Games That Weren't^®

Some of you may remember a little game from the covermount of Commodore Zone some years back, called Quota, a neat little game. Created by the talented Chris Young around 1989, Chris had previously been working on a game before then called Gyro Shoc in 1987 for Lynsoft.

The game was a bi-directional horizontal scrolling shoot-em-up that featured a orbital object around the player. This was the idea of none other than Jason Kelk, who was good friends with Chris Young.

The game was based loosely on ideas from Dropzone and Wizball, amongst other popular games of that time, where you could build up your weapons like Wizball and clear various waveforms. Although Chris wasn’t able to find a copy of the game when we preserved his disks, luckily Jason managed to find a 90% complete version. Although not the final version (possibly now lost), it featured most of the game, but had some bugs and no sound.

Jason was originally to tidy the game up for the covermount of Commodore Zone magazine in the late 1990s, which then closed its doors in early 2000 or so before he had the chance. In subsequent years, he always wanted to go back to it and complete for release – though there was an issue with the game consuming too much memory. It needed a lot of work.

Separately, around the time Sailor/Triad helped Matt Young (Chris’ brother) put together The Bubbler for GTW – Matt had given Sailor PDS sources for Gyro Shoc to take a look at. However, as Jason had still plans to tidy up and release the game, it was left for Jason to instead polish off the game for a future release on GTW. However, Jason tragically passed away in June 2021 from the effects of COVID-19 and would never get to do this in the end.

As a result, Sailor decided to carry out the work that Jason was planning to do, so that it could be released in Jason’s memory and showcase what could have been. Both Sailor and Taper/Triad got in touch with GTW to coordinate a release of the game this Christmas in 2021 in Jason’s honour, and so here it is.

The game has been carefully re-built from the old PDS sources, with some relocation of data and general tweaks where necessary to get it all running properly. It is a lovely title by Chris, which once again showcases his talent back then and also Jason’s influences.

Although nearly complete, we can’t quite call it a full game because it is missing sound and music and a bit of final polish. There are several levels and many different waveforms, and some cool weapons to upgrade to. The Wizball influences are clear to see.

We still hope that some day Chris or Matt may find something of the last build of the game – if they do, we’ll update the page once more. In memory of Jason this Christmas, please enjoy and see a glimpse of what could have been a great space shooter.

With thanks to Taper and Sailor/Triad for their hard work putting the game back together.

I remember seeing the UK adverts for Pushover, and the various competitions that Quavers ran to win an Amiga with a copy of the game.

Sadly no C64 version was ever on the cards for reasons unknown, so Michelangelo Carbonara and Raffox decided to try and put that right with their own homebrew conversion.

What resulted was this brilliant preview, with a number of levels implemented and looking very promising indeed. Unfortunately the last updates seem to be back in 2009, with nothing further happening.

We hope that the development hasn’t been abandoned and that it will some day be finished, as it looks and feels like an Ocean conversion and would be amazing to see.

Not entirely sure why this wasn’t added to the archives a lot earlier. This was a sequel to a game by Richard Bayliss called For Speed We Need back in 2005.

Around the time I was working with Richard on Sub Hunter and was also doing graphics for this new game in the background.

Unfortunately Richard hit problems with the car routines and decided to stop work on the game, releasing the game in its final state here.  Richard had a second attempt in 2009 with Ultimate Stunt Boat Challenge, which was also cancelled. In total I had worked on a few level maps and sprites, but nothing much else.

The game was to be resurrected several years later by Jason Kelk in a brand-new development called Endurance, that was later put on hold.

Jason sadly passed away in 2021 which means it will never be complete, though nothing much further was done compared to RWSN, apart from an extra set of sprites and a slight overhaul of the graphics. A mock up of how that version would have looked can be found below in the gallery.

Many of you will know and remember R.I.S.K! (or KRIS! as it was later renamed, probably due to legal reasons and connection with the board game) by The Edge back in the late 80s, created by both Chris and Tony West.

However, the game was taking a very different shape at the very beginning and wasn’t set in space at all. Within this early preview (which has been doing the rounds for years, but oddly we’ve overlooked it), you control a guy on planet earth who can get into a helicopter and jeep and fly around the map.

It seems the idea was to save prisoners in this early version by breaking them out of various prisons and taking them back home. This is compared to saving a set of scientists in the eventual released game.

What has become clear is that the West brothers were heavily inspired by Choplifter when they first embarked on creating RISK! and the game evolved from that point into something quite different that you may not have made the connection like now with the preview.

There isn’t a huge amount to do in the preview, but you can try out the vehicles and wander around the rather large map. It is an intriguing early glimpse at how the game could have been before a major overhaul.

Over a year or so, it seems that the game was constantly evolving, and we did a post some time ago regarding another early set of screens. We found another demo on Cory Kin’s disks, so we’ve pulled this here too in one place.

Hopefully some day we may get to learn more about it from the West brothers.

Controlling your little Pitfall Harry style character, in this early preview you can go between a series of simple PETSCII rooms and shoot a little laser gun.

That is pretty much it for this simple preview, and we wonder how much further it had got. It is likely the PETSCII graphics were just placeholder for something better. The question is whether anything else got done beyond this point?

We assume the game would have been an arcade adventure set aboard a space ship, where you would have had to solve a series of puzzles to progress or maybe escape back to earth. No idea beyond that.

Do you know anything more about this title?

Princess of Dark is a relatively early graphic text adventure that was being worked on around 1993, but seems to have been abandoned fairly early on.

It isn’t really playable, though you can enter a few lines to get some amusing replies.  Try for instance:

• kiss my ass
• shit game
• i love susi

It would be interesting to hear if anything more was done with the game and if something playable was ever produced, and who it was for too.

If you know anything more about this development, please get in touch.