1993 Radical Software
Platform: Amstrad CPC (possibly Plus range)
With the infamous Amstrad version of Street Fighter 2 never going to appear, a fan of the machine would take matters into their own hands back in 1993 with the development of Lethal Moves. Not without the nudge of a popular magazine of the time.
The game was being developed by Rob Buckley, who ran Radical Software in the early 1990s to try and save the Amstrad by producing and selling new games for the machine. After the fuss with Street Fighter 2, Amstrad Action asked Rob if he could develop a clone – and that they would really push it if he did.
The game would have multiple characters like Street Fighter 2 with the usual special moves (at least one per player) and usual one and two player modes. Rob suggested that the game would be a 128K only program, as each fighter would take up 16K, and with all the moves, info and other data – up to 25K per fighter.
There were features like parallax scrolling in the background, even at an early stage – though there was a chance this may get dropped at a later date.
In an interview with Retro Gamer magazine in issue 83, Rob revealed that he had produced the core routines and had one fighter working. However, when Dave Golder suggested the next issue of the magazine would be the last – he stopped development.
Thanks to cpcwiki.eu, we learn that Rob had posted to comp.sys.amstrad.8bit in 2000, revealing:
“Lethal Moves was 80% coded, 20% graphics. Shame really cos this was probably the best bit of z80 coding I’ve done, which isn’t saying much.”
Nothing of the game has managed to surface unfortunately, apart from some screens that were found lurking with the Smart Plus art package. We’ve included these here, but with something playable developed – we hope that it could still exist and hope to learn more from Rob soon.
With thanks to https://www.cpcwiki.eu/ for screenshots + details and also Stephen (Mort) Stuttard for the hi-res scans.
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