Games That Weren't^®

1992 Sensible Software

Platform: Commodore Amiga

A sequel to Mega lo Mania was on the cards as early as when the first game was still being written according to Jon Hare in Amiga Power magazine. When the release of the first game was such a huge success, the publishers were keen to see a sequel.

Developed by David (Ubik) Korn, originally the sequel was to be released under Mirrorsoft’s Imageworks label, but was reported to be looking for a new home by Amiga Power issue 10’s news page after the collapse of the company. David would write a diary for Amiga Power about the game’s progress.

Knowing how the game would turn out wasn’t quite clear, with Sensible Software allowing the game to grow organically, but trying to keep to the core of the original game. It was suggested early on that there would be two player modes where you could link up two Amigas, which sounded exciting.

Visually the game was going to be very different though, with a more 3D tiled display for the map, looking quite like Virus/Zarch in its style. The landscape would evolve, which would force the player into more empire building and relocating compared to the original game according to Dave in his diary.

A lot of the work over a few months would be to get the graphics engine working, with scaling capabilities added. As well as this, ideas would come together (on paper at least), with at one stage having roads that could be built between towers to allow for transporting armies, blueprints etc between sectors.

Menus were gradually put together with icons produced and extracted to try and get ready for inclusion in the game. Then with the gameplay itself, Dave began to start reading through the source code for the original game, before getting menus and interactions going.

It wasn’t long until you could set off men to begin mining elements on the map, and watch your stockpiles mount up. The excitement was getting to Amiga Power by this stage, who were hopeful of a cover disk for issue 13, but it was never to be.

After a 3rd diary part, the diaries stopped and nothing more would be seen or heard of the game, until issue 16’s news item gave the news that David had been moved onto a new project (which would turn out to be Sensible Soccer). Mega lo Mania 2 was put on hold as a result, but it would never be returned to.

Although the game hadn’t got very far at all, with much of the engine still being developed, it is hoped that something of the original development could be recovered and possibly shown within these pages. Does Dave still have anything left from back then? Watch this space.

With thanks to Karl Kuras for highlighting, Ross Sillifant for additional scans, and Amiga Magazine Rack and Stephen Stuttard for the rest of the scans.

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