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Based on the Capcom coin-op. It featured two brothers who carry swords and had to cross various platform levels to kill the dragon which killed their Father. The C64 conversion was temptingly to feature the original two player mode of the arcade, so most was seemly going to be retained of the original to make a fantastic conversion.
A preview in Commodore Format showed us some promising looking images of the game taking shape and talked of how good the main sprite animates and the game looks like a winner. But with confirmation from Games X that Tiertex were behind the conversion, were we doomed and would we see a pretty crap result as usual?
Well, we never did anyway...US Gold however seemed to pull the plug on the game after around 6/7 months work (approximately).
The 16-bit versions did apparently make it out, but the 8-bit versions were all scrapped (Including the Amstrad version.. which looked gorgeous!). It seems likely, because all the 8-bit versions were scrapped, that US Gold at that point pulled out of the full price market and milked what was left with their KIXX label.
An Amstrad review (of an unreleased game, and unfinished!) also included a C64 screenshot for some strange reason, but it happens to be a very high quality one for you to see most of the game's detail. So we've added it.
After 6 years of research trying to find out who in Tiertex was behind the game, we weren't getting very far. But that all changed in May 2005.... Games TM magazine published a small write up on Armalyte 2, and featured GTW's web address. A Wayne Billingham saw the article, and checked the site out... It was here he then discovered the game he did the artwork for.... Mega Twins!
Wayne then provided the other key detail we were missing as well as the artist... The Coder.... which was none other than Mike Ager, the developer of Orcus and many other classic C64 titles. Both Wayne and Mike previously worked together by porting the great Alien Storm game to the C64, which they did a superb job for Tiertex... a first decent game by the company!
Right after Alien Storm, both guys were assigned to the creation of Mega Twins on the C64, and progress was very good. Everything was looking to be retained, and with both guys being fans of Capcom's work, they were enjoying working on this title.
What is quite shocking is that Wayne confirms that the game was fully completed before he left Tiertex.. or at least the graphics were!.... US Gold decided to leave the scene and milk the KIXX label it seems, not even deciding to release the full game on the KIXX label straight away. Strange!
In issue 21 of Commodore Format (June 1992), Mark Wyatt from Colchester asked the question we were all asking... just where the heck was the game? (And not surprisingly as CF were promising a review every month for a few months on their back pages). Well, interestingly Commodore Format responded and gave a bit of an insight with US Gold which sounds a few alarms:
"Every month we ring US Gold and they tell us that the game is in final testing. So we put it on the innermost ring of the scanner. Then it doesn't show for review and we ring the Goldies and they say that it is still in final testing. The result of this is that the game has been virtually ready for review for three months, a position the scanner has mirrored.
This is in no way a criticism of the Goldies though. They want to make sure that Mega Twins is as good as possible and won't release the title for review or sale until it meets their high quality standards. It's annoying to have to wait for so long, but when the wait is for the sake of improved quality, it can only be for the best in the long run. So we'll review it when USG are happy with it" ... It obviously never appeared and US Gold were pulling the wool over CF's eyes. In June 1992, it was clear that US Gold were beginning to wind down their C64 operations. Indy and the Fate of Atlantis had just been released, and all that was remaining was the release of Street Fighter 2 in a few months time. This was it though.
Maybe US Gold decided that they were not making enough on the platform and just to make one final bit of cash on two big licences they had already spent the money on and that was that. Certainly the Spectrum and Amstrad versions never made it either and only the 16-bit versions surfaced - so this seems to be the case. Crazy though to ditch a game which was apparently complete and not even try and get *something* back from it via a budget release (Which US Gold continued to do for at least a year after they ceased their full releases). Very unfortunate, as from the sounds of things and following on from the success of Alien Storm, Mike and Wayne had a conversion which could have stunned people... Wayne offered a glimmer of hope for GTW though back around 2008...
Wayne dug out his Mega Twins disks and passed them onto GTW and although sadly no executable was found, we *DID* find a load of graphics which covers the scans which we have! No maps, but I will be reconstructing all the scans with the data I have.
6r6 has also very kindly produced a special sprite demo to demonstrate all the sprites which were found. There are loads of other bits not fully reconstructed yet, such as the Mega Twins logo (Which has a sprite overlay according to Wayne) and some other graphic bits. You can see that Wayne's graphics were fantastic!, this would have been a great little conversion!
Over the years we have attempted to get in touch with Mike Ager , which is funny.. because we've spoken to Mike in the past just about Orcus and had no idea he was behind Mega Twins!!
Sadly no matter how hard we have tried, Mike does not seem interested in speaking to GTW about either Mega Twins or Orcus and helping to preserve them. It may therefore be almost impossible for us to preserve this game.
Lets just hope that this is another Solar Jetman case... Could we now find an executable preview?... or even a full game? ... It might sadly be down to Wayne or someone completely random to come forward with the goods...
Is it nearly the end for finding Mega Twins?....
Frank.
(Additional source credits - Patrick Furlong, Wayne Billingham, Haydn Dalton, 6r6, Marco)
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