Games That Weren't^®

Thanks to Vinny Mainolfi for the heads up – but it seems that there was a very different looking Fight Night taking shape originally for US Gold back in October 1985.

In their upcoming previews section, Zzap showed screenshots of a game with far more detailed main boxer players – but lacking in the background detail area.

It seems the game never changed developer, so was it a case that the large characters were unworkable?   Maybe the graphics were just mock-ups that were produced for the press?

It’s early days yet, but here are the screenshots and original preview from Zzap to take a look at, as well as more shots from a US Gold article from Your Computer magazine.

Rob’n Run was one of two games that was to be released by a Danish company called “Future Games Development” in the Autumn of 1988.

Sadly it was never to be, but thanks to a search by contributor Mads, we are able to shed some light on them initially to hopefully start off a search for the actual game.

The title itself was almost complete at the time, and was described as an action adventure game set in a pyramid – where you have to complete an amulet scattered around 9 parts of the pyramid. It was praised by the guy who did the article, and a screenshot was also given – which shows a promising looking game.

We don’t know much more than this at the moment, but hope to find out more soon. In the meantime, we have included a rough translation (under Articles) of the original article from IC-RUN 1988. It’s not perfect, but it gives a rough indication of what the game was to be like.

Thanks to some excellent contributions recently from a chap called Mads, we are starting to learn about many more titles which are sort of related to Kele Line.

In SOFT 1987 July, there was news that 4 new programmers had joined World Games – Torben Bakager, Casper Gjerris, Bo R. Petersen and Viet Nguyen (who was working on Go Ape). World Games were reported to be creating a budget label called Power Games, with the first title released to be called “Twilight Beyond”.

The game was being developed by Casper Gjerris (Code), Bo Reestrup Petersen (GFX) and Johannes Bjerregaard (Music). The article contains a description of the game and plot, which contributor ‘Anonymous’ (thank you!) has translated for us:

“Power Games’s first game is published in September and belongs in the upper budget end with its 99 kr. The name is Twilight Beyond, which is meant to tell the buyer that he’s facing a fast shoot’em-up game, with lots of action and an ultra-fast side scroll.

Casper Gjerris is the programmer, Bo R. Petersen has done the graphics and Johannes Bjerregård is behind the sound.

The plot will probably be some sentimental stuff or other in the following Star Wars style:
You’re thinking back on that time, when you lived a still and calm life on your parents’ Kryllium Mushroom farm on the idyllic planet of Lorna. But just as often, you wake up screaming and bathing in sweat, when dreaming about that fright night, when Imperial stormtroopers struck like lightning and executed your parents for cooperating with the rebels.

Now, you are one of the rebels, and you are on a dangerous mission to steal the Empire’s latest super space ship, the WWS-14X2 Megablast, which the rebels must have in order to make it through the struggle to follow.

You manage to start the space ship up after several failed attempts, and now it is up to you!
Now is your chance to get your revenge on the Empire…

There will be more than 15 different levels and a piece of music which will increase the atmosphere, as you fight beyond the twilight.”

‘Anonymous’ suggests that the backstory sounds like something the journalist may have made up, but does give a glimpse of what the game was about. Datormagazin briefly mentioned the game too in issue 4-5/1987 (see scans), where they say “It’s going to be a game in proper ‘parallaxdeltauridium’ style”.

Interestingly it seems the music managed to sneak out, but nothing of the game – which you can see a glimpse via a black and white screenshot. Sadly Johannes passed away in recent years, so we will never know his story about the title.

So far, all we know is that it seems that the game was dropped by Casper due to some cooperation problems with the distributor. Therefore, Casper left the C64 and started a new career on the Amiga, where he worked on a new game.

Could anything of this title be saved some day?