite oriental and gives an indication that this may have been something similar to Tyger Tyger perhaps?

Interestingly in 2013, we found in Games Machine June 1990 – a reference to Bamboo 2 actually being Hawkeye 2 (see scans). Certainly an error for sure.

If you know anything more about this game, then please do get in touch.