Hydlide was to be a Westernized conversion of a popular Japanese RPG title to platforms such as the C64 in 1989. Contributor Robert Robichaud has provided some excellent information about the game- so much so that i’ve essentially posted here word by word what Robert has provided – so review credit = Robert Robichaud.
As you might know, the original Hydlide was one of Japan’s pioneering action RPGS, released initially by T&E Soft in 1984 for the Sharp X1, PC-8801, etc. After many ports and a sequel followed, the final 8-bit entry in the series, Hydlide III – The Space Memories, was released to general acclaim on multiple platforms in late 1987. An enhanced Famicom port followed in early ’89, although there it was just another face in the crowd amongst some very stiff competition.
Now, over in the States, Japanese RPGs were just starting to trickle in, thanks to the success of Nintendo and Sega. One of these was a somewhat infamous NES port of the original Hydlide, which had come out years earlier on the Famicom and was looking pretty creaky by that point. However, unbeknownst to US gamers, the series had continued on and (sort of) kept up with the times.
Enter Broderbund, whose dealings with the Japanese computer game scene stretched back even further than Sierra’s. In 1988 they formed a sub-label called Kyodai, meant to bring together around a dozen of Japan’s premier computer game publishers to help import their work to the US (a move curiously similar to Square’s “DOG” sub-label on the Famicom Disk System in Japan a couple of years prior, and involving some of the same publishers). Despite ambitious early plans, this proved to be a largely unsuccessful venture, and only a few games made it out.. It was a mostly IBM PC-centric effort, and the sole C64 game that came out of it was the rather obscure “Curse of Babylon” by XTALSOFT.
However, it turns out that at least one other was planned. And that was of course Hydlide. Except, it wasn’t actually Hydlide that they planned to port, but rather Hydlide 3, even though they were simply going to call it “Hydlide”, despite the fact that FCI was just about to release the aforementioned NES port of the original Hydlide, also (rightfully!) entitled “Hydlide”.
Where was Hydlide 2 in all of this, you ask? Well, nowhere as far as I can be told. It never did receive a Famicom port in Japan, and by the time Broderbund was sniffing around it had already been superseded by the more advanced Hydlide 3 on the Japanese micros.
Check out the Articles section for a detailed set of references from the US press about the conversion during 1989.
Summing up, it would appear that Broderbund showed some form of the port(s) at the 1989 Winter CES. The game continued to be scheduled for imminent release over the next few months, and then seems to have quietly disappeared by the time the Summer CES rolled around. It would seem likely then that at least some work must have been done on it by that point. Sega themselves did an enchanced port/remake of it for the Mega Drive/Genesis and released it as “Super Hydlide” not too long after the C64 version was planned to be published.
The person most likely to know something would probably be Doug Carlston, although it seems that he donated most of Broderbund’s historical records and design documents to the Strong Museum (National Museum of Play) in New York last year. So if he can’t recall, perhaps they would have something on it?
