The Punisher was advertised in various magazines, and was advertised by The Edge for all machines, including the Commodore 64.
The game is based on the film project of the time which starred Dolph Lundgren and which went straight to Video. We think the Amiga version did make it out.
Just how far the C64 conversion got is unknown. The advert was all that ever existed really of the C64 conversion. The Edge did disappear after a little while, so maybe only got the Amiga and ST versions finished before they closed their doors. Some companies did tend to spend more time on the 16bit conversions, and the 8-bit versions came last.
The game looked to be some kind of early Doom game, from the Amiga shot that was with the advert. Just how the C64 could have handled this is anyone’s guess anyway.
Without credits to give or anything, it will be hard to find this game… Though according to Jason, the golden boys of Edge at the time were non other than Ian + Mic, so maybe they could have been a part in the conversion?
Possible punishment to us that we may never see this…
Contributions: Jason Kelk, Ross Sillifant
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I had this game for Amiga back in the day, decided to revisit it after reading this and I think the CVG review is basically dead on. It is interesting though, that the ST version remedies some of the shortcomings addressed in the CVG review of the Amiga original- the game is noticeably nippier, and there is much less disk accessing.
The game remains a pretty weak Op Wolf clone, there is no illusion of moving forward or otherwise, it is flick screen and the animations are choppy but then it still holds a certain fascination for me. I think the C64 (or even Spectrum) could have easily coped with this game, but if it sold poor on 16-bit an 8-bit release would probably not make much sense at that time