Games That Weren't^®

A surprise finding on the disks of Darren Melbourne, with an unofficial and early Mario game from 1983 which has been lost for some time!

At the moment , we do not know for sure if this game actually got released – but Jeremy Thorne’s other game – Mario’s Brewery was released in 1983, without official Nintendo endorsement.

Thanks to a blog post here, we learn from the comments that Jeremy was just 14 when he wrote the game, and was part of a series of three titles, including Mario’s Brewery and Pubjumper Mario. They were written for 4K cartridges, hence were very simple affairs!

Firefighter Mario is a Vanguard clone, with Mario in a firetruck – having to put out fireball enemies, and then destroy a large flame on top of a building. The game scrolls in a variety of directions, just like Vanguard. It’s not the best game in the world, but for 1983 and 4K, you cannot really complain!

Hopefully Jeremy will get in touch some day – sadly Pubjumper Mario is still missing, but at least one more of the trio is now safe!

Thanks to contributor Aki Sivula, we learnt about a recently recovered game by a chap called Pasi Hytonen – who after starting off by developing games for the Oric, before then moving onto the C64.

His first project was a neat platformer called Little Knight Arthur, which was produced in his spare time whilst at high school. The game was developed from between 1985 and 86, and could well have been a commercial release.

Sadly Pasi never released the game to anyone, but he went on to do games such as Uuno Turhapuro muuttaa maalle for Amersoft and Number Bumper.

It wasn’t until November 2015, that Pasi had help preserving the game. The game has now been released in early 2016 for all of you to see for the first time.

It’s a rock hard game, but a lot of fun – and its a shame it never got a full audience back in the day. But the main thing is that it is safe now, and many of you will get the chance to enjoy Pasi’s work.

For the full and excellent story about Pasi’s early work and how the game came about, check out his blog post here and more details about the release here.

Our next game in the archives is an early title from Video Images, who did Exceleron for Commodore User magazine back in the day.

It was a title that would make use of the SEUCK engine, which some companies back then decided was a good idea to make a quick game to release. The game was created by David Bradley and Dean Hickingbottom in 1988 and was to be released as a budget title.

Although the game was developed fairly rapidly, things hit a snag when the team found that the player would get stuck all the time on the map. It wasn’t the usual bug of appearing on a piece of play area that you were not able to move, but down to the map design leading to dead ends. They decided to put one life in the game to get around it, but it didn’t really work.

Sadly the game was abandoned due to the above issues, and was laid to rest on an old disk. That is – until 2015 anyway, when Dean Hickingbottom made some copies of some disks which included the full final version of this game. On another disk was the loading screen that was never used, which we have included here in Koala format.

In December 2015, Richard Bayliss very kindly took up the project of linking the loading screen in and tidying up the game destroying bugs on the map. Once these were fixed, the lives were increased back to their usual amount. A new title tune and colour bars have been added too. There is also a tape edition, which gives a close indication of how it may have been had it been released by someone like Power House or similar at the time.

So thanks to the great efforts of Richard, here is the game how it should have been!

Case closed!

Our next game comes in the shape of a simple Uridium clone that was developed at Clockwize back in 1989, and according to the hidden messages in the code – was developed in only 2-5 days – and over the Xmas/Boxing day period.

It was coded by Craig Wight, with graphics and sound by someone called Budgie (who I have no idea who that is!). Overall, it isn’t the best game in the world and would have struggled against other strong budget titles of the time, but it is worthy of saving none the less. Graphically it isn’t too bad overall!

We don’t know exactly if the game was ever pitched to anyone in particular, or if it was being set up for a magazine cover – but it never quite happened, whatever the intention for the game. It is believed that the game was actually pitched to Hi-Tec/PAL developments, but turned down. As a result, it has sat dormant for over 25 years on a disk, until Dean Hickingbottom helped to save it by passing on a copy to GTW64 to preserve.

Hopefully in the near future we will get to learn more about the intentions for the game, but for now – here is the complete game for your enjoyment!

Yet another Clockwize title which has been saved from obscurity thanks to Dean Hickingbottom for passing on what is likely the only remaining copy of the game.

This was a title due for release in 1990, and was coded by Craig Wight, with graphics by Craig and Helen Morley. The concept was devised by Craig and a guy called Pete Morley. Music is previously unheard tracks by Sonic Graffiti (who Craig believes was Gez who wrote the these tunes). The game was written between 5/2/1990 and 14/2/1990

We think it was for Clockwize, as the disk was in the possession of Dean – but there are no actual company credits in the game. We are not sure if it was ever pitched to any companies at the time or not, and hope to find out soon.

The aim of the game is to move around the matrix and kill the attackers that are attempting to drain all the matrix energy. If the attackers energy reaches 100%, then it is game over. If your energy reaches 100%, you will move onto the next level.

Overall, its a neat and simple title which it seems a shame never got seen back in the day. Craig recalls that Helen created the logo by tracing from a drawing using a plastic sheet. Also that he probably spent more time on the raster effects than the actual gameplay. If no company picked it up, then surely a magazine cover would have taken the game?

As a result, the game has remained unseen for over 25 years until today – so here it is, and with some previously unheard Sonic Graffiti tunes to boot too! Enjoy!