Games That Weren't^®

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 It never did receive a Famicom port in Japan, and by the time Broderbund was sniffing around it had already been superseded by the more advanced Hydlide 3 on the Japanese micros.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?

A short entry for a title which seems to have a C64 connection, but we’re not sure if it is a red herring just yet.

Thanks to John Christian Lønningdal, we have learnt that the 1942 clone – Screaming Wings, has Atari/CBM indicated on the front cover. However, the instructions do not show any evidence of a C64 game.

Is it possible that a c64 version was produced at some stage, but maybe removed due to Elite having the licence to 1942 on that platform?

Early days, but we hope to hear from someone from Red Rat Software to confirm more details!

I kid you not, there was indeed to be a C64 conversion of the Amiga/ST Ready Soft game, following from Wrath of the Demon.

Certainly we’re sure that someone would have been possible, but will we ever get to see anything of the game? Was Steve Douglas behind the game?

At the very least, you can now hear the tunes intended for the game which were composed by Sean Connolly, Marc Francois and Mark Knight. First 2 tunes are by Marc Francois, tunes 3 and 4 are by Sean Connolly. 5th tune was composed by Mark Knight, but converted by Sean.

Sadly Sean could not confirm who was behind the code or graphics of the game or how far it got exactly. David Foster (from Readysoft) commissioned the music – can we find David to confirm who was behind the C64 game?

We hope to learn more soon!

Psionic was an intriguing title which was being developed by Robert Trevellyan, who later went on to work for Bitmap Bros and produce the likes of Speedball 2 on the Amiga.

His first commercial venture was for this game at Electric Dreams software, with a game set in a kind of vertical city, with different clans or tribes on each level.

Working with Robert was Nick Cook on graphic work duties, who Robert communicated a lot with during development. Stuart Hibbert oversaw production duties.

Robert worked on the C64 SKU, and sadly the game was far from complete when the project was cancelled. He had a very neat composite sprite animation engine running, and some silky smooth background scrolling. The player could navigate around the city, but there was no gameplay at this stage. Robert believes that one of the other SKUs had some basic gameplay in place, possibly the ST version which was in production.

It is suggested that the project was pretty much adrift with no expectation that it was going to come to anything. There was no design team, and the written design (by Mark Eyles) was a little lacking in detail. Electric Dreams had purchased the written design (and possibly 3 others too according to Robert) from Mark Eyles at an earlier date – from that point he had no further involvement on the game. Other team members were having to fill in the blanks to turn it into something playable.

When asked about the possibility of the game surviving, Robert sadly confirmed that he got rid of all his C64 stuff a long time ago. It is very unlikely that we will ever see anything of this game.

Our next entry is a title which was meant for release way back in 1983 in the US. Planet Quarx was mentioned in a magazine called Microcomputing with the following details:

“Planet Quarx is a three-stage video game for the Commodore 64. The object of the game is to reach the planet called Quarx. In stage one, the player must maneuver his spaceship through the asteroid zone, avoiding asteroids as they spin out toward his ship from the center of the screen.

Past the asteroid field, play moves into Stage 2 where the ship meets the outer defense system of Quarx. The display shows the view from the cockpit of the player’s ship. Using the joystick, the player aims and fires at approaching alien spaceships or turns on his forcefield to avoid collisions. Once past the outer defenses, play moves to the planet Quarx itself where the player destroys Quarxite tanks.

There is no time or fuel limits – play continues until all five ships have been destroyed. The game provides arcade sound and graphics displays with joystick controls and escalating difficulty”

We’re not sure if it is the same game as this, but we doubt it … http://www.gamebase64.com/game.php?id=6087&d=18&h=0 – but someone on the TPUG mailing list has an old copy of it which will not read any more. Oddly the disk says 4040 format, which is for the PET. Could it still be read and saved?