I posted this some time ago in another thread, but it fits here even better.

Radius from Players Software contains hidden Ian & Mic demo which you can view by pressing space when loading ends.

Just done a quick blog post covering the subject:

http://fgasking.wordpress.com/...-in-games/

Didn't cover everything we've listed here, but just gave a taster. I'll try and integrate a new section on the new GTW main site very soon.
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Some adventure games from Adventure International hide a Commodore Plus/4 version which has not been named anywhere in the game box or into adverts on magazines: The Sorcerer Of Claymorgue Castle and Fantastic Four recognize the 264 system machines, Buckaroo Banzai writes a hint note if loaded on a 264 system, that says you have to load side B instead.

Since years, Commodore Plus/4 fans suspect that almost the same could be possible in "Spiderman" by Adventure International, we would only need an original copy in order to look into the side B...

The C64 version of Rygar had sprites for the urn our main hero move around during each stage break plus a double-set for the rhino, yet none of them were used in the game itself. Makes me wonder if the game was originally planned to be a full(er) conversion, but it was kept simpler to keep it a single-load or something.

The arcade game was great. The C64 conversion could have been better.
I'm surprised they never included the 'urn'.

"Could have been better" is a major understatement. The game looked ugly, sounded horrible and played like crap. I guess the original arcade game wasn't well known enough to warrant a proper port, like Bionic Commando did. (Yeah, BC had ugly graphics too, but at least it had kickass music and well ported gameplay.)

Imagine if the guys behind Hawkeye converted Rygar. They'd have included the parallax scrolling, not to mention created better looking visuals. Rygar was so well suited for the C64, then US Gold got involved. US Gold were one of the worst at conversions (Tapper was ok).

I just remembered - a few years ago, for whatever reason, I was randomly going through SIDs when a friend was over. One of the SIDs was Headache (\GAMES\G-L\). Strangely, my friend not only recognised it, but said it was from an 80s beer ad, and then proceeded to hum the tune almost exactly to the note.

So like I said, a few years ago, forgot all about it, life goes on. But a few weeks ago I saw the programmer, Andrew Bailey, emigrated to Australia? Which makes me wonder; did it really come from a beer ad?

Couldn't find a more applicable topic to bump, sorry. It's a seldom-discussed game and there weren't any real blanket Firebird topics.

Just to avoid wasting time, I also noticed in Zzap! issue 15 they had a feature on CRL/'The Zen Room', and looked at some of their upcoming games - Cyborg, Rocky Horror 128, stuff like that - but they mention a game called "Cops and Robbers". It's not the Atlantis VIC-20 ported game...they described it as you basically break into houses, pawn the stuff, buy better equipment, break into better houses, avoid the fuzz...I couldn't think of any games that matched that description and CRL don't seem to have anything vaguely resembling it in their catalogue, even. It's not on GTW64...is it a lost game, or did it get released as something else?

you have to remember that games like Rygar were just "bill payers" to the development house contracted to convert them.

no royalties (because its not your game) just flat fees. so just do the job in the minimum time with the least aggro.

Hawkeye on the other hand was Jacco and Mario's "baby" complete with royalties and bonuses etc. so it was in their own interests to make it good

tbh the only sw house i can say that consistently turned out above average to excellent conversions was Ocean/Imagine but then they had a top notch in house dev team.

one final comment, in reply a few pages (and 2 years) back somebody said it was weird that yie ar kung fu had an '85 copyright on it from konami but said Imagine 1984. This is because Imagine 1984 was the company name after Ocean bought the name when the original Imagine went tits up in 1984.

see here

http://video.google.com/videop...890708986#

Steve

ACE 2 has some text at $50B6:

Quote:

welcome to my code. what are you doing in it?anyway, since you are here, i'll just tell youthat this game is dedicated to the verywonderful teresa.i should also like to thank everybody here for theirhelp, and i'll say thanks to ocean for notreleasing topgun for the c64, and thanks tothe programmers for doing such a bad job.if you're reading this guys, play ace2, andsee how these sort of games should be done!if you enter the name of my hamster on thehigh score table, player one will be immortala real hacker will find her name from the code .

BTW, Ian Martin's hamster's name was "dusty bug"

Very cool find ... and very true about Top Gun!
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