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Quite possibly one of the largest mysteries behind a Ocean
release, and it comes in the form of the rather bizarre release
of Operation Thunderbolt.
It all stems back to Zzap 64, and
issue 57 in particular. Zzap 64 reviewed the game and it
seems that they may not have reviewed a complete game.
This was pretty much confirmed by Paul
Hughes, the game's eventual programmer for the final
version that was released. Zzap 64 *might* have reviewed a half
complete version which wasn't that playable, it just looked
bloody good.
Robin Hogg
once told GTW he may have written the review through "Rose
Tinted Specs" at the time, but it is uncertain if Robin did
actually review the released version or the earlier version
which was done. Anyhow, the game got a rather undeserved high
mark, when it wasn't that particularly great after all.
Well... we find out the real reason as we speak to one of the
actual developers, Brian Flanagan, who did the
graphics. Read later on for the found reason for the
rather strange high marks.
Paul Hughes confirms to GTW that the earlier version was
existent, and was being coded by a junior programmer,
Trevor Brown. Apparently the game looked really good but
never moved that much. Paul and a team including Richard Palmer
and Johnny Meegan had to write the game from scratch in no more
than 12 days. Incredible, and possibly even more incredible that
even though the game wasn't great, it was written in this time.
Trevor Brown was made redundant as a result.
It is currently assumed that music and graphics were reused from
the original, and just pure coding was done from scratch. It now
acts as a curiosity to find this earlier version which was meant
to look so good.
Recently we have had revelations from Brian Flanagan, the
graphics artist, which reveal that the game was around 60%
complete from around a 6 month period.
The big shock (or maybe not?) is that a
deal was apparently
struck with Zzap 64 for them to give the game a good mark for
the game in exchange for Zzap obtaining exclusive access to one
of their big up and coming games. This unsurprisingly was
the way sometimes with a few magazines, and it still goes on
today. It seems that Trevor's demo was shown to the Zzap
guys, it looked good enough to be passed off as a good
game and was done so. Maybe the game was needing promotion
at a crucial time, and a high mark was needed while the game was
quickly sorted out for the Christmas deadline. It seems
so.
Robin Hogg however knew nothing of any deal being struck with Zzap 64, and just reviewed what they felt was a good game.
It was a blip on their normally high standard reviews, but it seems that in the background there was promotions involved
for the up and coming Batman licence. This was possibly the game which Zzap had first refusal on for Operation Thunderbolt
to get such a good grade.
You can read Robin's side of the story also in the "Creator Speaks" page, obviously from a reviewer prospective :-)
To be honest, it seems that the guys allocated to the project
should not have been. It was too big a project for two young
lads just starting out in the industry. Had there been someone
more senior on the project to supervise and help, Trevor may
well have got the game out. In the end, the struggle was too
much and not a lot was done.
Trevor moved on to pastures new, and has yet to be tracked down
to talk about this game and give his side of the
story. We would be interested to hear from Trevor and find
out more, so if you are out there Trevor, please get in
touch!
You can read Brians's story in full on the Creator Speaks page.
The search however goes on for remains of this intriguing
mystery, but more of the jigsaw has been solved....
A gorgeous first version of the game, but playable as a brick...
Frank.
(Additional source credits - Paul Hughes, Robin Hogg, Brian
Flanagan, Paul Koller)
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