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No One Talks About Impossamole or Head Over Heels


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On 11/29/2019 at 9:24 AM, PikoInteractive said:

Both of them have sold less than 100, like 70 or so.

 

We'd still support the platform for a while. 

 

I think competing against unlicensed/bootleg stuff like Ninja Turtles and Rick Dangerous IP is hard. Head Over Heels has nothing compared to TMNT etc. But oh well, that's every other market in the retro scene. Hard to compete against Terranigma SNES with your little SNES homebrew, or smaller licensed title.

 

It is what it is.

 

 

I’d like to show some support , you have 4 Jaguar games listed on the website, Switchblade is back ordered it says. Any idea when it will be in stock? I’d like to order all 4 at once if possible. Thanks   

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1 minute ago, BuddyBuddies said:

I’d like to show some support , you have 4 Jaguar games listed on the website, Switchblade is back ordered it says. Any idea when it will be in stock? I’d like to order all 4 at once if possible. Thanks   

They're also in the AtariAge store.

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  • 2 months later...

Impossamole is one of my favourite games ever.

I loved it on the '64. The Amiga version was a good laugh as well. Never played the ST version, which I am assuming this is, with bells. Personally think the slatings it got first time out were mainly unjustified and as a result of people's love for the first four Monty games. Irony is, I enjoyed this more than the other Monties.  ?

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I'm in the USA so neither of these were released on platforms very accessible to me.

 

Never heard of Head Over Heels so I looked it up on YouTube, looks a lot like Solstice on the NES. Solstice was released a couple years later, so maybe it was inspired by Head Over Heels.

 

Impossamole I've heard of thanks to Turbo Views which I highly recommend if you're ever interested in a TG-16 game but want a short video review before buying. He's been at it since 2009 and it's the most consistent show on YouTube, if you showed someone the 1st and last episodes they wouldn't be able to tell which was which. It's still a small channel after all this time so it must be a labor of love.

Edited by Buffalo Biff Burgertime
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9 hours ago, Buffalo Biff Burgertime said:

I'm in the USA so neither of these were released on platforms very accessible to me.

Originated on the Spectrum.

9 hours ago, Buffalo Biff Burgertime said:

Never heard of Head Over Heels so I looked it up on YouTube, looks a lot like Solstice on the NES. Solstice was released a couple years later, so maybe it was inspired by Head Over Heels.

Um... Well. Head Over Heels was a great game and innovative in some ways but I think it is fair to say that it, and others, owe a bit of a debt to Knight Lore from Tim and Chris Stamper. From 1984.

9 hours ago, Buffalo Biff Burgertime said:

Impossamole I've heard of thanks to Turbo Views which I highly recommend if you're ever interested in a TG-16 game but want a short video review before buying. He's been at it since 2009 and it's the most consistent show on YouTube, if you showed someone the 1st and last episodes they wouldn't be able to tell which was which. It's still a small channel after all this time so it must be a labor of love.

Nice one! I'll check it out.

 

 

9 hours ago, Buffalo Biff Burgertime said:

Never heard of Head Over Heels so I looked it up on YouTube, looks a lot like Solstice on the NES. Solstice was released a couple years later, so maybe it was inspired by Head Over Heels.

Have you played Equinox (Solstice 2) ? It came out on the Super NES. It's by the Pickford Brothers rather than the original developer however.

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14 hours ago, ∞ Vince ∞ said:

Have you played Equinox (Solstice 2) ? It came out on the Super NES. It's by the Pickford Brothers rather than the original developer however.

I haven't played it, but! While writing that post I knew I had seen other games that are very similar. Only Landstalker on Genesis was coming to mind, but it wasn't that. Couldn't figure out if I was just making it up, but you might've solved the mystery.

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20 minutes ago, Buffalo Biff Burgertime said:

I haven't played it, but! While writing that post I knew I had seen other games that are very similar. Only Landstalker on Genesis was coming to mind, but it wasn't that. Couldn't figure out if I was just making it up, but you might've solved the mystery.

That's not to say HoH did not inspire other games. I think it did. The thing with HoH is, it was a massive technical achievement on the base system it appeared on, the Spectrum. Jon Ritman & Bernie Drummond had made a game similar previous to this, Batman ('86), which was a wonderful take on the licence rather than the routine platformers Ocean used to pump out.

 

 

 

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23 hours ago, ∞ Vince ∞ said:

That's not to say HoH did not inspire other games. I think it did. The thing with HoH is, it was a massive technical achievement on the base system it appeared on, the Spectrum. Jon Ritman & Bernie Drummond had made a game similar previous to this, Batman ('86), which was a wonderful take on the licence rather than the routine platformers Ocean used to pump out.

 

They did another isometric game later on the GBA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_Max

Does Piko still own the right to Head over Heels ? https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/spectrumnext/zx-spectrum-next-issue-2 In an update https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/spectrumnext/zx-spectrum-next-issue-2/posts/2943496
After much negotiation we secured the rights to the classic game Head Over Heels to fill that missing 1.5M stretch goal. Even better is that the original programmer Jon Ritman has agreed to lend his time to help get it made. Thanks Jon! A brand new challenge, with new levels and graphics befitting the Next generation of Sinclair Spectrum computers.

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2 hours ago, Seedy1812 said:

They did another isometric game later on the GBA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_Max

Yes, that is right, Seedy, they did, and it fitted the target platform (and the speccy like hardware too) - Game Boy - perfectly.

Quote

Does Piko still own the rights to Head over Heels.

I don't know, you would need to ask Eli, but usually, if you had the rights at the time you developed your version of something, even if you sold them on, you still have the rights to sell your version irrespective of any deal made. It all depends on the terms of the deal.

 

Or, more likely, perhaps they got a licence to do a Spectrum Next version specifically, a whole different thing to buying the full IP rights.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 10/17/2020 at 9:14 AM, Buffalo Biff Burgertime said:

I'm in the USA so neither of these were released on platforms very accessible to me.

 

Never heard of Head Over Heels so I looked it up on YouTube, looks a lot like Solstice on the NES. Solstice was released a couple years later, so maybe it was inspired by Head Over Heels.

 

Impossamole I've heard of thanks to Turbo Views which I highly recommend if you're ever interested in a TG-16 game but want a short video review before buying. He's been at it since 2009 and it's the most consistent show on YouTube, if you showed someone the 1st and last episodes they wouldn't be able to tell which was which. It's still a small channel after all this time so it must be a labor of love.

Head Over Heels on the ST and Amiga used Room Data from the C64 version, which has some rooms missing found in the ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC versions. 

 

Jon Rittman changed them as he didn't think the C64 was up to them and Colin Porch wasn't aware of any differences, until after he had written the ST and Amiga versions. 

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On 11/2/2020 at 7:46 PM, Lost Dragon said:

Head Over Heels on the ST and Amiga used Room Data from the C64 version, which has some rooms missing found in the ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC versions. 

 

Jon Rittman changed them as he didn't think the C64 was up to them and Colin Porch wasn't aware of any differences, until after he had written the ST and Amiga versions. 

Right.

I seem to remember hearing that Colin and Jon spent days on the phone writing it line by line.

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16 hours ago, ∞ Vince ∞ said:

Right.

I seem to remember hearing that Colin and Jon spent days on the phone writing it line by line.

Jon also found a lock up  just before tapes were mastered for the speccy. Apparently he had a friend around and got him to play it while he went to the shops. On returning his mate had found the problem and could reproduce it for Jon. 

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7 minutes ago, Seedy1812 said:

Jon also found a lock up  just before tapes were mastered for the speccy. Apparently he had a friend around and got him to play it while he went to the shops. On returning his mate had found the problem and could reproduce it for Jon. 

Cool. Nice knowledge. Jon is well an incredible talent. Colin was/is an incredible talent. It's a shame the C64 wasn't a bit niftier or there could have been a 128 version. The extra speed might have helped push the 64 version into 'Classic' status too.

 

I remember Match Day 1 being awful on the 64. I think this is what triggered this situation.

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