1989 Imagine Software
Platforms: Atari ST and Commodore Amiga
I never played the SNK arcade, but remember seeing the terrible Commodore 64 conversion by Sentient Software and wondering just how it got past quality control at Ocean Software at the time.
Also in production though were conversions for the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST platforms. It seems that these were being arranged by Ocean France, and the work was subcontracted out to a team called Prestasoft, which only seemed to have the one game to its name – Expressing.
Apart from adverts, nothing much was mentioned or shown of the conversions at all, especially in the UK press. It would be the French press which would see exclusive screenshots of at least the Atari ST edition.
It looked pretty decent at least from the static shots that were shown, but the game would then subsequently disappear, with unconfirmed rumours that the game may have been simply abandoned. If that is the case, then that is a real waste of what potentially could have been a solid conversion.
Just who were Prestasoft, and who could have been the developer? Well, a common name attached to them seems to be musician Patrick Sigwalt, so that could well be a starting point to find out more about the company, and ultimately about this intriguing arcade conversion.
Thanks to the great research of Hoagie / Abandonware France, it has been revealed that Prestasoft was just another name for Satory Software, which was Marc Djan’s company before he was hired by Ocean to start Ocean France. The only game they released was Hotball.
It seems that Guerrilla War was commissioned to Prestasoft after seeing Hotball, and which then led to Ocean France being formed in July 1988. They were also assigned to work on W.E.C. Le Mans, but this was also cancelled too.
So what happened? Was it due to some kind of falling out with Ocean? Was it a quality issue? Hopefully we’ll get to learn more from Marc at some point in the future (and see if anything has perhaps survived).
Hoagie notes that Prestasoft only lasted a few more months more, as it was associated with three other assumedly unreleased games in the form of Johnny Diggood, Vertigo and Dreamland.
What of the Amiga edition? In comparison, there seems to be nothing shown in the press at the time, apart from the adverts themselves. It is very likely that it would have been nothing more than a straight port of the ST conversion, but this is just a guess at this early stage.
Check out the screens below and magazine articles (in French). With thanks to Ross Sillifant for some of the provided scans and heads up about the title, and also Hoagie / Abandonware France for the great information and research for the ST edition.
Gallery
After some research, it seems that Prestasoft was just another name for Satory Software, Marc Djan’s company before he was hired by Ocean to start Ocean France. The only game they released was Hotball:
https://www.atarilegend.com/games/hotball (check the copyright on the box)
So this game was commissioned by Ocean to Prestasoft after seeing Hotball, and it led to the creation of Ocean France in July 1988. Their 16-bits versions of W.E.C. Le Mans were cancelled too.
The name Prestasoft seems to have lasted a few months more, because it’s associated with three other unreleased (?) games:
– Johnny Diggood and Vertigo: advertised in Génération 4 5 (9/1998) page 37. Vertigo was reviewed in Tilt and Génération 4 but it’s still MIA.
– Dreamland: preview in Génération 4 6 (11/1998) page 123.
Thank you Hoagie, that is great work! I’ve just updated the page with credit to yourself. Hopefully Marc will be able to shed some light sometime soon!
My eldest boy (6) got a cheap hand-held retro game device in his Christmas stocking and promptly became hooked on a game called (according to the menu screen) ‘revolution’.
I’ve got my old STE setup in the spare room and both our kids asked if the game existed on it. I couldn’t find it anywhere, but after some googling, I discovered that the game was really Guerilla War, which then led me to your article. What a shame it never made it to the ST, but thanks for the info.