Games That Weren't^®

A quick new entry and for another Quicksilva game which was listed in a few adverts as coming soon for the likes of the C64. However there seems to be no evidence of the game anywhere.

Pretty much straight away we found out that the game was eventually released as part of a 30 game compilation that was released by Argus Press.

Additionally thanks to John Christian Lonningdal, we find that 3D Tunnel was released by New Generation Software (Possibly distributed by Quicksilva). Backups will be made for various preservation websites soon.

The game itself can be grabbed from here, so its case closed!

Case closed!

It was back in 1985, way before the days of Doom or Wolfenstein, when a young Antony Crowther began working on a 3D game which you ran around a 3D maze blasting various bad guys. Some progress was made, but unfortunately Tony was never happy with the general look of the game and left it – deciding never to complete it.

The first mention of the game was within the pages of Zzap 64, and this was it and no official product was ever announced. There was no official publisher in mind for the game, but was a product of Antony’s creative mind which likely would have been pitched around. It didn’t really end there though, and in 1990 Tony resurrected the general concept in the form of the Sizzler ‘Captive’ game for the Amiga/ST (Published by Mindscape).

Looking at ‘Captive’ you have a kind of Dungeon Master style game with clickable arrows to move your player around the maze and blast things. This is kind of what the C64 version may have been like and is believed a little of which Captive evolved from.

Thanks to Ross Sillifant, there was an interview with Tony in C+VG’s Computer Cabin section (Dave Kelsall aka Microgoblin) – where he mentioned the game and gave it a name called Shelter! Here is what Tony had to say:

“I did a game called SHELTER that I spent a week on. It was a 3D game on the C64 (a bit like Doom) with chunky graphics where people hid behind barrels.It was done in the machines character mode and at the time i felt it was’nt going in the right direction…so we shelved it.After that i’ve released every other game i’ve written…”

Sadly we doubt that Antony will ever release anything of the early C64 prototype, so this is likely an open and closed case…

Plucked from the advert pages of Computer and Video Games comes this intriguing racing game entitled 3D Formula One by Knightsoft.

We do not know much about the game, but it seems that all that was ever mentioned was the advert for the game itself. Knightsoft seem to be an obscure company which didn’t last very long, and could therefore be the reason for this game’s demise.

As a result, we are unsure what the game would have looked or played like, and we do not know how far the game reached. It may well have been completed. All we know is that the game apparently did feature full 3D graphics (Wireframe?) which apparently ran at high speed and had superb sounds. There was to be multiple gear change, engine conditions, actual qualifying position, pit stop and much more.

Thanks to Anonymous Contributor, they noticed that the full advert seems to suggest that the UK Gold games were not yet ready for release at the time of the adverts. Then the March 14 1985 issue, page 5, of Popular Computing Weekly (see scans) mentions that Knightsoft got into legal trouble with US GOLD over the label:

“US Gold previously won a dispute with Knightsoft which introduced a UK Gold series of software, US Gold had registered both the names UK Gold and also Euro Gold. That time the dispute was settled out of court.”

It seems that 3D Formula One never made it out before the injunction, even if printed and ready for release. The other games though in the advert all saw release, but under a “Knightsoft” banner – with no sign of the “UK Gold” logo.

We don’t think the brand dispute was a cause for the game to not see a release, especially considering the release of the other titles. There must be another reason why it never made it out. Perhaps there were issues with the actual development?

We are currently lacking any credits also, so we await anyone to come forward and lay claim to this game. Who worked on it, how far did it get, and can anything of it be found?

More from Mastertronic, this time from Binary Design who did a number of titles for the budget label.

Speedboat Assassin was being worked on by Paul Gill and Haydn Dalton. Hayden was doing the graphics, with Paul Gill on the code.

The game was in the mould of Live and Let Die, and described as a Fire and Forget game on water. The Amiga and Spectrum versions managed to make it out, but sadly the C64 version did not.

It seems that the game was fairly playable on the C64 and was only a month away from completion (after around 6 months worth of work done on it). It seemed to be all shaping up well, but then Paul wasn’t getting paid for his work and left in the end before it could be finished off.

Paul was asked if the game still existed – but sadly he didn’t keep anything from back then. Haydn also never kept any of his work from back then (apart from of course Solar Jetman), so it is looking very bleak.

Could well be case closed i’m afraid…

Being created by Marc Dawson (BC Bill and Mega Games), 11th Time Period involved travelling through time, through Roman, Greek and various periods. Each period consisted of a platform game based level where you had to fight your way through all kinds of enemies and obstacles, armed only with a sword to fend off the bad guys.

The game was inspired by a classic Apple 2 game called Swashbuckler, which featured similar aspects throughout. Ironically, the game also was to have 11 levels to match the 11 time periods in the game.

Marc Dawson described his game as something "Special", for an unknown reason. Being harsh of his own work, Marc describes the game as being crap and therefore never really getting that far. A shame, but a game which Marc hopefully may find scraps of one day for GTW.

Inspirational game, meaningful to its programmer but flaws meaning the eventuality of no game…

In development for Elite, this was one of Mark Kelly’s first games being developed and was based on an ancient arcade game of the same name. It was American football and was to be another Elite arcade conversion.

For reasons currently unknown, although the game was finished, Elite never released the title. However this was apparently the title which got Mark Kelly the start he needed in industry.

According to people who worked with Mark, the game was terrible and this could be the reason why the game was never released. Mark recently confirmed that he was working on the game and that it was a mess from the start.

There was no coin-op for Mark to use as a reference point and he originally got the job to work on the game after someone else bailed out on the conversion. As the game finally got started after a coin-op was found, the artist was then moved onto another project. In the end, the game was canned and was one of Mark’s one and only games never to get fully completed.

Unfortunately it seems that this one may be completely lost, but Mark offers the hope that he may still have something of it tucked away. We’ll wait and see I guess!