Games That Weren't^®

A short entry for an earlier edition of Ms. Pac Man that was being written for Atarisoft by Joe Alter. Thanks to Graeme Mason for the heads up. Joe was converting the game for ICOM Simulations, under contract with Atarisoft to do a number of conversions.

He was reverse engineering it, going to the arcades and playing it – photographing mazes and characters, reproducing music and sound effects. Joe’s version was working and he was able to get it surprisingly close, but then his colleague Steve Hayes showed off a Robotron conversion he had done for the Apple II. This was done using a software layer made to emulate the arcade hardware on an Apple II, and it just played the games right off an image of the ROMS. So it ended up being an almost exact version of the game.

With the approach, you could essentially emulate any game that shared the same hardware. He translated this approach to work for Bally machines, and it lowered the labor cost of porting games. They decided to apply the approach for Ms. Pac Man and so Steve Hayes would end up doing the conversion. Joe’s conversion was put to one side.

It is hoped that perhaps something of Joe’s conversion still exists, as it would be an interesting curiosity to see something of it.

As well as Superman – The Game, it seems that First Star Software had big plans to do more comic based titles afterwards.

In an issue of Family Computing Magazine, it was reported that after the release of the Superman game, First Star also had rights to produce both New Gods and Wonder Woman for the Commodore 64. Thanks to Chad Shumaker for highlighting both titles.

However, neither game would see the light of day – so was either actually started? With the rights purchased, we’d be surprised if there wasn’t at least some kind of game design drawn out.

Was it due to poor reception of the Superman game that saw the games cancelled? Details are very sketchy at the moment.

Do you know anything more?

As well as Superman – The Game, it seems that First Star Software had big plans to do more comic based titles afterwards.

In an issue of Family Computing Magazine, it was reported that after the release of the Superman game, First Star also had rights to produce both Wonder Woman and New Gods for the Commodore 64. Thanks to Chad Shumaker for highlighting both titles.

However, neither game would see the light of day – so was either actually started? With the rights purchased, we’d be surprised if there wasn’t at least some kind of game design drawn out.

Was it due to poor reception of the Superman game that saw the games cancelled? Details are very sketchy at the moment.

Do you know anything more?

Elite 2 was released for the Amiga, ST and PC back in 1993 as Frontier: Elite 2 – but what may surprise you is that a C64 and BBC version was also in the works too by David Braben and Ian Bell.

However, this was way back in 1985, and shortly after the release of the first game. There was a snippet in The One magazine where David Braben talks with several other developers about their history (See scans) and explains a lot about the development.

Essentially, the game was got into an almost playable state and even included shaded planets in it, along with spaceships flying about. Unfortunately it was far too slow and they decided that no-one would want to play a game that ran at 5 or 6 frames a second. They also felt too restricted by the memory of both machines too.

David confirmed that the ideas between the final released version and this 1985 development were closely related, but the released version was far more ambitious in comparison.

The game was completely abandoned, and was never shown to any software houses as a result.

So could anything still potentially exist of both the BBC and C64 editions that could be shown? Hopefully we will get hold of David Braben to see if anything may still exist – but we suspect that the early development is now long gone.

A short entry for a title that may or may not have ever been released. This title was flagged up by Mat Allen.

This was an educational title that was to be released by Commodore on cartridge, and supporting the Magic Voice module.

Mat Allen dug out his Magic Voice packaging, and provided the scan that you can see here, which lists the game. So what happened to it?

Do you know anything more about it and can you help preserve it?

A bit of a cheats entry, but whilst going through Zzap Italia scans, we found many titles that the magazine previewed and which are as of yet unpreserved. SEUCK, 3DCK and custom developed titles that are still at large.

Please let us know if there are any that need adding to the list (some may already be in the archive as individual entries). A good chunk of the titles + scans listed here are thanks to ready64.org.

Here is a rough list of what seems to be missing. See the scans below for more details and screenshots. Can you help us find them? Many may sadly be lost for good.

• 1943 – Cristian Tomasi
• A.S.T.R.O (SEUCK) – Christian Bonassi
• AIDS Killer (SEUCK) – Christian Ghezzi
• Andromeda (SEUCK) – Marcello Scala
• Bat Revenge (SEUCK) – Manuel e Francesco Di Forti
• Battaglia Navale (Battleships) – Carlo e Gianfranco Monelli
• Boanerges (SEUCK) – Diego Marchente (Electricvision)
• Bridges ‘N’ Roads (SEUCK)
• Danger Car (SEUCK) – Diego Marchente (Electricvision)
• Danger Zone (SEUCK)
• Fire Street
• Goldon’azz (SEUCK) – Diego Roveri
• Hordes From Hell (SEUCK) – Maurizio Guerra
• Idleness (SEUCK) – Nicola Tomljanovic
• LESP (SEUCK) – Marcello Scala
• Massimo Marchese Show II (3DCK)
• Motorway Runner
• Mutant’s Lair (SEUCK) – Michele Di Lullo
• Pik & Pok – Francesco Stranieri
• Psychofantasy (SEUCK) – Guido Marchente
• Settore Omega (SEUCK) – Fabio De Paolis
• Sky Light (SEUCK) – Luca Contoli
• Star Light – Pietro Trojan
• Suicide Mission (SEUCK) – Adolfo Cirillo
• Supporter (SEUCK) – Pierdomenico Baccalario
• The Last Eretics (SEUCK) – Satana 666
• Top Manager – Giuseppe Fasano
• Wizard Fighting (SEUCK) – Massimiliano De Ruvo
• Zombie’s Day (SEUCK) – Ermete Urbani

We’ll update this page as titles are found over time. Can you help us recover any of them?

UPDATE: Fabrizio Bartoloni informs us that Motorway Runner was not SEUCK, but an early self developed game.

Scans with thanks and courtesy of https://www.zzap.it/ and also ready64.org

This may well be a short lived entry, but The Final Matrix was a ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC title released by Gremlin Graphics back in 1987.

However, Zzap Italia reviewed the game and stated that a C64 version was one of the formats to be available too. There is no other evidence that a conversion was started though.

Was this true, or a cock up in the format details?

A short entry for a title that may or may not have ever been released.

This was an educational title that was to be released by Commodore on cartridge, and supporting the Magic Voice module. According though to the advert, it was also to be released on disk. The description of The Magic Garden was as so in an advert:

(Ages 4-8) The Magic Garden is a series of five animated Talking Books which helps your child read by using the Magic Voice Speech Module. Simply indicate any word in the story and hear it spoken.

With the help of two characters that are present in all 5 stories, Tom and Mr. Bee, your child can learn such concepts as shapes and colours, counting relative size, etc (Diskette)

Although advertised and listed, it doesn’t seem to have surfaced for reasons as yet unknown.

Do you know anything more about it and can you help preserve it?

A short entry for a title that may or may not have ever been released.

This was an educational title that was to be released by Commodore on cartridge, and supporting the Magic Voice module.

Was this a real title? The only evidence of it currently is from it being listed at https://www.cubic.org/~doj/c64/magic.html

Mat Allen dug out his Magic Voice packaging, and provided the scan that you can see here, which lists the game as well. So it is real, but what happened to it?

Do you know anything more about it and can you help preserve it?

A short entry for an early title that was created by Ocean’s Tony Pomfret and had wowed David Collier enough to get Tony a job at Ocean Software.

The game was influenced by Choplifter, and featured a lot of raster interrupts, border and colour splits, visual effects and more. Dave was blown away by it.

Nothing would happen with the title, and it wasn’t even sold elsewhere – but Tony would later take the basis of the game to create Cyclone, which turned into Helikopter Jagd.

But what of the original game? We hope to get hold of Tony sometime soon to see what happened and if anything may have survived of the game. We suspect that it is sadly long gone, but you never know.