As with Mag Max, it seems that there was another conversion in the works for Breakthru, which saw a terrible release on the C64 in the end by US Gold.
Canvas were working on a Breakthru conversion for US Gold, but for reasons currently unknown, it was abandoned. Ironically, both Mag Max and Breakthru in their release versions – featured music by Fred Gray!
Graphics were being handled by Pete Graylish, who had produced various graphics on the C64 – including the loading screen to Miami Vice.
He unfortunately couldn’t recall anything about the conversion or what happened, but did provide this rare unfinished loading screen. Maybe the game was cancelled very early on perhaps?
If you know more, please get in touch!
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So even though Steve Calvert (coder) and Simon Butler (graphics) had did the completed/released version Breakthru at Canvas, it is possible that loading picture was meant to be used had that game used the Procass tape loader (which was a standard tape loader used by U.S. Gold/Gremlin tapes at that time). But it was scrapped and the release version used the Novaload tape loader.
Hi Duc – that’s interesting! Could I just check where you have confirmed that Steve Calvert did the code for the released version, and Simon Butler the graphics? At present – both the artist and coder credits are undisclosed in the likes of Gamebase64, so I just thought i’d check. If Steve is indeed the coder (and there is a Steve mentioned on the map screen as “LiL Steve”, though would have thought that had been the artist credit?), then this indeed means that Pete’s loading screen was for the released game.