Games That Weren't^®

A slightly bizarre name, which may well have just been a work in progress name set by Cory whilst developing a cool looking bi-directional vertical scroller.

Erik does look pretty neat, even at this very early stage – and has some cool tiles and scrolling effect. It seems the game was to be a sort of Paradroid meets Bounder style game, though hopefully Cory will confirm at some point.

There isn’t much to see, apart from a single enemy which fires at you. There are no collisions or bullets, and test sprites are the only things in place.

It is unlikely that the game got any further than this. Nothing more of the game was ever found. What happened to it, and what was the plans for it? Cory will hopefully shed some light very soon!

Watch this space!

Our next entry is for a title we believe was called Earth Mover, due to its filename, but this could also have been a work in progress name. The game was found and recovered from Cory Kin’s personal disk collection.

In its very early stages, this game seems to be a bi-directional sideway scrolling shooter with a large expanded ship that you must control and destroy things. Here though, you can merely move your ship left and right over a cool looking landscape.

It feels very much like a Tony Crowther game for some reason. Was it produced by him? He confirmed sadly that it wasn’t.

For now, much more information is needed to try and see if this one got any further.

Found on a bundle of disks ported from Cory Kin’s collection, we found what seems to have been a title to a game in development by Scoop Designs for Firebird Software back in 1987 and was downloaded from Compunet it seems.

We are unsure exactly what the game itself was shaping up like, but the scroller describes it as one of the fastest space shooters ever seen. The music seems to be place holder music by Rob Hubbard, but its possible he may have been doing proper tunes for it.

There was no trace of the game to be found anywhere else, so do you know any more about it? Check out the title demo for now!

Hyper Galactic Warrior is a title that has been around for some time, possibly first surfacing on Compunet as a preview.

The game is a Uridium clone, of which there were plenty at the time. This suggests the game is dated at around 1986-87. The game was written by a chap called Ian Moran, who produced another Uridium’esq game that never was called Omega Ceti. We believe this was the follow on from that initial preview, where the split screen approach was ditched.

Overall, it isn’t a bad title – but it is very likely that the simularities to Hewson’s classic meant that this one was never going to get a release. Maybe we have it wrong, and Omega Ceti was in response to this by making a game with a slight twist (split screen).

Well, Ian got in touch and confirmed that the game was never more than a scratch about to upload to compunet. They were also written in a way using the Expert Cartridge which meant the game was not really expandable. Ian was basically playing and testing things out. See Creator Speaks for more details.

This therefore draws a conclusion to this title and solves the mystery. This is as far as the game ever got, and therefore is case closed!

Not entirely sure how we missed this, but it was tucked away in the demo archives as Pulse Preview. We discovered it by going through Cory Kin’s CNet disks and got a bit of a surprise to see a proper conversion of the Spectrum classic.

Due to the date of production, we don’t believe this was official at all – and could be the reason why the game was abandoned. The preview we attach here is sort of an advert for the upcoming conversion by Pulse Productions, which were a demo group active mostly on CNet at the time. It gives some intro text, followed by a short animated sequence of the game and the jet pac guy getting into the rocket.

After pressing space a few times, a conversion of the Spectrum loading screen is presented.

There is no doubt that the game could have been converted perfectly fine. The question is whether anything came from this preview, and if anything playable was ever actually produced. However, worst case – we have been blessed with a brilliant Jet Pac clone called Rocket Smash in the RGCD 2013 competition – so we do now finally have a decent conversion of sorts.

But what of this intriguing Speccy port? How far did it get? Well, so far Sean Connolly, Duncan MacDonald and Dave Edwardson don’t believe that it got any further than this demo – so it looks like an accurate Spectrum port isn’t on the cards just yet!

Omega Ceti is a title that has been around for some time, possibly first surfacing on Compunet as a preview.

The game is an interesting Uridium clone of sorts – which has a split screen display for two players to fly over a dreadnought and fight together. Quite a unique approach. The game was written by a chap called Ian Moran, who produced another Uridium’esq game that never was called Hyper Galactic Warrior. We believe that Hyper Galactic Warrior may have been born from this original demo, which Ian suggests he developed in 1986.

It’s a well produced game for its time, and has plenty of promise. What stopped Ian from finishing it? Was it real life commitments, or a case of too many Uridium clones on the market?

Well, Ian got in touch and confirmed that the game was never more than a scratch about to upload to compunet. They were also written in a way using the Expert Cartridge which meant the game was not really expandable. Ian was basically playing and testing things out. See Creator Speaks for more details.

This therefore draws a conclusion to this title and solves the mystery. This is as far as the game ever got, and therefore is case closed!

Our next entry has very little in the way of clues, apart from this loading screen created by Lizard for Tim Rogers and Darrin Stubbington. We believe the screen was released on Compunet at some point, and was found lurking on Cory Kin’s disks.

The loading screen depicts a castle on a hill, with a path leading to it. There is no clue to any company on the screen, just the names of those involved.

We asked Darrin Stubbington regarding the picture, and he couldn’t quite recall what the game was about. All he could remember that it was for Melbourne House. In the end, Darrin suggested that this game may have turned into Throne of Fire. However, we’re not entirely certain of this – as there have been no clues in the press to Mike Singleton’s game being called anything different.

One possibility is that Questerious was a similar game which Darrin and Tim were working on, but with Mike’s game coming along – they decided to ditch the similar game, and as compensation – get Tim and Darrin to do the C64 conversion of Throne of Fire. Pure speculation of course!

Well, Tim pretty much confirmed to us that this was to be an original game – but before they could get into the work, things switched over to Throne of Fire for Melbourne House. He believes that nothing was really started, and it was only really at the planning stage before it was cancelled. The screen is possibly all that may exist! If Tim does by chance find something some day, we shall hear about it I’m sure!

We need a lot more information on this title, from Cory in particular – but on Cory Kin’s disks, we found a series of bits and pieces (mostly graphics) for a sort of RPG/Gauntlet looking game. We believe it was called Questor 3, though this also needs confirming.

It is possible that this was a very early game from Cory, being developed in Laser Basic. Just what sort of game it would have been isn’t fully clear, but the screens we have extracted suggest a text adventure or RPG title.

Once we have more information, we’ll be back with the details. For now, check out the screens we have salvaged.

An interesting entry for our next title. Activision have a history of different versions of their games existing – Wonderboy, Afterburner, Time Scanner, Enduro Racer, Karnov to name a few. Could Rampage have been yet another to add to the list?

This demo has been around for some time now, but the scroller suggests that this preview was actually preview of a game in development. With Bart Meeuwissen (White/The Judges) being the main developer, and Marco Scheepers as the graphic artist (who later did the graphics for 5th Gear). The demo shows a potential loading screen, and then a character selection screen.

We assume that the game was in development, but there are no clues online to anything else leaked or what happened to this other development. We believe that Jeroen Kimmel would have been involved in the music, but nothing in HVSC suggests this just yet.

A lot will result on us finding Bart and Marco, and getting their input of what was happening at the time. Was this an official production for Activision, or just made up text for the demo? Time will tell!