1989-1995 SideFX/Kimera Studios
Platform: Commodore Amiga
Our next title has come under various names over the years, Sergei, Sergei – the showdown and Sergei and the Isle of Belphegor. It sounds like a trio of games, but this was just one single development from Denmark that was being done between the period of 1989 and 1995.
Over the years the game has had an internet presence and has since vanished, though thanks to archive.org – we are able to recover materials and details about the game.
Programming was by Jon Rocatis, with graphics by Dennis Hansen and music by Simon Holm. The team originally had started out as SideFX, but then later organised themselves into an early company called Kimera Studios. Both Dennis and Simon would later go on to work on major titles for the games industry. Dennis was also involved on a C64 title called “Ball” that we have within our archives.
The interesting thing about the Sergei game on the Amiga, was that it was seemingly in long development over a 6 year period. Why was it this long? Dennis gives indication as to why on his old archived resume, where he mentions working on the game whilst studying and doing all the graphics and sprite animation using Deluxe Paint and Brilliance.
So what kind of game was it? When you look at the images, the game seems to depict a sort of Rick Dangerous/Chaos Engine style shooter, with a fully armed hero who goes around blasting everything in sight. There is a shop where you can also buy further weapons to increase your arsenal.
There were some assets saved from Simon’s old webpage, but sadly the MP3 music file from the game is missing. Via the project page on Simon’s site, we learn of the shop being called “Little Shop of Horror”, and levels including the notorius town of Scumville, the Swamps, Caves, Temple and the base of Boris (who we assume is the main bad guy). Hopefully we can find larger screenshots in the future (or even something playable of course!)
Thankfully Simon’s other website that was archived had some working screenshots, but also a snippet from him about the game:
“This was the game that started it all. As three very good friends we started to work on the game in our spare-time in the summer of 1989. Being only three, a programmer, a graphic artist and me as the composer & sound designer we were all involved with all the aspects of creating a video game. In 1992 when Commodore went out of business, and the future of the Amiga computer was uncertain the hope of having the game released began to fade away.”
So we know why the game was cancelled. Via the Kimera Studios homepage from archive.org, we learn even more about the game and what happened in the end:
“This was our first project together. Developed on the Commodore Amiga, we worked on the project for almost six years, but only in our spare time – work and education took up lot of our time. We also learned a lot of things the hard way, this being our first game.
The game was playable and a lot of fun to us, but newcomers found it unreasonably hard – not so strange as Rick Dangerous, and Ghost n Goblins were among the inspirational games for it. In retrospect games in the good old days games were really hard! In 1995 we decided to stop development and used it as portfolio material. It eventually helped two of us to get our first job in the game industry in Funcom, Oslo.”
Of course, by 1995 the Amiga market was also in sharp decline. Had development been full time, this could well have seen release and it is a huge shame, as it looks like a lot of fun!
However, although the game was never finished – it was their starting point to get into the industry, and according to Dennis – there were talks to try and perhaps get the game finished as a remake back in 2007, but there wasn’t any time and it seems that idea has now completely faded away.
The question is whether anything of the game could be saved and shown. We hope to get in touch with those involved very soon and save something of this promising game. Just how far had it got overall? Was it almost complete?
Thanks to Adrian Simpson, he had been in touch with Jon Rocatis and asked some questions about his time on the game, which we have been given permission to include here:
Interview with Jon Rocatis (Courtesy of Adrian Simpson)
How did you first come across the Amiga?
I of course knew Amiga from magazines and the likes but I didn’t know anyone with an Amiga before I met Simon and Dennis. I was actually leaning towards getting an Atari ST back then.
I understand that you, Dennis Hansen and Simon Holm were friends. How did you meet?
We happened to all be in the same class in the same school after grammar school
What made you decide to make a game together with Dennis and Simon?
We became friends and we all liked games and all had skills in different areas so it just came naturally from that I think.
When did the development start?
In late 1989 I would say.
Which games were an inspiration for Sergei?
Quite a few, but I think top 3 is Rick Dangerous, Gods and Black Tiger (arcade).
How did you split up the development effort?
Simon did music and sound effects, Dennis graphics and animations and I did the coding.
What was the plot and theme of Sergei?
The plot was something that wasn’t there from beginning I think – we just wanted to make a cool platformer and then later on came up with something.
How many levels featured in your game?
I think there is about 4 or 5.
The game seems to have had a few different names: Sergei, Sergei: The Showdown and Sergei and the Isle of Belphegor. Did these represent different versions of the game or just different names?
Those are all the same game – we had some trouble on deciding on something we all liked. Or something we all liked for a more than a few months.
Did you target a different model of Amiga throughout the development process or was it always intended to run on all Amigas?
We talked about going for AGA at the end but that ended up just being talk. It was made for A500 512K Chip / 512K Fast from the beginning.
Which programming language and tools did you use for Sergei?
The game itself is written 100% in 68K assembler. All the tools were written in C. I didn’t know any C at the time so I had to learn that so I could write the level editor. The editor started out as an Intuition app but later on I started using MUI (Magic User Interface) which was way nicer for doing dialogs.
Your development team was called SideFX and later Kimera Studios. Why did the name change?
That is just two names of many :) Again, we had a hard time on coming up with something we all liked.
Did you encounter any particular technical challenges during development?
More or less everything since we had to learn everything. The thing I had most problems with was the level scroll system – it ended up being pretty complicated and there is still one hard-to-reproduce bug in there :)
When did development stop?
Beginning of 1995.
How complete (%) was Sergei?
Around 75% maybe. It needs a level or two more and the end-sequence is very rough.
Why was the game unfinished?
A combination of the demise of Commodore and that we got real jobs and all that.
Is there any chance of finishing and releasing Sergei on the Amiga?
Slim but not impossible. The game has some issues like you can run out of ammo and then you have no way to kill enemies for example. Also we have a shop where you can buy items but prices and how much gold you can get on a level is not at all coordinated.
It’s also very hard and full of things and traps that we made to prank each other and probably would only annoy actual gamers :)
We still have all the original source code and graphics and it has been transferred from my ageing A4000. Some years ago I ported it to C++ and PC.
Are you still in the games industry today?
Yeah, Simon and I are still doing games.
What are your favourite Amiga games?
Too many good ones! Maybe Kick Off 2, SpeedBall 2 and Hybris.
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It is amazing to hear that the development has been backed up, and we hope that perhaps it could be finished some day, or something of the game added to the site. Watch this space!
With huge thanks to Anonymous Contributor for pulling most of these archived links, details and information together and also to archive.org for making it possible to save much of this information. Also to Gzegzolka on EAB for saving some other screenshots too and for Adrian Simpson for the great interview!
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