Messages, Rumors, Humor & General Chatter -> Lost/unreleased IIgs software

Compiled from the A2 Delphi Public Guest MessageBoard - 5/99

by MacProber 

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As many of you probably know, over the years there were a great number of
commercial Apple IIgs software titles--in various stages of developement, some
finished, some not--that for one reason or another were not released. Some of
these programs have been leaked into the public (e.g. Vindicators, Shufflepuck
Cafe, Puzznic) while other are still floating around out there, waiting to be
unearthed one day... I was just reading the April 1989 issue of A+ and read some
interesting bits from Bob Lindstrom about what he saw at the Las Vegas Consumer
Electronics show that year:

Taito follows its outstanding Arkanoid conversion with visually crisp Apple
IIgs interpretations of Renegade (martial arts in the big city) and Operation
Wolf (wreak havoc with Rambo-style firepower). Visuals on the IIgs reach a
boggling new high with Discovery Software's Sword of Sodan.

Some of the more interesting titles worth tracking down: 

- Deluxe Music Construction Set 
(unfinished program 'DMCSGS' with all src. codes - found in private IIgs
collection on 4-99. Final program development, enhancements and additions in
progress. Release date: When it's finished and ready.)

- Renegade 
(unfinished program 'TRGS' with all src. codes - found in private IIgs
collection on 4-99. Final program development, enhancements and additions in
progress. Release date: When it's finished and ready.)

- Operation Wolf 
- Bubble Bobble 

- Sword of Sodan 
(unfinished, full nine level beta - play and save program 'SOSGSb9' with all
src. codes - found in private IIgs collection on 4-99. Final program
development, enhancements and additions in progress. Release date: When it's
finished and ready.)

- Flintstones 
- Heatwave 
- Double Dragon 
- Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp
 
- Fairy Tale Adventure 
(program - is a 2 disk set of an Apple IIgs adventure, graphics animation game.
Final, unreleased, finished program obtained in private IIgs collection on 4-99)
Will be released soon, after test for ROM 01 and ROM 03 launch and operation,
documentation written, varify all options are active and functional, test for
hard drive install, program operation stability from hard drive.)

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Has anyone out there seen these? Or perhap know the whereabouts of people like
Bob Lindstrom from A+, or the former IIgs Taito authors such as Ryan Ridges or
John Lund? I tracked down Sword of Sodan a few years back but had little luck
getting it released (mind you it may be worth looking into a again as the Amiga
version was reclassified as freeware a few weeks ago).

ÊWhat I heard about Deluxe Music Construction Set (this story may be bogus, of
course) was that the lead programmer wiped out all the source code (like 8 MB
worth of code) in a drug-induced frenzy, and the project was cancelled because
of that, after a year and a half of development. That's what I heard, way back
when the product disappeared.

Something like that would explain the abrupt end of MCS. It was among the top
music composition contenders and, then, just 'dropped out of sight'.

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One you did not mention is Bard's Tale III. The for-GS version is supposed to be
nearly done except for monster, etc. artwork-- the source of the pic you see
when there is an 'encounter'. The for-GS version is said to be much better than
the buggy one released for PC. ÊÊ

Anyone knows what happened to Fairy Tale? A friend of mine with a Amiga 1000
had it, and it was my favorite back then. Did work ever start on this game, or
were the full-page ads the only signs of this game? It's playing in the Middle
Age. It's very similar to Diablo, though much simpler in design of course. I
believe it was one of the very first games of its kind, and on the Amiga it
looked pretty spectacular. I was really looking forward to the IIgs release, and
I'd still like to slap the marketing guy who placed all these ads.

There is a screen shot of the 'never-to-be' ??? IIgs version in the May 1988
issue of inCider, on the top of page 44. It was going to be published by
Microillusions and require 512K of RAM according to the magazine (ah well, at
least they brought us Firepower, albeit years late, which was another Amiga game
I wanted for the longest time).

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Comment/reply from Sheppy:

"What about Henrik's masterpiece: FlameStation XL?ÊThat's just a case in point. I
don't think he actually really had anything to do with that masterpiece. I bet
he just sector-edited his name onto another fine product by Dr. Tom. :)"

-end of Sheppy's comment/reply-
;-)

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For that matter, does anyone know what ever became of TimeLord*? I have a 
demo of it and it looked decent but I never heard of it being completed.

I have a demo of it and it looks decent but I never heard of it being completed.
Chris McKinsey (the main programmer) dropped out of the Apple II scene, possibly
out of computers entirely if I remember right, leaving the project in limbo. It
might have been continued if not for Steve Chiang and Jason Anderson leaving the
Apple II world to work at Visual Concepts writing console games.

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* (unfinished program and demo '' with all src. codes - found in private IIgs
collection on 4-99. Final program development, enhancements and additions in
progress. Release date: When it's finished and ready.)

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DreamWorld did manage to give us DuelTris before departing (1993), but never
finished TimeLord, DreamVision or an updated version of DreamGrafix.

That reminds me of another cancelled IIgs game, Ultima VI. Apparently Richard
Garriott started work on the IIgs version before all others, then stopped
mid-way because Origins decided the Apple II market was becoming too
unprofitable. They took the existing code from the IIgs version and started the
PC version, cancelling the GS project in the process. It got ported to the
Commodore 64 and SNES though, which is too bad because the GS version would have
been alot better (interesting note: apparently that was the last time Richard
Garriot/aka Lord British wrote any code, on the IIgs). TimeLord was written as
something to fill the void left by Ultima's cancellation, but it just created
another... 

And on the subject, what about Opale? 

Brutal Deluxe had to cancel that project when their graphic artist stepped out.
Haven't seen much from them actually since LemminGS (there was Return of Cogito
recently, but only an extremely tiny fraction of IIgs users can use it).

MODZap 1.0 is another cancelled project. Mitchell Spector was actually redoing
all the graphics for it (never got around to finishing them because he said his
monitor was dying, and by the time he got around to replacing it, Ian wasn't
interesting in doing II stuff anymore). 

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Some of these can now be found from:

http://apple.cabi.net/pub/applegs/Games/

or 

ftp://apple.cabi.net/pub/applegs/Games/


Apple IIgs Forever !

MacProber