Games That Weren't^®

A brief entry for a title that never got very far… not very far at all!

At the end of Rick Dangerous 2, things are left open – suggesting that a 3rd game was going to continue the adventures of Rick Dangerous. However it was never to be, and the character was never revisited, apart from a 2 1/2 demo game on an Amiga covermount.

Had a 3rd game been planned, it may have skipped the C64 platform anyway due to Core moving away from the platform shortly after Rick Dangerous 2 was released. But Simon Phipps confirmed that they kept it deliberately open, but there was no demand to do a 3rd game and in the end they just never came back to it or did anything more. They moved onto new projects and Rick was retired off …

It was thought that Tomb Raider originally started out as a Rick Dangerous title, but this was never the case. Simon suggests that if Rick was to come back, it may have been in a 1970’s Austin Powers way, but if he ever does … it will never be on the C64!

So with nothing ever started, it is a nice and simple case closed!

A short entry for what possibly might be an earlier edition of Samuari Warrior that exists with a much larger and open world experience.

It is suggested from a snippet on the game that it may have had a lot of features in from the start, which were later cut when they realised memory was too short. What kinds of features were these? We do not know, but hope to find out soon and see if there is something potentially which could be interesting to see.

Do the coders still have anything or earlier builds of the game showing something rather different overall?

Well, Craig Grannell has confirmed that there wasn’t so much a C64 game created and much content cut out, but that scripts and ideas fell by the wayside as the programming happened to try and squeeze everything in (as a single load). It is very unlikely that there was ever anything more than what we got to see – though some characters and graphics were likely cut from the final game that were created. Could these be found and shown? Who knows … but it is unlikely.

Craig also very kindly passed on the original transcript of the feature he did with Doug Palmer on the game.

Almost possibly a case closed!

A quick entry for a title which was advertised within a Players Software inlay for Steel Eagle for all Players Premier titles.

3D Snooker was listed as a game available for all the key formats, including the C64.

Not to be confused with the Championship 3D Snooker game that came out later on by Zeppelin, this was a different title in 1990 – which did see release at least on the ZX Spectrum.

What happened to the C64 edition though? It’s early days yet, with no indication of credits – but we hope to find out more soon.

Do you know anything more about this conversion?

A very quick entry for an educational title which was due for release in 1991 on the C64 by Scetlander, a company based in Glasgow. The game was released on the ZX Spectrum and various other platforms.

We know that a C64 version existed, as David Jolliff confirmed he was the coder of the entire series of games on the C64.

Only currently Henrietta’s Book of Spells seems to have got a release, so we now begin a hunt to see if the game can be found.

Was it just released in limited numbers, or did Scetlander go under before it could see any sales?

A very quick entry for an educational title which was due for release in 1991 on the C64 by Scetlander, a company based in Glasgow.

We know that a C64 version existed, as David Jolliff confirmed he was the coder of the entire series of games on the C64.

Only currently Henrietta’s Book of Spells seems to have got a release, so we now begin a hunt to see if the game can be found.

Was it just released in limited numbers, or did Scetlander go under before it could see any sales?

Thanks to Shaun for flagging up a title which was the competition winner for a Zzap compo to design your own game and win £500.

This was ran in 1987, and Shaun was the lucky winner – where the game would be then created by Domark’s new budget label called Streetwise – who had earlier published another competition game called “Kat-Trap”.

For reasons currently unknown, the game never surfaced, and neither did the Spectrum compo winner called Pile Driver.

Was it possibly due to Kat Trap bombing so spectacularly that Domark decided not to take a risk again? We’re not sure!

Shaun has for now detailed under Creator Speaks what the game would have been like. Now its a case of finding out if anything was ever started!

A very quick entry for a title which may well be vapourware, but was briefly mentioned in the news pages of Zzap Italia back in 1987.

After the massive success of The Sentinel, it would have been no surprise had a sequel have been in the planning or development stages. Mentioned in the same news item was Revs 2, which we believe would have been Revs+ that was released. Could it be possible that a The Sentinel+ or similar was planned by Geoff?

We’d be massively surprised if anything was started, but you never know – maybe there were plans to expand the game and get a bit of extra life out of the title.

Well, in late 2019 – contributor Fabrizio Bartoloni found a small snippet in Games Machine magazine issue 1 (See scans), where a sequel was mentioned as being pondered. This must have been where Zzap Italia got the information from.

So did Geoff ever get to start his sequel, or was it parked for other productions like Stunt Car Racer?

A very quick entry for a title which may well be vapourware, but was briefly mentioned in the news pages of Zzap Italia back in 1988.

7 Minutes To Midnight we believe was described by Zzap Italia as having a “Plot about a secret agent miniaturized to disable an atomic bomb from the inside”. But around 1988 was a time that Activision (or Mediagenic at that time) were going through a strange phase of cancelling everything and this well could have been scrapped early on.

Fabrizio Bartoloni oddly found an advert in Crash magazine from the same year which had the game on sale for the ZX Spectrum. Was this related (see scans)?

Early days, but we’d be surprised it was even ever started!

Watch this space!

Originally we thought this was a vapourware title briefly mentioned in the news pages of Zzap Italia back in 1988, but Strident did some impressive digging and found that the game did exist and was to be released on the Destiny publishing label. See http://8bitag.com/info/stbrides.html for more details.

The game was a graphic text adventure being produced by the St. Brides development team and was actually completed. It was based on a poem by Marc Peirson, who also did the poem that White Feather Cloak was based upon. Here is what Marc had to say to 8bitag.com:

“As to King, again this was just a bit of fun I wrote based on a drawing that a school friend mine had done of a shaggy monster type wearing a badge that said ‘king’. The friend’s name was Harry Venning, who you may know of as the cartoonist in Stage magazine and the writer of the Claire in the Community radio show. Francis Lee optioned [King] to do a computer game based on it – and that again was the last of my involvement and knowledge of it really. I didn’t know it had been made into a game eventually.”

Destiny had done a deal with Activision at the time to publish their games, which explains why Activision has been linked to the title. It seemed the game had been development for some while, but when things fell through with Destiny, the game would never be released. We have added the artwork as shown on http://8bitag.com/ , which was intended for the cover art and is copyrighted to Francis Lee.

Eventually it was established by contributor Strident that the game would eventually surface via GI Games under the title of The Dogboy, matching the name of one of the characters in the story. Considering that Tim Gilberts converted many of St. Brides’ games, we wonder if he was also involved on this one too. Maybe something of the C64 version could be found?

Most likely a title which is being mixed up with Starslayer – this was a title mentioned briefly in an 1988 edition of Zzap Italia and to be released by Firebird.

Is it indeed the same game, or is there another title to be found on the Silverbird label?

Could well be an open and shut case before we know it!