Games That Weren't 64^®

A rather interesting story with another game which had an earlier version … but one which was infinately better it seems than what was eventually released.

Airwolf 2 was released on the Hitpak collection as the final game was awful. It was a basic Nemesis clone with all of the good things missing.

However, it seems there is a rather bizzare link between Airwolf 2 and Starline… You see, Airwolf 2 was indeed to be a clone of Nemesis in terms of gameplay, but also was to feature some awesome graphics in bitmap mode…

Arthur Gill had the following to say after checking out Starline…

“I told you a while ago that one of the gamkes Stu was working on had graphics that looked justlike the arcade version of “nemesis” and was infinitely better than the official konami c64 version that was released;. The game was “Airwolf 2”.

The ‘bitmap scroll’ screen you mention in the ‘shots’ section shows the mountain from nemesis, and that is the GFX’s that stu originally was sent! I recall it perfectly, as he created the twin volcano spitting fireballs section (heck entire level as I recall 20 years later) as a demo. The trees also look similar, but in “starline” they are much larger then the ones Stu had received form Bob.

It seems the GFX’s did eventually get used elsewhere.. :) This is what Airwolf 2 was ‘originally’ going to look (a bit) like. You can tell Stu my memory still works, If you like!”

Very interesting indeed… it is now a case of checking what Bob and Stu have to say and see if a demo can be found… I wonder how much it improves over the released game. Why was this one scrapped? – was it the same reasons as with Starline and Touchlight?

Another interesting bit of info is that the game that was released actually has an entire level tucked away which was accessible only via a SYS code. Anyone know what this was or how to access it? Apparently there was a poke in Zzap 64 disclosing the extra level (which was dropped apparently for being too easy).

It would be interesting to locate Stu Cook’s demos from CNET which had the fireball spitting feature. Does anyone have it?

More information needed…

Contributions: Arthur Gill, Jason Kelk