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Now
I bet you didn't expect to learn that Obliterator was also a planned
C64 title?... No?... Well, if you're an Amstrad user you have
probably played it already, where as us C64 users have suffered
without a conversion of this popular Amiga classic.
There
was always the odd rumour that Obliterator was being worked on,
but we never got to see or hear anything of the title. That is,
until Lee Cawley set the record straight
and with some hard evidence.
Obliterator
was in production at Lothlorien with
Chris Caress (Coder of Bosconian)
and Lee Cawley (Graphics man for
Motos and Bosconian). This was at a time when Lothlorien was on
its last legs and production became an uncertainty as staff were
not paid. In particular, Lee was not paid and started working
at home at one point.
The
game was essentially finished and was a very faithful conversion,
featuring almost nigh perfect porting of the main character, and
only some comprimises had to be made to the squeezing in of the
enemies. Overall a solid conversion. According to Lee, the game
was only needing a few minor tweaks.
Sadly,
as Lothlorien went downwards, they got rid of Lee to try and save
the business and the game was supposidly going to make it out..
though it never did.
15
years down the line, and Lee has now dug out his old disks in
the hope of finding more of this enigmatic conversion. We may
not find a full version of the game just yet, though we could
soon be seeing some of the ingame graphics and sprites, and maybe
(just maybe) something playable by the off chance. Currently Lee
has found the loading screen, which for the first time can be
seen in the shots page. This is the first and merest of glimpses
you will see of Obliterator at the moment. This was also found
on an old CNet disk, so you can check out the real thing.
So
what now?... Chris Caress was traced thanks to Lee, and he
was been asked the big question about the game's final existance
somewhere. Chris spent some time checking his old Einstein disks which would have had the code on, but sadly it seems that there were only mere scraps of source code remaining and nothing to really show to the world. The only remaining hope now seems to be with Lee Cawley and if he manages to find anything else of the game. Bad news overall, but there is still some hope left.
Chris himself is to shed some light on the game's development very soon and hopefully we can try and find out a bit more about the game's lifespan on the C64 and what exactly happened. Was the game actually completed?... Was it the demise of Lothlorien which prevented its release?
Rumour has it that the musician Mark Wilson converted the music, but was not paid for it. We have added the tunes which Mark did, which could well have been officially asked for, and would have been used in the official game.
Maybe
in the end it could be just a mere privilige to learn of its existance
and glimpse stills of what might have been... Time will tell...
More
to come soon we hope...
Frank.
(Additional
source credits - Lee Cawley, Chris Caress, Mark Wilson)
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