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Darius + was advertised in various magazines, and was advertised by The Edge for all machines, including the Commodore 64.
The game is a conversion of a popular arcade by Taito, and eventually did surface on the Amiga, Spectrum (http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0001254) and ST machines, but sadly the conversions were not too great. The C64 version never surfaced at all.
Just how far the C64 conversion got was unknown until graphic artist Tahir Rashid got in touch:
"I did some test work on it, as I did the original ST and Amiga versions.
The only thing that was done on it was the sprites and the first level, the game was canned after 4 weeks into development due the the coder leaving after a row over payments.
At that point I left The Edge to go and work on SWIV at the Sales Curve. "
So we can confirm that we are looking for a very early development version of the game, with at least one level to look at. Could another developer have picked up the game later to do more?... We are not sure yet.
However, what is quite interesting is that ACE magazine reviewed the Atari ST version (Thanks to Martin/Stadium 64 for the heads up) and had a quick box out for the C64 version which doesn't seem quite right. They say very little apart from that it holds up pretty well as a conversion, is still recognizably and playably Darius. Fast, colourful, and nicely animat- .... and it cuts off. The final score was 705 to give a good SEU conversion by the sounds of things. But did they *really* actually see a C64 conversion?... or was this just a load of old fluff?...
Pete Dabbs additionally tells us that he approached The Edge to actually convert the game, but their demands for the C64 were way too high, and after a arguement, The Edge felt they could find someone else who could do the job. Maybe they did after reading the ACE review?
Without coder credits to give or anything (Tahir wasn't able to recall who worked on it), it will be hard to find this game... Though according to Jason Kelk, it could have been Ian + Mic, so maybe they could have been a part in the conversion? Well, Rob Whitaker confirms it was not them, so who was it?
Another recent thing could be that CRL's Inner Space contains bits of Darius+ from the C64, at least on the 4th-6th levels possibly. Jason Kelk suggesting that one of the later levels looks very much like a Darius+ level. Considering Inner Space contains a mixture of sprites and bits from other C64 games, could it also contain something unused from a C64 conversion of Darius+?.... Was it maybe the same coder?
A
good SEU?, rubbish on other platforms.. good on C64?
Frank.
(Additional source credits - Jason Kelk, Andrew Fisher, Pete Dabbs, Martin/Stadium 64, Rob Whitaker, Leszek Chmielewski, Tahir Rasid) |
