Games That Weren't^®

Our next entry into the GTW64 database is a title which has been long overlooked for many years, and has been highlighted by Richard Bayliss.

The first time I heard of this nice looking Columns clone was from its release on Commodore Format’s Power Pack 37. It was listed as a PD game, and came from Hex Heroes public domain. However, it firstly wasn’t PD at all – and was also incomplete too!

I never noticed at the time, but when you run – there’s a crack intro from the group “Awesome”.  Back in 1991, many different cracking crews had released a preview of the game and it seems it snuck into a PD library by mistake.

What is particularly funny is that the CF team clearly didn’t play the game that much, apart from to set some instructions and get some screenshots. The game is playable to a degree, but the score and bonus doesn’t work – and the game never actually ends.  Once it fills up with blocks, they just continue to drop.

The question now though is about who was behind the game, and what happened exactly. Was it intended for commercial release and did it ever get any further than this?

What is interesting is that what looks like an earlier preview has been out there for some time called Futris (short for Future Tetris), which doesn’t include any of the status panel areas. It also doesn’t clear the blocks like with Blockie – suggesting that Blockie may have been someone trying to tidy up the Futris preview and finish off.

However, confusingly the Futris preview is from 1996 and not 1991 – so had this just been an earlier build of Blockie leaked at a later date when under a different name?

Talking about the game with Richard, it inspired him to have a go at tidying the game up and fixing some of the issues to actually make it properly playable. So, to fix the block disappearances, to make the game properly end and for all the scoring to work. Essentially – to try and finish the game off as much as possible.

After several months on and off, and with some testing work by Dirk S. and Simon Quernhorst, Richard finally finished his reconstruction work for Games That Weren’t. There might still be the odd glitch, but it is already in far better shape than it was all them years ago for Commodore Format readers.

So here it is, and a huge thank you to Richard for the amazing work that he has done!

However, the search still goes on to find out who was behind the original development. If you know anything more about the original game, please do get in touch.

Not to be confused with the Commodore VIC-20 game of the same name – this particular Garden Wars was developed in Italy and to be released by a company called JCE.

Andrea Pachetti revealed the game in a great blog post in November 2022 and that the game was first cited back in mid-1984, and remained in the publisher’s catalogue until at least 1986.

So was the game actually ever in existence? Did anyone buy it? The game was unfortunately at large, even though it was sort of reviewed and is seen in physical forms in catalogue images. A screenshot of part of the game was shown too.

Thanks to Andrea’s post as the original source, the game is described as follows:

Romeo , the protagonist of our game, is the victim of a spell cast on him by the old witch of the woods, since some time ago he had collected magical seedlings destined for mysterious spells. To free himself from the spell that oppresses him, Romeo must go through eight enchanted gardens that separate him from the wall beyond which he will find salvation.

During this adventurous and dangerous journey he must collect all the lucky charm plants he encounters in his steps, while avoiding the poisonous ones planted by the witch in his path. But his escape is also hampered by horrendous monsters who relentlessly pursue him, and if that weren’t enough he must avoid falling into the many bewitched wells .

Once he has reached the ladder , he cannot enter the next garden without having collected all the lucky plants and having touched all the gnomes of the wood which will help him escape. Once he reaches the eighth garden, to pass this last test that separates him from freedom, he will have to contend with six monsters, and once under the wall he will have to look for the ladder blindly , since he will not be able to see it. Find it, it will come down automatically, and Romeo will be free.

Andrea has done a very detailed search and investigation, and so far hasn’t been able to match up the game to any other releases – and was so believed to be at large.

Two years later in 2024, Silvio got in touch via the comments to say that they had a rare copy of the game in their collection and was willing to sell to see it preserved.

As Silvio was based in Italy and because this was Andrea’s original search, it made sense for Andrea to be the one who recovered the game – so we linked the two up, and this was the result:

https://quattrobit.substack.com/p/garden-wars-jce-1984

Andrea collaborated with Ready64 to ensure that the game was fully preserved, and you can now check it out for yourself. Then in November 2024, Ready64.org produced an article that talks about the game and its copy protection which you can view at https://ready64.org/recensioni/leggi_recensione.php?idrec=38

A very early and simple game, but yet another recovered and case closed!

The thing I love about working on Games That Weren’t, is that even after over 20 years – we still get the odd surprise surface. Our next entry is a title by an author who created a VIC-20 game which is very close to my heart.

Lordsfire is a title by Jeremy Walker, who had previously produced Envahi on the VIC-20 for Virgin Games in 1983. Jeremy knew the C64 was the machine to have and produce for, and got to grips quickly with the hardware to produce his very first game on the platform.

His idea was for a very loose interpretation of the Thomas Covenant books by Steven Donaldson, with a multi-part game – testing out the potential of the C64’s video and sound chip, and what Jeremy felt was “a ridiculously large memory of 64k!”.

In the game, you were to control a young Lord of the castle-in-the-sky, where you have inherited a mighty winged steed and a powerful fire-staff, but more importantly the hand of a beautiful princess in marriage.

Furious at being overlooked on the wedding guest list, a coven of witches steal and lock her away in a distant tower and cast your staff deep into a volcano. Heartbroken, you head eastward on a quest to save her.

The game would take place across 6 distinct locations overall, including: The Wood, The Volcano, The Battle, The Cerulean Caves, The Well and The Coven. It was a neat and ambitious first development by Jeremy, all crammed into a single load and developed over a 2-3 month period.

However, Virgin Games would sadly reject the game. Jeremy felt he had missed the boat, and games were now written by teams of dedicated people and his new game didn’t quite make the cut, even though it is a pretty impressive first effort. Unfortunately we wouldn’t get to find out if Jeremy could improve on things, as he decided to leave the games industry at that point.

Rotting away on a disk for 38 years, Jeremy managed to find a copy of his game and kindly sent it over to GTW to fully preserve after Simon Birrell put us in touch. So now for the first time in almost 40 years, you can play this multi-part game from 1984 that was intended for Virgin Games.

Looking at the title, I’ve certainly seen far worse games see a release – so it seems quite harsh of Virgin Games to reject it. The main character sprite looks brill overall, especially the winged steed!

So here it is – we hope you enjoy it, and a detailed chat and piece on the game with Jeremy will be found in a future issue of FREEZE64 too, so be sure to check it out!