1991 Digital Magic Software
Platform: Amiga (and C64 – released as Bod Squad)
C64 owners will very much recognise our next entry, which was eventually released by Zeppelin Games back in 1992 as Bod Squad. Originally though, the game was due to be released by Digital Magic Software under the name of Bod the Alien, and released around October 1991 time.
Bod has to search several locations in order to recover his kids across mansion and pyramid themed levels. Graphics were being created by Jon Law, with code by Mike Halsall (who also worked on Universal Monsters at a later date for Ocean).
Unfortunately, when DMS collapsed, Bod the Alien was caught up in the mess. Mike gave his only copy of the game to a C64 artist and programmer on the promise that another publisher was going to release it. We checked this with Kent Murray, who was artist and programmer on Bod Squad, but he confirmed that he never had a copy of the game. Sadly it seems that it could well be lost, unless Jon Law still has something of the game – who we’ve pinged a message, but haven’t heard anything back yet.
Bod the Alien was released as Bod Squad by Zeppelin, but seemingly dropped a level or two to make it into a budget release. It is currently the only glimpse we have of the game.
Thanks to Grzegorz Antosiewicz for the suggestion and for the scans.
Gallery
I was there visiting the escape Colditz c64 coder , when Jon (Law) was drawing graphics for it on dpaint on amiga. I remember he was drawing stone door arches and rotating them.
soon after digital magic went under, Jon and Jules went to work on the very first fifa on megadrive… ironically I used to play kick off and pro tour tennis when i was visiting.
I gave Kent (who did bod squad far later) a copy of the pds software when i was back in london , and he welched on a deal to provide me some pics he’d drawn that i was impressed with .. seal being one, for a demo. hopefully he lost em, kharma