Back in 1996, an enthusiastic Wayne Wormersley got working with Jon Wells on a title called Crash Course.
The game was to be a sort of update to the classic Spectrum/Ultimate title ‘Trans Am’, or at least based on the game due to its 8 way scrolling. Wayne worked very hard on a graphics set for the game – Wayne recalls about the project:
"Crash Course was meant to be a collaboration project between me and Jon back in 1996. I did the graphics for a full level and a bitmap screen to advertise the game which isnt quite complete. Jon originally suggested doing the game as an 8 way scroller like an old Spectrum game whose name escapes me but then decided that he was going to use his 10TH DAN scrolling routine for the game. This game didnt get done due to me being so slow, I was incredibly neurotic ( I still am ! ) about getting the graphics absolutely perfect.
The graphics are in Saracen Art files I think there are about 16 files in total with bits and bats here and there. Jon has a utility that will grab the graphics form the screen and dump them in to a character set. Perhaps someone could approach him and suggest he completes this game, the graphics are rather nice even after all this time….."
At this stage we are unsure about how far the game got code wise, but we believe not much was ever started. And we believe that after all this time the game is likely to have been cancelled unfortunately. The idea of a C64 version of Trans Am would have been very welcome (And i’m sure Jon would have done a great job, considering he was a fan of the game).
We hope to find out some more soon about the game, its plans and how far any code got. We are now to chase a few leads to see if we can get hold of the graphics to show and preserve on the website.
More soon we hope!
Contributions: Andrew Fisher, Richard Bayliss, Wayne Womersley
