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One
of the most infamous of GTW games comes in the form of a well
sort after game "Bamboo".
What
a better way to introduce the game, but for a clip from Finnish
computer magazine "Mikrobitti"
in December 1988, thanks to Seppo...
"Boys
without brains, who programmed the game Hawkeye, are making a
new revolutionary game for the C64. The idea of Bamboo is to rescue
your beautiful girlfriend from an evil witch. Like Hawkeye, the
boys are pushing the C64's graphics to the limit. The amazing
effects are possible thanks to a 8-directional bitmap scroll-routine
coded by Mario van Zeist. Bamboo smoothly scrolls in its 8 directions
for its example graphics made with Koala painter, at the speed
of 1-100 pixels per screen refresh."
Jori
Olkkonen wrote
this text, who is rumoured to have known the guys behind Bamboo,
and have seen a demo of the game running, due to his knowledge
of the game's technics.
This was then later written in an issue of Games Machine magazine:
"Crazy Dutch programmers The Boys without Brains - creators of Hawkeye - are delving into their Commodore's insides to find a game with the (tongue-in-cheek?) title of Bamboo. Although little is known at present, it's a massive shoot-em-up with a nifty eight-way directional scrolling routine. Plans are afoot for a Christmas release if the dykes hold, and we'll bring you the full preview very shortly."
Zeldin,
a past GTW contributer with informations and games, informed GTW
of his past contact with Mario van Zeist,
who proclaimed his new game as far superior to Hawkeye. What makes
things rather interesting, is the fact that Zeldin remembers that
his bitmap scroller was for a very colourful SEU in the style
of Armalyte. Zeldin pointed out that he could not be precise if
this is what he saw. Of course, all of this a very long time ago.
A
link to help finding the crew behind the game, could possibly
sit with the fact that Jacco van t'Riet
(Jaws), did the graphics ad he was part of the demo/hacking
circuit in Holland. So possibly people from this area will know
of him, or even have contact?
One
final link... to Mario himself is that possibly a MWS/Radwar
still has contact with him. If you are MWS, then can you help?
To
round off though, the game never surfaced as you may have guessed,
and it was canned, with Flimbo's Quest being their next game to
actually make it. How far did it reach, and does this amazing
game exist in any form still? We hope to find out soon from Mario and possibly Jacco too. We've added Thomas Detert's music for the time being, which rather strangely is quite oriental ... so was the game an oriental SEU?
All we know is that it could be very soon we get to see something of the game, as in recent times (2010) remains of Hawkeye 2 have been preserved and it is being checked if anything of Bamboo is out there.
A
mouthwatering prospect of a game, lost...
Frank.
(Additional
source credits - Seppo Aikas, Zeldin, Steve Day, Jazzcat)
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