Games That Weren't^®

1991 U.S. Gold

Platforms: ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 (GTW64 entry), Amiga, Atari ST, PC

Back in the days before SEGA’s trusty blue mascot appeared on the scene, the company would licence its various games to the likes of Activision, and U.S. Gold – resulting in conversions of Afterburner, Outrun and many more for home computers of the time.

When Sonic first appeared, it blew everyone away – including U.S. Gold, who were keen to snag the home computer rights quickly, and were very confident that they would get them given their current relationship with SEGA.

Magazines such as ACE, C&VG, Amiga Power and Zzap64 all reported that U.S. Gold had got the rights as well. So, it seemed set that the speedy blue hedgehog would be making its way to home computer platforms by 1992. But then the news trail went completely dead.

Sonic became a huge success for SEGA, finally giving them their “Mario beater” – and a title that could help shift consoles for the company. It was therefore decided to keep their new found mascot as an exclusive to their own platforms for the foreseeable future, and no doubt much to U.S. Gold’s disappointment.

The question is whether anything ever get started at all at U.S. Gold before the plug was pulled. It would seem that development was never started, and plans to convert the game to home computers remained just “a plan”.

When we asked games tester Simon Hadlington many moons ago about any potential conversions, he felt it was all a load of crap and that they were never going to convert them. Wayne Billingham, who was working at Tiertex at the time, also had no knowledge of ever seeing one of the team doing anything on any conversion either (Tiertex of course being a popular choice for U.S. Gold to give conversion work to).

However, Italian games magazine The Games Machine featured a rather interesting preview after their review of the game for the Mega Drive. Here, they talked about U.S. Gold doing the home conversions – but with screenshots supposedly from what looked to be an Amiga conversion. These were photos that were reportedly sent through to the magazine from U.S. Gold. Before you say it, this wasn’t an April edition of the magazine either.

When you look closely at the screens, they do seem very suspect and are likely to be just static mock-ups. The “Press button” font looks very Deluxe Paint’esq. Codetapper mentions that the font is also the default one used in the low-res AMOS software – so could it have been a quick and nasty mock-up in AMOS?

The question is, who produced them? Was it done by someone at U.S. Gold to create interest in the press, or perhaps done as a genuine test by someone of how the game could look with an Amiga palette?

Hopefully some day we will learn more, and if anyone knows of more mock up screens out there, please let us know. Those hoping that a conversion could be found someday will be disappointed we feel – however, considering the quality of many of U.S. Gold’s SEGA games that were converted, is it perhaps a blessing in disguise?

Thankfully, in modern times – we have been lucky enough to see unofficial conversions and developments – including an impressive one for the Commodore 64 that was based on the SEGA Master System edition of the game. There have also been numerous incomplete attempts too, which probably need their own GTW pages in the future.

With thanks to Sega Retro and Stephen Stuttard for the scans, Codetapper for the AMOS suggestion and Chris McAleer for the suggestion of covering.

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