My second game-related thread of the day! (Mainly because I'm bored at work, but also because I'm in a retro-mood!)
I've just been reading a review of a game by Scott Johnston, in which he states that an AGA version of Hired Guns was being worked on but was never released, and it has got me thinking about games in general that were never finished and/or never released on the Amiga (I'm thinking more along the lines of games from the "original" software houses such as Team17, Microprose, US Gold, Psygnosis, etc, rather than the "newer post-Commodore" software houses such as Digital Dreams, Clickboom, Vulcan etc).
A few of the games (mainly sequels) that were never released include:
- Eye of the Beholder 3 (US Gold announced there would be no conversion)
- Fade to Black (Amiga hardware wasn't fast enough for this Flashback sequel)
- Simon the Sorceror 2 (well, until the relatively recent conversion, which wasn't by the original software house)
Games that were started but never finished include:
- Hired Guns AGA
- Inferno (CD32)
- Cyberwar (CD32)
- Extractors (a follow-up to Diggers for the CD32)
- TFX (famously released partly-finished on CU Amiga's cover CD)
CD32 magazines around 93/94 were literally FULL of previews of games that would never make it.
Some reasons for the above (which I'm sure everyone is familiar with) are Commodore's demise (causing most software houses to exit from the Amiga scene), Sony buying Psygnosis to concentrate on Playstation development, and most significantly the rise of the PC, which left the Amiga way behind in terms of hardware capability.
At the time, having just completed Eye of the Beholder 2 AND Flashback, I was devastated to hear that neither sequel would be coming to the Amiga. The previews of Inferno and Cyberwar looked good (graphically anyway!) and again lead to more disappointment. Hired Guns AGA sounds really cool, and apparrently would have had significantly enhanced graphics and sound (even though the graphics for the ECS version were already excellent, and sound was already somewhat enhanced for 2MB machines).
The point of this thread? Not sure really! I was just wondering if anybody knew of any more games for the above two categories, and their thoughts on why the game(s) didn't make it. Also, I'm sure it reminds us how lucky we were that the "new wave" of Amiga software houses stepped in and took post-Commodore Amiga gaming into the late 90's and the 2000's. It also makes me even more sad that the Amiga isn't what it once was :cry: :-D
Steve.
