I was really confused by this. Why? Well I remember playing a Men In Black game that had 3d characters on pre-rendered backgrounds, and Men In Black being out before Wild Wild West, and I assumed the same company did them. Wiki says the publisher is SouthPeak but the developer is Gigawatt Studios.
ps: I have no idea what the new game is :(
Angband '99?
Whoa, I’d forgotten about Druid. I think it was the second one I played on the Spectrum!
I think you might know which one by remembering if you could play with a friend taking control of the golem, which was available only on the second game on the CPC if I am not wrong. Actually maybe it was the reverse, and you could play that way only in the first one?
Also, there were very few spells in the first one (like 4 ?) while there were a lot of variety in Druid 2.
Yeah, I remember the variety, and the skeletons in the graveyard! I’ve no idea how old I was at the time but it was released in '87 and I was born in '83. I suspect I played it later than that but, still, these games were magical to me at the time so I remember a lot of them well.
Don’t think I’ve ever seen this one, but it looks cool.
Based on the reference to a good SID tune I’ll just randomly throw out… Stormlord.
Well, Rob Hubbard (Master of the SID) did do the music. =)
Men In Black was published by SouthPeak (and was about a year before I started there) but developed by Gigawatt as you noted. SouthPeak did devote some resources to helping crush bugs and such during crunch time if I recall correctly. At the time of MiB, however, SouthPeak was still very much interested in FMV (Temujin, Dark Side of the Moon, and the unreleased 20,000 Leagues) so it was only after that was starting to peter out that they turned to 3D on pre-rendered (possibly because they knew it had worked with MiB, I’d guess). SouthPeak also published other games like the PS1 Dukes of Hazzard game.
Not Angband '99 either.
(Or Stormlord).
Another hint, this may give it away:
Oh, funny SouthPeak story. So after Dark Side of the Moon shipped we had a brief period where we could explore our own ideas for games. I really wanted to do a Pirates! like game but with more exploration. Worked with a friend as well as a game designer named Craig Taylor (from Avalon Hill, Microprose, etc. – designed Wooden Ships and Iron Men) for a while on a design document. SouthPeak had become increasingly a family-friendly publisher and had a deal with WB for Looney Tunes content. Anyhow, my manager called me into her office a few months into our design and asked “Could you perhaps change this into a LEGO Pirates type of game?” I was not interested at all, thought it was not a great idea, and with WWW ramping up was almost relieved to move on at the time. Bear in mind this was in late 1998, had no idea how LEGO games would end up being awesome.
Rob Hubbard. Hmm, I don’t think this is right, but Spellbound?
I have zero… nope, negative ideas regarding the title now, but wow, does it look ahead of its time, interface-wise.
I want to know!
The game is Mastertronic’s “Master of Magic” (yeah, the other “Master of Magic”).
The game looks really fascinating.
I take it it was more of an adventure game in disguise, but such an easy to use interface is amazing, and on top of it, field of vision dungeon crawling.
I had never heard of it.
Next obscure game, please!
Haha, oh crap, I guess that means I’m up again. Third times the charm I hope. I’ll think about it for a tiny bit first though. I really didn’t think that one was too obscure, mainly because Rob Hubbard is so well known.
Ok, this one will certainly be guessed:
Ultima IV
Nope, but correct era.
That looks to me like the location of Venice at the top of the Adriatic. Perhaps some sort of trading game?
Questron?
Questron II?
Annals of Rome?
