Games That Weren't^®

Cyberdyne Systems burst onto the scene with their amazing debut game “Armalyte”. This horizontally scrolling shoot’em up was one of the finest on the Commodore 64, combining fantastic graphics with some very tough gameplay. As Games That Weren’t already shows, the sequel did not make it to completion. But this is all about what Armalyte was like BEFORE it was released.

First of all, it wasn’t always called Armalyte. The project was originally called Starburst, then it became Manowar and finally Magnox. (Magnox was also the name of another unfinished Cyberdyne project). Armalyte was finally chosen, from the name of a heavy metal song. However this was prone to being mis-spelled, even by the team themselves – the first demo version calls itself “Armalite” (the name of a gun manufacturer) in the scrolling message

The graphics underwent many changes too. The initial style was metallic and bas-relief. This was followed by a second crystalline style, which Robin Levy was unhappy with. Finally he settled on a mixture of organic and metallic elements that became the final overall style.

The three demos available to download show this progression in style, and also contain some fascinating glimpses of different sprites – for the main ship, and the enemies. While none of them are a complete game, they do give an indication of how much the project changed as it neared completion.

Robin Levy gives some more inside information in the Creator Speaks section, talking about how he created the graphics. And Retro Gamer issue 36 from Imagine Publishing features a “Making Of Armalyte” article showing off design sketches and the demo versions.

Finally, Jason Kelk suggested to also add the extra images from the Hunters Moon original disk to this archive, as it includes some graphics which may have been meant for Armalyte, including the Xenophobia screen by Robin.

Case closed…

Back on our screens in 1988, we were graced by one of the greatest SEU’s of all time. Armalyte was released with an almighty impact, shaping the way all sideways SEU’s should be on the C64.

With the first game’s big success, a sequel was inevitable and work was set on a sequel to be released in late 1989/early 1990. Again being programmed by the immaculate Cyberdyne Systems, a few ideas were placed. The main ship was to be more colourful, the aliens more intelligent and a power-up shop was to be included too. It was to borrow more from Salamander too!

The game was to feature around 6 levels in total, and just the one player to fit in all the improvements. Flickering problems from the first game were to be removed and other various improvements. Unfortunately, Cyberdyne Systems were contracted out to System 3, and after getting to work on projects for System 3, such as Deadlock and Last Ninja 3. Armalyte 2 was shelved.

Dan Phillips of ex-Cyberdyne Systems, contacted GTW with proof of the game’s existence. Dan submitted to GTW a series of previews which were made to demonstrate ideas which were put on the table. As well as the main ideas above being demonstrated, the last game’s levels used as demonstration have had colour splits placed onto them and the weaponry on one of the previews is awesome. As well as this, you can experience the all new ship itself and some new enemies knocked together by Robin Levy.

So thanks to Dan Phillips, you can now experience what was Armalyte 2 on the C64, or at least part of what it was to be. The remains of a potential new king to the throne of best C64 SEU. Also check out “Creator Speaks” for the full story on Armalyte 2 as extracted from Zzap 64’s interview with Cyberdyne Systems.

In 2010, GTW backed up a number of disks from John Kemp and Robin Levy, and on one of the disks was a music demo from a guy called Bjørn (Who is thought to be Bjørn Røstøen) . The music was intended for Armalyte 2, but it seems that the music was by Prosonix! The main tune was only infact released recently! (http://csdb.dk/release/?id= 95768) .

We have also found some sprite files which we have uploaded into the main download file. The disk label can be found here.

As you will see from the disk label, it seems that the game could well have been called “Maglyte” had it been finished.

As an additional bonus, when you download these previews, you will also obtain a special D64 of a previously unseen Competition Edition of Armalyte, built with an official Cyberdyne trainer. Many thanks to Dan Phillips for his incredible contribution to GTW!

One of the big long lost c64 games…. found!

An interesting little game from the late part of the 80’s, featuring music which Mark Wilson composed for Obliterator.

This game involves controlling the main character on some kind of space craft, using arrow buttons with a pointer icon. There is not much to explore, nor to look at apart from some very early ship interrior, and the ability to go through a door and shoot bullets.

The game has the look and feel of one of those games you would find on the “Players” budget label or something. Has the look of potential for its time

According to Chris, who recently got in touch with GTW, this game demo was started off to show a Swiss company who were looking for someone to code a conversion of an ST game.

However, the company wanted the complete conversion done in 8 weeks and Chris could not get enough time away from work to finish in that time so the deal fell through.

This unfortunately was it, and nothing else will be obtainable. To me, this seems to be some kind of Obliterator clone, and the use of Mark Wilson’s music may confirm that. We hope to hear more from Chris and Andie soon.

Mark Wilson tells GTW that he cannot recall much about the game, but feels the Obliterator music was temporary. This means there could be another version out there with Mark’s music. In the meantime, Mark very kindly passed us on a music demo with the tunes intended for the game (of which in turn Ian Coog provided a clean SID rip and year confirmation of 1988). The main tune is brand new, but the sub tunes (selectable via poke 251,1 to 3) were sneaked out via compilations released by Mark over the years.

Not a bad preview, but a shame it never progressed further…

Angel of Hell II is a preview of a game by 576 KByte which was produced back in 1996. Sadly it never got completed. It was the sequel to this game.

The preview spans a very impressive 3 disk sides, and comes with a superb introduction sequence which then brings you onto the main game itself.

The game needs an English translation, so I cannot describe much about the game’s story at present – but the game is an impressive looking icon driven graphic adventure game – which looks very promising indeed.

Development of the game overall got quite far, but it seems that it was quite late into the C64’s life, and possibly due to poor sales of previous titles – the game was abandoned as a result. Recently Jazzcat managed to get hold of the remains on the game which we can now present to you to check out for yourselves.

It seems a shame that this one never quite got finished, as it looked very promising and might not have been that far away from completion. Still, at least it is now preserved and people can get an idea of what might have been. Please refer to the text file for instructions on how to get some of the separate parts working.

We hope to hear from the developers themselves about the game and the intentions very soon!

An exclusive to GTW which was uncovered on a disk by Jason Kelk in 2005.

This is a really neat two part preview, with the main part featuring a nice sideway scrolling SEU with some nice (if pink..) graphics, and where you have to collect Acid symbols.

The part that follows is kind of a follow on from the main part. As you reach the end of the scrolling level, you come to a place called the Acid House (where the game then crashes). Loading the second file takes you to the phase inside the Acid House. Here a little man runs and gets into an Acid symbol and starts bouncing around a single screen collecting various bits and bobs.

Overall its a nice polished preview, which looks promising for when it was in development. It’s probably about 20-25% complete at this stage. Development was done in Sweden by Stefan Walter and Bjorn Fogelberg, who started this game as their first start in programming. Unfortunately by the time much work was put into the game, the guys felt that the game lacked original and fun ideas.

After pushing the game around a few companies, no interest was gained. After a year, the developers moved onto the Amiga and started producing on that scene instead.

There are no pieces of music, but a range of good bouncy sfx. The music was planned for once the game was complete (or at least at a more complete stage). No presentation as such. Game just has a small text based screen, there is no title screen. Obviously this wasn’t complete at this stage. Here we have two playable game parts and that is it.

Overall, this is about all we are going to find of this game, and thanks to Bjorn, we have finally been able to complete the tale of this game and thus close the case. See Bjorn’s Creators Speak page!

Check it out, and hopefully we will find out more about this mysterious game in the future…

Case closed!…

You may recall the impressive Metalwars which currently sits in GTW at the moment, with its flashy bitmap levels that sadly never got completed.

Well, A.B.C was the predecessor to Metalwars, where the game was a shoot-em-up which had a regular character based theme to its levels, and no bitmapped levels in sight.
It was in development by the same guys, Henk Dekker as coder and Robert Tan as the graphics man.

Similiar to Metal Wars, the game had a large board computer at the top half of the screen.

Sadly, as the game wasn’t really containing that extra special gameplay, the guys lost interest in the game and it was sadly scrapped. Apparently it was nowhere near as interesting as Metalwars.. but it would be interesting to see this game aswell maybe?

Well, the game somehow managed to sneak out, unknown to Henk, and it was a fellow GTW contributor Bayban who managed to track it down for us!

And thats it really… check out what Henk has to say about the game in Creator Speaks!

So time will tell on this title, but an interesting one to wonder about. If you are really curious, check out Metalwars for now.

Case closed…