A brief new entry which we kind of missed before – as the coder Mario Knezovic had mentioned it in one of his previous creator speaks for Seven Gates of Jambala.
At the same time as working on that C64 conversion for Thalion, Mario was also doing a conversion of the Alien Syndrome/Gauntlet clone called Leavin’ Termis (Or Leaving Termais). The game saw a release on the Amiga/ST back in 1990 and was a fairly well received game, though not the most popular overall.
Mario had got a small way through the game’s development, but was never properly assigned a graphic artist to help finish the work – and the game was scrapped as a result after taking too long to find someone. Mario had up until then done test graphics himself to be later replaced.
We know little more right now about the game, though the adverts never mentioned a C64 version it seems. It is hoped that Mario may have remains of the game, along with Lethal Xcess … we hope to try and find out very soon!
Contributions: Mario Knezovic, Ross Sillifant
Supporting content
Gallery
Creator speaks
Mario Knezovic talks about work on Leaving Teramis:
“I worked at Thalion in 1989, mainly on the C64 conversions of Seven Gates of Jambala and Leaving Teramis and a little bit of assistance on Chambers of Shaolin. Unfortunately my two projects never got finished as the back-then management was not able to provide a graphics artist for the projects. After nine months of sitting around and enjoying nightlife in and around GÁ¼tersloh and Bielefeld, I got my full pay for the two projects and headed toward new adventures. Lucky enough I did a little project for Thalion later: The C64 version of Neuronics and thus became a legend of being an immortal ex Thalion coder ;-)”
Then later in 2013:
“Leaving Teramis has been abandoned in such an early phase that it was
not worth keeping anything. Actually everything there existed was the
scrolling and an early version of a sprite multiplexer. The hero and
dummy enemies moving around in very basic ways. (Teramis should have
been developed after Jambala.)
Actually this was exactly the same stuff I used for Jambala, just here
it was horizontal instead of vertical scrolling. But unfortunately
Jambala C64 also was abandoned by the company because they were not able
to find a good-enough C64 graphics artist. (I was a rookie back then,
Jambala was my 2nd game project and I had no contacts yet by myself.)
I doubt there is much useful left of any of these two projects. And if
so, in the same dusty basement where the Lethal X-Cess leftovers are and
where I have not been in years (complicated story).”
Update history
02/04/14 – Added Thalion scan from ACE magazine thanks to Ross Sillifant
Does’nt look like Thallion themselves thought all that much of the game, looking back:
Erik Simon: Well, since Thalion was in the wild days of the games biz, we never had to release really rotten eggs. But we did release games that in hindsight were not really cool, e.g.: Leavin’ Teramis, Seven Gates of Jambala, Enchanted Lands, Neuronics and a few others.
Most of them concentrated too much on technology and had an unfocused game design.
ACE Magazine Issue 29, Page 9, ‘Ace On The Autobahn’ Thalion article also mentions C64 versions of Leavin Teramis and Seven Gates Of….
Thanks Ross, just adding the scans to both entries now :)
A Thalion preview of the German short-lived computer game magazine SMASH stated in issue 3 – May/ June 1989 that the game probably will be released on C64 (tape+disk) along the 16 bit versions.
Thanks for the confirmation Gerry! :)