Games That Weren't 64

Martijn Althuizenspeaks to GTW about work on Firethorn...

"As for unfinished, unreleased games, we've also started work on a game called 'Firethorn'. A name, by the way, coined by Jeroen Tel (of Maniacs of Noise fame), as he was at the time also a resident of Helmond (the city I live in). He even gave us one of his unreleased music-scores to use for a 'game-in-progress' demo I think it was.

It's been a while since I've seen Jeroen. Last time I met him in a bar and we talked a bit. It's funny how sometimes you still meet people that were also in the C64 scene. Just last year I had a multimedia company nearby program something for me. Turns out the owner of the company is somehome related to I think it was 'Euphoria'/Boys Without Brains who made Flimbo's Quest, Disposable Hero and even the acclaimed Hawkeye. Somehow Helmond, Aarle-Rixtel and some other neighbouring towns beared some fruitful contributors to the C64 scene. C64 parallax scrolling was pretty much invented around here.

I remember Harold being told what the trick to it was and him immediatelly having a go at recreating it himself. All in assembler... LDA, STA, JSR etc. etc. Harold also wrote a lot of c64 music himself using the MoN editor. I also remember sitting in Jeroen's room while he's telling us about some of the plans he had at the time. I remember feeling pretty impressed by it all back then... :-) Firethorn wasn't really a game, more a show-off of the parallax scrolling thingy we managed to do. I remember being pretty proud seeing the mountains and buildings (I think it was the Taj Mahal) I had drawn scrolling by with pipes and stuff scrolling in front of them. "

Martijn Althuizen.