Video development diary for cancelled ST/Amiga game Broadsword by Electronic Pencil Company

[oky2000]

 

Going through stuff archived from my other PC with failing HDD I found this little snippet from the European TV series Bit for Bit (hence the forced subtitles) so I finally just sat down and edited it all together from segments in two episodes. Thought you might want to see what small time financial knife edge development of ST/Amiga games was like back then in the mid-late 80s and see the background to this game.

 

There is a bit more info about the company, but not too much specifically about this game, in a very old issue of Retro Gamer magazine. What I remember was Anna Wilson, one of the artists in this video, along with Benni described the years during working on this game as living on the poverty line and it was always uncertain they could keep the lights on at this business due to tiny revenues.

 

Rainbird, the last publisher who was financing this development 1989/90 I think, finally pulled the plug on the game when there was still some work to do and that was that. Benni and Anna just closed up shop and went and got 'proper' jobs as they put it as there was no money to allow them to continue working on the game without any money coming in from a publisher.

 

Video is probably recorded a couple of months or less before Rainbird decided not to continue with the game. Shame, looked quite interesting.

[Megalomaniac]

Sadly there was so much more money to be made back then from 'proper jobs' than from making computer (as opposed to console, but that wasn't possible for most UK companies until the Megadrive really took off) games, even if you got a decent publisher who actually paid you as promised. Maybe we should be grateful that anyone did it as more than a hobby.

 

Still, Electronic Pencil did the awful conversion of MicroProse Soccer that played worse than the C64, so I can only have so much sympathy for them.

[Zogging Hell]

We they responsible for Wicked then (the game at the start of the video)? I thought that game was a good, frantic shooter with a nice concept and some excellent music, if pretty insanely difficult towards the end.

[oky2000]

2 hours ago, Zogging Hell said:

We they responsible for Wicked then (the game at the start of the video)? I thought that game was a good, frantic shooter with a nice concept and some excellent music, if pretty insanely difficult towards the end.

Not sure why that is in there, might just be some sort of intro to 'how are games made' scene setting bit. Would have to look through that issue of Retro Gamer (61 I think).

[oky2000]

6 hours ago, Megalomaniac said:

Sadly there was so much more money to be made back then from 'proper jobs' than from making computer (as opposed to console, but that wasn't possible for most UK companies until the Megadrive really took off) games, even if you got a decent publisher who actually paid you as promised. Maybe we should be grateful that anyone did it as more than a hobby.

 

Still, Electronic Pencil did the awful conversion of MicroProse Soccer that played worse than the C64, so I can only have so much sympathy for them.

Hmm I read that Microprose Soccer on ST and Amiga uses some sort of weird 65xx emulator written for the 68000 as part of the code in a profile on EPC in Retro Gamer article. Never played it on 16bit. Emlyn Hugh's Int Soccer on the ST had surprisingly acceptable h-scroll IIRC though so I'd probably have got that. I only had the Microdeal Soccer game on my ST (International Soccer?). I remember it because it came on a disk with a new label stuck on the top and it had the original Major Motion label underneath you could just about read....this was an original game in box not a pirate copy lol

 

This game they were working on looked quite interesting, nowhere near the level of Systems Architect's Ancient Mariner project in scope or scale but an interesting idea. Clearly it was a slog for them to do 16bit stuff. 

 

If all you want to do is make money and get on the property ladder to move out of parents home getting a 'proper' job was the safest bet by far for sure. If I had kids I would have pushed them towards doing an accounting certification, better than any Computer Science degree for earning capacity in the Thatcherite greed fuelled 80s anyway

 

The guy who co-founded Llamasoft with Jeff Minter then left (he wanted to bring in other coders to do Llamasoft games and Jeff refused) and started  Interceptor Micros was a millionaire within a couple of years, success and quality of software clearly had nothing to do with each other if you played those horrendous Interceptor games. There's a VHS transfer of some interview with him in front of his Rolls Royce thinking what to do with all his money!!

 

 

 

 

[ColecoGamer]

It looked like a fun, innovative RPG for the ST. Does a demo exist or maybe screenshots?

[oky2000]

There's nothing to download on Atarimania or Games That Weren't, not even an entry sadly. I've never seen any page scans of magazines doing a preview blurb about it either. This game is lost to time sadly. I agree it did look interesting, the final revision to the game design I think worked well and looked good too.