Games That Weren't^®

January 1989, and Compute Gazette published two Origin System game adverts, “Times Of Lore” and “2400 AD”. Times Of Lore made it, well known for its amazing Martin Galway music.

Unfortunately, it was not to be for the other game. Even though released on Apple 2 and PC platforms, the C64 version was never to be, apart from some great music by Jeroen Tel that would sneak into the wild.

The game’s development had two separate development teams over time, starting in 1987 with John (Doom) Romero originally kicking things off. John was way into the development, but Origin decided (for reasons unknown) to kill the project. John subsequently left in 1988 to start his own company.

This wasn’t all known at first – it was always believed that John was always the developer for the game. What was odd though for us was looking at the scan shots of the game from the adverts. Notice the name, “Allan Short”?…

Well, it was none other than Allan Shortt, who did Arkanoid 2, Athena and others for Ocean Software. After a quick question about his name being in the game, he confirmed that HE was the coder for the game, and not John Romero. With John’s email in 2008, it confirmed the story of two development teams.

Just why the game was reallocated to a UK team, we do not know. However, lets move onto the second development phase…

The second development phase

The game’s development with Allan started in August 1988 (shortly after John Romero had left Origin), and spanned a good few months until the game was pretty much complete. After going back to the UK, Allan tried to go back to the US to carry on with the game but was refused entry due to a cock up with visas. A break down in communications with the producer led to the game sadly being cancelled as a result. No-one seemed to take over the project for reasons unknown.

Allan disclosed that the graphic artist was Phil Meller (who also did work on Bad Blood, though was mis-credited as “Phillip Mellor”), so what with Allan not sadly having any of the game code any longer, Phil was the last resort – otherwise the game could be lost forever. Allan sadly passed away some years ago, not too long after we had spoken about the development.

Music was completed during the game’s second phase, with rare unreleased sound effects by Maniacs of Noise later recovered. The tunes done for the game have been in HVSC for some time.

Nowhere to be found

We finally got to speak with Phil in 2013, and sadly the news was not good. Phil confirmed that the game was complete, but hadn’t kept anything of the game at all. Phil described the title as a great looking game. Our last remaining hope could be if Phil uncovers a random disk in the future or someone else comes forward with a rogue copy.

There is off course still the question whether anything of John’s version still exists. Has John kept any of his work, or will this too uncover more bad news?

Well, in May 2022, John got in touch via the comments and confirmed that all his C64 disks were lost in the early 1990s during a move. Overall, unless a miracle happens – this could well sadly be lost for good.

If you know anything more about the game or any potential leads to recover it, then please do get in touch.

Only a few C64 sceners who stayed around until the end with Commodore Format magazine will remember this game probably.

10th Dan was to be a ground breaking martial arts beat-em-up game by Jon Wells, featuring two massive sprites and game play and graphics to beat IK+ to a pulp.

Originally promised to feature a whole array of tunes, high quality samples, excellent graphics and variety of maps (Which were to scroll as well) and some awesome moves to create a very playable game. But the big thing was that Jon aimed to squeeze this entire game into a single load!

Well, its safe to say that after time during its development, Jon realised that this dream would not be possible, and so a Multi-load was staring the game in the face.

During the dying days of the C64, the game had its own diary instalment in Commodore Format magazine, detailing Jon’s progress for the game and taking the reader through all the problems that were occurring It was a very interesting read, and with all the progress screenshots, it looked very promising indeed. And you can now read all 9 parts in the gallery area below.

At the time, Jon had a lot of projects on the go for the C64, and sadly the support was not that great for them. People were just not buying games, and eventually Jon decided to slow down his productions and even cancel some too. After a trial on Supportware, which Jon created, it was found that trying to sell games on the C64 was going to be hard. So hard infact that Jon decided to call it a day. Not that he has stopped all production completely, but we may not see as many bits of code for our c64’s like we used to.

Since GTW came about, we asked Jon about his titles, and mostly they have all been put on hold. 10th Dan came up in conversation, and Jon pretty much confirms that 10th Dan will never be completed. But we cannot bring you any preview just yet, because Jon wishes to use the code for something else, maybe C64 or even another machine. The thing is, it MAY be finished in the future in some form or another.

For now, we bring an entry on the game with an insight into the game’s graphics, including a rare colour screenshot. In the near future, Jon will hopefully give us some emulation screenshots to have a look at.

The one part of the game that has been released is the actual game music which Jon did some years back. We therefore bring you the SID tunes as a download for the time being.

The Art Ravers originally saw the previews according to rumour, and they felt it was a fantastic game that was coming along. What with the quality of Jon’s previous work, it is not hard to imagine that the game would have been great

Jon has kindly passed on an emulation grabbed image of 10th Dan in action, so you can finally see in full glory what the game was looking like. Makes a change from scans! ;-)
We are hoping to provide a video clip of the game in motion in the future with Jon’s permission..