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If
anyone can remember the scanner pages in C-Format, they will probably
remember seeing CJ In Space being
in there, but that didn't emerge in the end.
So
it was a surprise to uncover the 4th game in the series, before
a 3rd has even been seen or known to exist.
This
was not done by Genesis, but by a new coding crew altogether,
and unfortunately it doesn't live up to the same standards of
the previous games, even though in its own right its quite a good little platformer!
This
game was finished, but around the time that Codemasters pulled
out of the scene, so it never got released at the time along with quite a
few others which are rumoured.
Eventually however though the game was sold and released on the Magic Disk 64 magazine in 1995 (4/1995) under the name of Jimbo (A reader called Rudi has confirmed that they own an original), which is practically the exact same game with a different logo. We are not sure who did the deal, we think its probably the game's manager Duncan Kershaw.
CJ's
4 was written by people behind Entropy to try and help them into
the industry. The game was created by Juned
Wahab and Shaun Pearson, and
the game featured music by Gerard Gourley.
A part of Codemasters offered a sum of money to complete the game
for them to release.
Shaun
lost interest in the game after creating a much better sprite
with hi-res overlay, and the whole of level 1. A new graphics
guy came in called Wayne Billingham and helped Juned finish the game in 4 weeks and recieve
his money. Read Shaun's own words in 'Creator Speaks'.
Shaun
pretty much confirmed this as the sequel to CJ In Space, so we
are missing the 3rd game in the 4 part series. Sadly this is no
nearer to being found yet.
Hopefully
soon Shaun can help us see his original unseen work on the game of which non at all seems to have been used in the game.
Interestingly... Wayne Billingham came forward saying that he worked on a CJ Island Antics game, which was actually CJ's 4th. Wayne mentions Duncan Kershaw as the producer of this game... while Juned is known to have done this game. Read what Wayne has to say in Creator Speaks...
After looking on Wayne's disks in recent times, we managed to find an early version of CJ'S Island Antics and also a long lost unused loading screen for Codemasters. These can now be downloaded as part of the archive. The loading screen is in Amiga image format.
A
reasonable sequel, but nowhere near as good as the original.
Frank.
(Additional
source credits - Steve Williams, Shaun Pearson, Wayne Billingham, Rudi)
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