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Now
this is a GTW that has gone down in history as one of the most
eagerly wanted games to appear on the C64 in some form. For many
years we have been taunted with the fantastic screenshots from
Zzap 64 and the infamous Cyberdyne Interviews.
Deadlock
was worked on for a number of months over the space of approximately
2 years and promised very much in the way of an Impossible Mission
type game crossed with the likes of Trantor and Armalyte (With
insights into the game from Zzap 64.).
It's
team was infact Cyberdyne Systems,
the very people who did Armalyte. It looked and promised to be
a ground breaking game, with stunning visuals from Robin
Levy, code from Dan Phillips
and music by Reyn Ouwehand. Even
there was some sound effects by Martin Walker
to add to Reyn's music.
To
say that the game was groundbreaking was an understatement. Deadlock
was far ahead of its time and featured some of the most authentic
and ambitious graphics and animational detail to feature in a
C64 game. We are talking major detail in a game from 1989/1990,
from its realistic walking and jumping to its realistic gun recoil
and reload animations. It was essentially very much like a 8-bit version of Super Metroid! (Quite scarily actually!) Sadly it was to be the graphics which killed
the game stone dead.
Ultimately
it all boiled down to the fact that the game had been wrapped
up so much in its awesome visuals directed by Robin, that playability
was terminal. This was the opinion of Cyberdyne, and they even
admit that compared to Armalyte, this game was not fun to work
on. Fun was a crucial element in Cyberdyne's production phases.
System 3 at the time were still confident to see this stunning
blaster make a release, and even got Reyn to compose a set of
tunes which were to be never used (Apart from one being cheekily
used in their cartridge version of Myth).
What
also didn't help was the fact that both Dan and Robin were dragged
away to work on Last Ninja 3 (Dan on the Intro) and so the whole
project was shelved for the time being and overall for the rest
of its days.
It was mentioned in an interview that the game would likely be resurrected after Last Ninja 3 and turned into a more Shinobi styled game. It never happened...
And
so Deadlock, after several dozen previews and incarnations, suffered
an unfortunate death and was sentanced to life on its development
disks. That is until GTW became live, and Dan Phillips got in
contact.
Out
of the blue one day back in around 2000, GTW recieved an email
from Dan, giving tons of information on his titles and also the
last reminants of Armalyte 2. Deadlock was also promised, after
permission was gained from System 3. After attempts to gain contact
with System 3, no reply was ever heard, and a relaunch later in
2003, Christmas 2003 saw a GTW update which Dan gave permission
to GTW to finally distribute the remains of what is a fantastic
work of art.
Dan kindly supplied GTW with 4 very different previews of Deadlock
(As different as possible) to give you the best possible view
of how the game was. Finally you can throw those old screenshots
away and check out a slice of Cyberdyne history for yourself,
and you may just get a shock at how good those amazing stills
move!
In December 2010, GTW preserved some disks from John Kemp and Robin Levy, and found a large number more of early previews and variations. We have added all of these to the download, and the very early previews are quite different!
In addition to this, there are some of the editors used to build the levels and some of the graphics to take a look at.
Finally, the disks themselves had a few labels which included some awesomely drawn bits of art for Deadlock. You can now download all of these labels in the options above. But here is one in particular from Robin:
Brendan Phoenix in recent times found a little leaflet from System 3 which mentioned Deadlock as an up and coming title. Here is is.
A
lost relic found, and here for you to see...
Frank and Jazzcat.
(Additional
source credits - Jazzcat, Phil Davis, Dan Phillips, Robin Levy, Brendan Phoenix, John Kemp)
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