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A
famous sequel to a famous series of games, Solar
Jetman was released on the NES platform, and other 8-bit
conversions were planned, including the C64 and Spectrum.
A
little news snippet was mentioned once in Zzap about the conversion
by Storm, but that was it.
The
game never surfaced and became a myth when mentioned on the C64.
But GTW one day recieved news of the game being fully completed
on the C64, with music by Geoff Follin,
code by John Buckley and
with Haydn Dalton supplying the graphics.
The
game was being converted by Software Creations for Sales Curve
way back in 1991. Martin
Holland,
another guy from Software Creations, informed GTW about the game,
adding that the conversion was really good.
GTW
got to work and began to search for this elusive conversion, and
started with Haydn Dalton, who sadly could not find anything of
the game after some searching. Two years later, and a month or
two after the site relaunch, efforts were made to find the game's
programmer, John Buckley as a last ditch effort. After tracing
John down to PlaypoolUK, GTW got the news it dreaded.. John hadn't
got any of his old disks no longer...
But
a week or two after almost giving up hope of finding the game,
Haydn
Dalton was one day searching through some things at home, when
he stumbled upon a disk with the label missing. The label was
in there too, and stated "Solar Jetman Disk 1", and
after a bit more digging, Haydn found the second disk.
In
an excited hurry, Haydn sent
them special delivery to GTW to port over, hoping that they still
worked after all this time. And luck favoured all... Clean as
a bell, the 1541 wurred and there it was.... A Geoff Follin tune
and title picture, and then a fantastic game to follow... Solar
Jetman was saved!... The last known copy in existance was very
quickly backed up and ported. For the first time ever, Solar Jetman
could now be appreciated by the fans as it should have been back
in 1991.
But
why not release such a stunning little game?.... For crazy reasons,
Sales Curve decided that the title was not suitable material for
the C64 games market. And after the relatively poor sales of the
NES game, this kinda confirmed the canning of the game. Ludicrous
really to turn down such a nice little game, and something you
almost didn't see.
But
thanks to the fate of Haydn finding the disks, you can see and
play it. And now John and Haydn can recieve the credit they deserve.
If you wish to comment on the game, then please feel free to in
the forum!
One
of the most important findings ever on C64... Case closed!
Frank
(Additional
source credits - Haydn Dalton, John Buckley, Martin Holland, Tony
Williams)
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