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Ok ok, yes we know that
Zamzara
was infact released, but light was shed recently on a rather
different game which was shaping up originally by
Jukka Tapanimäki.
I really love this game, first played on
Commodore Format's powerpack 9...
The music, graphics, gameplay is awesome and holds fond memories
from my gaming childhood. This would most likely be at least in
my top 20 games.
Zamzara was originally going to be very "Impossible Mission"
like, with the aim to collect Genes and built DNA. Hewson loved
what they were seeing, but thought that the game was way too
complex for people to play. As a result, Jukka reprogrammed the
game from scratch and it became very adventure like.
Hewson took another look at the game and felt that it was now a
bit boring.
Following these final comments, Jukka dumbed it right down into
a simple shoot-em-up, which Hewson eventually gave the thumbs up
to. According to sources, they still said it didn't have enough
content, so Jukka added extra content to create the fantastic
game that was eventually released.
But it asks the intriguing question about what happened to these
other previews of the game, which played rather differently to
the final version. It will be very interesting to see other
versions of this game for us to check out. TNT/beyond force from
the Lemon forums first brought to light about other versions of
Zamzara, and we have quoted most of what he has said about the
versions here.
He has also put out an earlier version of the game with rather
different graphics, which you can download and check out. As you
will see from the screenshots, there is a loading screen which
Jukka originally did himself which was unused and later redone
by a well known loading screen artist.
It is possible that the game went straight onto the Rack-IT
label after the the comment of "Not enough content" from Hewson...
which is very sad, as the game is truly awesome, and one sorely
missed on the C64DTV.
We are hoping to find more on this title, but sadly Jukka passed
away in recent times. We don't know much more than this, but it
is a huge shame that a wonderful talent from the C64's history
has gone. Zamzara being a personal favourite game of mine brings
much respect from myself to Jukka, and it is a huge shame that
we will not get the chance to hear from him about his work.
We hope that in the future we will be able to host more of his
lost/early work as a tribute..
An awesome game paid tribute to in its early form...
Frank.
(Additional
source credits - TNT/Beyond Force)
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