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January 1989, and Compute Gazette published two Origin System game adverts, "Times Of Lore" and "2400 AD". Times Of Lore made it, well known for its amazing Martin Galway music.
Unfortunately, it was not to be for the other game. Even though released on other platforms, the C64 version became nonexistent apart from some great music by Jeroen Tel (Which you can download above).
Recently from the Internet, it was shown that the game's C64 creator was none other than John Romero (Doom), whom in an interview talked of 2400 AD. What made things strange was when we checked out the scan shots we have had blown up.... Notice the name, Allan Short?... Well, it was none other than Allan Shortt, who did Arkanoid 2, Athena and others for Ocean Software. After a quick question about his name being in the game, he confirmed that HE was the coder for the game, and not John Romero. However, things take an interesting twist a bit later... (Read onwards)
The game's development started in August 1988, and spanned a good few months until the game was at a 85% complete phase. After going back to the UK, Allan tried to go back to the US to carry on with the game but was refused entry due to a cock up with visas. A break down in communications with the producer led to the game sadly being cancelled as a result. No-one seemed to take over the project for reasons unknown.
Allan discloses that the graphic artist was a Phil Mellor, so what with Allan not sadly having any of the game code any longer, Phil could be the last resort. Otherwise the game could be in an old warehouse somewhere in the USA, where it may remain lost.
Music was fully completed for the game, and recently GTW has aqquired some very rare unreleased sound effects which were made for the game by Maniacs of Noise. This is thanks to Pete Baron who was sent a disk of Maniac's sfx to show what they could do. These sfx files have never been released before until now.
In September 2008, GTW had a surprise email from John Romero who had spotted our page:
"I just saw a short article on the C64 version of 2400 AD. I had no idea that a C64 version was carried on after it was canceled - the project that I was hired to work on at Origin in 1987. I got a ways into it as well, but Origin decided to kill it as well as the Apple II sequel because of bad Apple II sales of the game.
I left Origin in June 1988 to start my second game company, Inside Out Software. Apparently, if your information is correct, Origin decided to resurrect the port with a UK company. Did it ever get finished? 2400 AD was an excellent game and I most definitely worked on the C64 port."
So infact we are looking at the possibility of two separate conversions of 2000AD. For reasons unknown, the first version was cancelled but resurrected with a new development team. An interesting turn of events. We are now trying to find out if John still has anything of his version of the game and if he would be willing to release any thing of it to the world.
Well, progress continues to be made with this one and hopefully we can find something of this game. At 85% completion for the UK version and a US based version from John Romero now confirmed, it seems like a pretty neat conversion could be found if we try or even two of them!. Lets see what the future holds...
A
potential classic wasted... Thank Apple-II for that one! :)
Frank.
(Additional
source credits - Martin of Stadium 64, SC, Pete Baron, Allan Shortt, Marco(Exile),
Ciara Brennan, John Romero)
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