Lost Dragon

@CPUWIZ That'd be a pretty amazing achivement for me, coding a ZX Spectrum game, given well, fact i never owned a Spectrum (though i did have a ZX81), cannot code...erm, basically not who you mistake me for (and that was cleared up months back)...nor am i Spartacus...these probably are'nt the droids your looking for.... I did pass my C.A.D exam, but that was 20+ years ago, but Speccy coding...nope. If your looking for someone to code something on Speccy, may i suggest WOS forum? :-)

And lastly re:UK mag claiming Turrican was on show at Atari event: Raze (Jan'91) reporting on Atari's 6-City Tour (6 railway caoaches packed with Atari hardware and software visting:Bristol, Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle, Glasgow and Birmingham) said visitors could see the 7800 console and.... '..2 very exciting new numbers:Impossible Mission and Turrican' Would love to know if this info came from the Atari P.R release sent to the magazine to promot tour.

Oh and talking of magazines like Raze, previewing games that never appeared on Lynx using screens from other versions... They were just as bad for games that did appear:Gauntlet:Third Encounter in Raze Preview of Raze used screen from Gauntlet III-totally different game.Again, probably just used existing screen from ST/Amiga version, threw that in, far easier than taking a screen shot of any Lynx preview code they had.

I'd lost count of how many UK magazine reviews of numerous games on numerous formats that had opening line of something like... 'I was never a fan of this in the arcade (or on platform X or Y)'. Well if you hated it there, chances are at the very best you've gone in blinkered and it's doubtful, espically with arcade conversions, much has been changed. I also often wonder with Lynx reviews if reviewers sometimes blinded by the technical aspects, i mean Shadow Of The Beast, is a marvelous showcase of what the Lynx hardware is capable of, but original game not all that and not, i find suited for handheld play. But it's all down to personal preferences at the end of the day.

Raze magazine claimed US Gold's Strider 2 was 'Around 50% complete' but shots used in the feature looked way to high res to be actual Lynx shots, so i'd wager ST/Amiga shots used. This was in the July'91 issue. Game seemed to split reviewers on home formats so US Gold possibly had 2nd thoughts about going too far with Lynx version? or maybe the Lynx market deemed too small to release game on.

Hold on THIS was posted Nov'2010: Freelancer 2010 CD - Imagitec.It's BLUE so finished but lost? I wrote to Imagitec (via Ultimate Future Games and i had similar letter in Gamesmaster magazine, Gamesmaster one was letter of the month in fact and blagged me a free game!), regarding what had happened to it, they replied, (i have mag scan on me bloody hard drive) and told myself and the magazines readership that the game had been SCRAPPED (in terms of development on Jaguar) in Mid'95 and project was re-designed and overhauled for Playstation 1. So how did it suddenly become finished and lost? the information that it was scrapped and where it was headed was out in 2 UK mags.

If the information is better off in a new thread, please delete my post's and i'll create a new one. My intention was just to update the status of some of the bigger name Jaguar titles that were annouced.Took me a fair few cracks to find a source who knew much on anything bar Creature Shock...(that itself easy enough to answer, so many sources had said Atari wanted it, but soon as i read old interview in Edge with Jez where he stated he never did any Jaguar projects as format was too risky, i knew it was unlikely to be more than test footage on Jag CD dev.kits, had 3 seperate sources confirm Atari wanted it, could'nt do it themselves and test footage of the FMV was done on Jaguar.) Edges look at Creature shock alone explained game was designed to be do-able on any ssytem powerful enough to handle the data-transfer rate, but it was nice to know just how 'far' testing had gotten.

Posted this on Atari 8 bit threads, but Atarian Magazine July/August had Road Runner down in it's Games Check list as Coming Soon on both 7800/XE.

Few others i've yet to hear down as M.I.A on XE Ninja Golf (down as 7800/XE in Atarian Magazine) Road Runner down as Coming Soon (7800/XE) in Games Check List July/Aug 89 issue of Atarian.

Found it:Retro Gamer Volume 2, Issue 2 (said it was an early issue, lol). Steve Golson Interview: 'Graphically the 7800 is probably a bit better than the NES, but not quite upto the standard of the Master System..............The 7800 could implement an arcade game better than the NES, but Nintendo was'nt trying that;it did'nt do Donkey Kong over and over.Instead it did Mario platform games' He also talked of the 7800 games development process 'It was generally small teams-one or 2 people per game.Some general work shared by all-we had sound/music specialists'.

@Drac:Nope, it was def.the 7800 being talked about, i'll have a rummage and get back to you. @Trebor:I'm a sucker for What If.....type scenarios. I wondered about the 7800 getting the crumbs of the development team table as being an A8 owner so often i saw conversions that whilst probably would'nt have matched the C64 version (A8 less PMG than C64 had sprites?), could have been a lot better given more time/talent.Things like Arkanoid, Green Beret, Rampage etc.All just seemed to need few things adressed or fixedand would have been much better.

Blimey! Seeing that Bentley Bear video running does indeed give me the impression the 7800 was capable of a lot more than what i've seen in terms of commercial releases.Very grateful for you putting that up. Would the issue with the 7800, in terms of commercial support, be that old familar (to myself at least as an ex-A8 and Jaguar owner) in as far as Atari just did'nt have the resources (in terms of programming teams) to compete with teams working on what could be classed 'flagship' Nintendo and Sega titles? and so the system was never pushed as far as it might have been. Also, i guess Sega and more so Nintendo, had pretty much cream of the commercial development teams signed up making games for NES and MS. Also given the budget issues (saving money by not putting the Pokey chip on-board the console, instead opting to put it in specific games), that we were unlikely ever to see big sized games in terms of ram avaiable to developers, let alone extra chips to assist with the graphics handling?.

:-) i know posting in long dead threads is often frowned apon, but sometimes it's nice to return to threads to update status on 'Lost' games as new information is found (or better still, actual games!) and more titles can be added/crossed off. Done the 7800, A8 (few more to go in both i think), Lynx.Not really a 2600 fan, in terms of lost games, had 1 at the time, loved it, but never returned to it, 5200 never owned, ST Lost Games you'll find covered in article i helped Darran Doyle with, for ST Gamer. And updated the Jaguar games list with info i've picked up on my travels interviewing folks for ST Gamer etc.

Huge thanks for the info to both of you.I'm going to have to dig through my back issues of RG and look at previous articles (i do recal Marty G's being one of the most balanced looks at the hardware i'd seen) as i believe they are covering it again next month. Nice to see what 7800 was capable of, resolution wise if 'tricks' were used. What was Leonard Tramiel 's 'Beef' with the 7800? (I know very little about Leonard). So to say the 7800 could 'hold it's own' again'st the MS might be a little too Pro-Atari to really stand up to closer observation?.Perhaps something like it was cabable of being pushed (much?) further, yet due to it's limited 'life' we never got to saw what it was (commercially) capable of?. I'm a big Atari fan (owned 600XL, 800XL, Lynx MK1, MK 2, Jaguar and 520STFM) but as a reader, i like my articles to point out a systems shortcomings as well, as they make for just as good a read.There's never a need to 'gloss over' what went wrong, i feel.

Oh Elite's version of A8 Commando:It was indeed farmed out to English Software, work got finished on a title screen at least, then project sold off to Mastertronic who re-jigged it, released it as Gun Law.I've had that confirmed.

Few more: Preview copy of The Living Daylights supposed to have 2 more levels and 'proper' title screen, which are missing (?) from retail version.I had said game (last game i ever bought for my 800XL), but your talking so many years ago, i cannot recal if it had any sort of title screen, let alone how many levels..... These were annouced, some even had trade ads saying coming soon on Atari XL/XE: Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Daley Thompsons Supertest (Ocean)/ Druid II:Enlightenment (TGM said John Crowdy who converted original, was handling it)/Kendo Warrior (Byte Back), Hunt For Red October (Grandslam), Zoids (Martech).

I've a potential interview with System 3 lined up (but so far all i've had is 2 promises from the PR dept that ***** ***** will get back to me later in week, he's currently out of UK) IF it ever comes off, i'll ask about A8 Last Ninja which System advertised, then told people they still planned to bring to A8 etc. John Twiddy a while back in interview in Retro Gamer magazine thought reason we never saw it might of been because it was beyond abilities of System 3's A8 coders. I do recal Atari User magazine saying reason ELITE never appeared on A8 was because Firebird just could'nt find enough skilled A8 coders to do the conversion.

Few details on said Chronicles Of Cute: By London Software Designs.Coded by Colin Huges, Graphics by Alan Tomkins. Said to be a 4 level affair, playing as either a boy or girl, out to save brother or sister.You'd jump/fight your way past mutated insect life, price to be £15. If anyone wants screens, just find Zero Magazine issue 3, look at page 57.

Another old thread dug up, but not sure if there's an Official Lost Games Thread? UK Press reported on a few things i could'nt see listed here: Zero had a very early preview of:Chronicles Of Cute. Raze claimed Atari would be showing of 7800 Turrican at latest UK event. C+VG told potential 7800 owners they could expect the following conversions from home micro's to 7800: Eliminator (Hewson), Black Lamp (Firebird), Technocop and Deflektor (Gremlin). So all these really ought to be added to any Lost Games type list, Chronicles Of Cute espically as we have 'proof' that at least was started.

(Cont) and what sprites lacked in colour, they tried to make up for in colour. I'd also heard the 7800 was some sprite-shifting monster... Then i read this comment: Leonard: Maybe it would have, maybe not. The 7800 was basically a 2600 with some things put into hardware that were done in software on the 2600. It was still quite a limited machine. At this point it is difficult to say for sure. From this interview:http://classicgaming.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Articles.Detail&id=268 And i'm even more confused than ever. The recent RG articles seem written by a big 7800 fan, so really lacked a certain degree of 'balance' for my personal tastes, but Atari themselves don't seem to rate the hardware, that much, judging by that interview, but said interview claims Panther came out after Jaguar? Basically just how did the 7800 match up to the Master System? would bigger carts made a difference? or would it of needed to go the NES route and have enhancement chips for graphics ?.

Very sorry to dig out ye oldie thread, but after reading various magazines coverage of the 7800 over the years, i'm more confused than ever. Very early issue of Retro Gamer magazine had an interview with the designer of the Graphics Chip of the 7800 if my memory serves (i'd have to dig issue out to be sure) and he said 7800 was more powerful than the NES, but not as capable as the Master System. I then read 'recent' 7800 coverage in Retro Gamer (Minority Report coverage etc) which seemed a little too Pro-7800 and suggested it could hold it's own again'st the Master System, yet i've never seen any 7800 game running the higher resolution mode the MS often seemed to pull off. I looked at C+VG's 2-page feature on the console from years back, reviewer commented that the 15 games he'd seen running did'nt compare that favourably (graphically) with the likes of SMB III, Wonderboy 3 etc and that MARIA did it's best to be as flexiable as possible regarding the trade-off between colour and resolution.

Never really seen a huge amount of love for Xenophobe on any format.When the arcade machine appeared, some reviewers found controls frustrating, game lacked variety and by time home (micro) versions appeared, feeling seemed to be they were decent conversions of a rather average coin-op. I enjoyed the Lynx version, though that's supposed to have improved controls. Maybe the 7800 version just falls under same hat as many other versions, game just rather uninspiring to many?.

This thread reminds me:There was 'talk' from certain source that Jeff Minter was working on Star Raiders 2000 for the Lynx, which in terms of concept, sounds mind blowing, but.... I've never seen Jeff talk about it in ANY of the many press interviews he's done over the years, he won't reply to emails i've sent asking about it (crying shame i'd not heard the claim when i met him in person years ago, i'd of asked him right out) and never found a shred of evidence to support the claim. Can anyone one on Atari Age confirm such an undertaking was started?.

Also, if we could'nt get NARC, we could of have a clone:Access/US Gold's Crime Wave could have been ported from ST/Amiga.... I'd also have liked to have seen Metal Masters (infogrames). And i was always very surprised Creative Materials/US Gold's 'Rotoscope' games (Operation Harrier and Rotox) never made it across, i'd of thought the Lynx hardware was ideally suited to handle these. As for press reports:If you look at UK mags, you'll see both Ace and Zero claiming Bob Armour was busy working on 7800 Gauntlet-completly untrue, he never touched it/it never happened and Ace claiming Data East were about to enter the 16 Bit console market with hardware based on their coin-op's, only time i ever heard such a claim and nothing ever came of it.So you wonder where news came from a lot of the time.

This might be of interest: Thalamus/Arc Development's Richard Underhill was working on Restrictor (for the Amiga, planned release Winter 1990, C64 version to follow etc), but project sadly died when Thalamus collapsed.Game was described as a cross between: R-Type, Galaxy Force and Afterburner. During games development, Richard talked of how he wanted to bring the game to the Atari Lynx (which hardware wise did indeed seem ideally suited i feel), crying shame the Amiga vrsion never appeared as it looked promising and ideally suited to the Lynx hardware.