Games That Weren't^®

Mission X is a cool looking sideways scrolling shooter with cool Uridium style backgrounds.

It’s a short map, as you start hitting random parts of the game’s code as it runs out of map to show, but its enough to give an indication of how this could have been.

There are no credits apart from sound, so it could be very hard to track anything down of this one. We’re hopeful though and hope to unearth something on the game very soon.

Watch this space!

Mini Don is a cool Don Doko Don conversion which was being done as part of a mini-game compo.

Although looking and playing brilliantly, the developer didn’t finish it as the graphics were too much to fit within 4K. It was originally thought that the game was never to be finished, but Geir confirmed that the game was just inspired by Don Doko Don, and was not intended to be a straight conversion.

He has said that it will never be finished as a Don Doko Don conversion, but it could well be finished as a different game. He still works on the game now and shots can be found here:

http://home.online.no/~gestrau/c64/minidon-screenshot-1.png

http://home.online.no/~gestrau/c64/minidon-screenshot-2.png

Geir still does C64 development and recently completed Brilliant Maze for the RGCD compo!

Created by the developer of Gemini Wing on the C64, this seems to be an advert for Carl Wade’s coding abilities that was leaked out.

the game is a sideways scroller with a nice scrolling background and a cool attack wave thrown over the top. It looks cool enough and could have been a good budget game had it been fleshed out with new sprites.

We guess that Carl got the job on Gemini Wing and that this was put to rest as a result.

Sadly we believe that Carl may have passed away in recent years, so finding out more about this game is very unlikely now. If you do happen to know anything about this game, please contact us.

We guess the Sega logo in the background was no link for this title, which is a simple single screen game where you shoot at Mafia lurking up in building windows.

There is little to do apart from this with your Op Wolf style gun target, and it seems to be another very early development which has been canned early on.

There are sadly no credits attached to the game, so there is some digging to be done to find anything out about it. Can you help shed any light?

A more recent game from 2001 and seems to be a title which was being developed in Australia.

The game is a simple sideway scrolling car game with some awkward controls. You basically just control a car and must keep it on the road, whilst going down some bendy roads and through tight obstacles.

It is very simple and seems to be at quite an early stage. Did it get further than this, or was it abandoned at this early stage?

Let us know if you can shed any light on it!

A strange game where you are having a fight with a neighbour or someone in a carpark.

There is no end to the game, and you just wander around aimlessly as the opposition follows you and you try to beat the crap out of them.

Very early preview and not a huge amount to do. Was this a serious game?
Who was behind it?

Jump is a very neat looking Great Giana Sisters clone with a cool hires sprite.

In this preview, there is one level and some annoying spikes to avoid – but it is enough to see the amount of promise in the title.

Now just why the game never got finished or progressed further is a mystery to us right now, and with no coder credits – this may be difficult to find out more about.

Do you know anything more about it?

I remember first seeing Grubz about 10 years ago and being completely blown away. At last here was a fully fledged Worms clone on the C64 and looking every bit as good as the Amiga original.

Sadly 20 years on it seems that the game has been abandoned and with no sign of it being completed, which is a huge shame, as it is brilliant.

With a multiplayer feature as well as CPU players, and Super CPU spport this may well still get seen some day, but for now it remains in limbo. Will it ever surface? Was anything more done than this preview we can see here?

At the time of writing, the web page for Grubz was still online, and details that the game would run on a stock C64 in PAL and NTSC mode, but would also support SuperCPU, IDE64 and CMD drives.

Highlights of the game would be:

• 2 screen multicolour AGSP scroll with open top/bottom border.
• 16 sprite multiplexer with interlacing (only if really necessary) and splitted hires/multi sprites.
• Particle effect for explosions.
• Possible to play against 1 or more computer players.
• Keyboard, and 4 player adapter supported.
• Fast math routines, movement of weapons/worms with wind calculated.
• C64 version with illegal opcodes and C128 2 MHz support on border for optimal speed. SCPU version works everywhere, but is expected to run with 20 MHz.
• Currently 2 weapons: bazooka and dynamite.
• Experimental ethernet support for local network game using two computers (TFE and RR-net works, ETH64 planned)
• Simple sound effects, random placement of worms and changing wind.

Work remaining was:

• More weapons
• More levels
• User interface
• and more.

A preview (which you can find here) was released at Forever 5 party and included 3 levels and one weapon. Its a SCPU version, so runs a bit slower. The plan was to release the game through Protovision.

Hopefully we’ll hear from the coders sometime and get confirmation on the plans for the game.

An early preview from the days when the C64 was riding high commercially.
Griffin could easily be thought of as a Rastan clone of sorts, and I say that as the main character is ripped from Rastan. However it isn’t.

Griffin is a flip screen arcade adventure in its early stages. There are plenty of screens and enemies, but nothing really else to do at this stage.

Apart from needing a new character, the game is looking promising – but just for reasons unknown it never got completed.

Was it pitched to anyone? Who was behind the game?