1991 U.S. Gold
Platforms: Atari ST and Commodore Amiga
Saragossa was to be a space fantasy game set within the distant future, developed by the Liverpool-based Kinetica team who had created Gold of the Aztecs.
An arcade adventure spread across 5 levels, the title was reportedly well into production and was using a Mac based development system called Animator – which reportedly meant that no coding would be required and mostly be put together by the artists on the game. The same system was used on Gold of the Aztecs.
Background story
Taking from the preview in Commodore User magazine, the story of the game puts you in the astro-boots of a battle-hardened explorer whose spacecraft has inexplicably lost all power and is now stranged in a mysterious and eerie spaceship graveyard. Luckily there are four other alien ships marooned nearby which might have the parts needed to fix your ship’s warp drive. To repair your ship and escape the graveyard, all four alien craft must be explored and suitable equipment taken away.
Each ship is vastly different and crewed by a plethora of weird and wonderful-looking creatures that look like they’ve just stepped out of the Cantina bar in Star Wars. They are also armed to the teeth and don’t take kindly to someone trying to walk off with the family silver (or delithium crystals).
Working on the game were artists Ray Coffey and Jack Wikeley, who had spent about a year coming up with very detailed alien ships and around 30 screens each to explore. To move around the game, you would have the choice of four suits/vehicles. One vehicle would move around by firing a metal sucker onto a wall and hauling the rest of the craft after it.
Even though one article suggested that no programming was required, Amiga Action magazine listed the developers as being Dave Lawson and Jake Glover, the team behind Gold of the Aztecs (and also of course were at the original Imagine Software).
Due for release in the summer of 1991 by U.S. Gold, the game completely disappeared from sight and was never heard of again. We hope to speak to at least Ray very soon to find out exactly what happened to the title.
Thankfully a number of screenshots and assets were shown in magazines of the time, so we’ve extracted these to show here. More details, interviews and assets can be found over at the Amiga GTW site in their entry on the game.
With thanks to Karl Kuras for suggesting the title and GGN for flagging up about the sneak preview in Gold of the Aztecs.
Gallery
By the way, are you aware that Gold of the Aztecs has a small Saragossa teaser, accessible from its main menu?
Hi there ggn, I wasn’t! I will take a look right away today. Thanks very much for the heads up, and I’ll credit you in the piece later when I update it. EDIT – I’d forgot that Amiga GTW had covered it on their page we linked to, but I’ve added some screenshots anyway.