Games That Weren't^®

Thanks to Brendan Phoenix for the heads up.  Zzap 64 in October 1986 had a small news snippet about Scarabaeus 2 coming soon from Ariolasoft.

Apparently the Zzap team had seen something of the game and thought it was very good.  Coded by the same Andromeda team as the original game. So certainly, this sounds a lot more than just basic vapourware and there could well be something out there of a sequel to save.

Interestingly in 2017, contributor Hank got in touch with GTW64 to inform us that a strange video reporting to show the sequel had popped up on Vimeo at https://vimeo.com/110227340 .  The person behind the video (Thomas Sunhede) informed us that it was picked up as part of a bundle of Greve Graphics games, which were mostly master disks of the released games (see gallery).

In September 2021, Genesis Project arranged a preservation effort on all of the disks kindly loaned by Thomas, and now the demo can be checked out for yourself thanks to the efforts of Hedning and Zyron, who had to piece the game together into a more cohesive package.

There are 3 segments in total, an introduction sequence quite similar to the first game, where now you come out and take off in your ship.  The next segment is a strange multi-scrolling area where you can click and interact with panels to change the direction of the scrolling. Not entirely sure what the purpose would have been at this stage.

The final part (press Run Stop to see this), has a very neat early 3D section with the screen split. For 1986, it looks particularly impressive at this early stage. Perhaps the split screen indicates that a two player mode was to be present?

As for how Greve Graphics came to have the demo, we are not sure just yet. We believe that a demo was sent by Andromedia, either to draw up interest in the game or to perhaps get another team like Greve Graphics to take it on. More mystery solving to come, but for now – check out this cool early preview for yourself!

As you may have guessed, Space Invadaz was to be a Space Invader clone, but modernized with a fresh new look.

It isn’t known what the game was intended for and for whom, but the development disks recovered by Triad in 2016 suggest that the game may have been developed for a magazine coverdisk.

So no credits at the moment, but we hope to find out soon and learn more about the game and what the intentions were. In its current state, its quite playable and features some lovely graphics.

More soon we hope!

Blaster Twins is a very early Bomberman clone which was being developed for Threshold Productions in the 90’s.

There isn’t a huge amount that can be done, apart from blow up some bricks and move both players around. The Green player is controlled via cursor keys, and cannot place bombs – but pressing return after moving will shoot fire in that direction. Pressing Space will also trigger three different movement speeds for the green player.
Everything setup seems to just be for testing purposes at this stage.

Although making promising progress, the game was cancelled for reasons unknown – and was released to the world for the first time in July 2016 by Triad.

We hope to learn more soon about the game, so watch this space!

Our next entry in the database is thanks to contributor Asphodel, who has flagged up a title which is 30 years old this year and one that we haven’t yet added to the archives.

Race with the Devil is a scrolling platform game, similar in some ways to Blagger. It is very tough to play, and a demo was given we believe to Floppy Magazine 64 in 1986.

The final game was never to appear though for some reason, and Harri didn’t seem to do any other games after that point. So what happened to the game? Did Harri get bored and move onto other projects?

We hope to find Harri to find out more and confirm what happened to game. Maybe there is a full version that exists somewhere?

Recently,  Mark Hardisty has launched a website full of memorabilia in preparation for the launch of his new A Gremlin In The Works book.

Part of this included source code files which were donated by Anthony J Clarke, which included some C64 source files for two Gremlin Graphics games – Dork’s Dilemma and Tycoon Tex.   Hokuto Force have pieced everything together and have made these available for people to check out in an emulation form.

Dork’s Dilemma is pretty much the C16 game code and graphics, with no hardware sprites used.  It is essentially a complete conversion, but with no sound.

The game was constructed on the C64, and then wired down to the C16 to run and compile.  This is why a C64 version of the code was available, which could be compiled to get running – but the intention was always for a C16 only title.

Overall, it is a great piece of history preserved thanks to Anthony, Mark Hardisty and Hokuto Force.  Check it out!