Games That Weren't 64^®

To be honest, this entry into GTW64 has been a little overdue. Paint and Create was part of a new “Fun School Special” educational range which was introduced around 1993 time across all the main formats by Europress Software.

Many Fun School games have been released over the years for the C64, and Paint and Create was to be yet another.

Reviewed in Commodore Format 28 (January 1993), it received an excellent score of 91%. The game was only available on cassette and contained 6 sub-parts which would be loaded in separately, including:

• Interactive Intro,
• Make a Monster
• Card Creator,
• Art Alive,
• Jigsaw
• Music Maestro

For years though, no digital copy has existed and no-one has come forward to say that they own a copy. Amiga and PC versions do surface occasionally on Ebay and digital copies for both exist.

Was it just that the game didn’t get to sell too many copies as the C64 began to die out? Or did Europress decide that the C64’s time had come and decided not to release the game? Europress continued to produce the Fun School series for many years afterwards.

We managed to get hold of Mark Healey, and he confirmed that he was the graphic artist behind the C64 version. Chris Walsh (of Murder! fame) did the coding. Sadly none of the 3 people potentially involved have anything of the game any longer.

However, it was always odd that Commodore Format for several months had the game on special offer to its readers after the review. Surely had it never been released, it would not have been advertised for that long? With a final search, this time we found what seemed to be a C64 version on Jasper’s Retro Cavern.

Sure enough, there was a C64 label on the front and a tape! GTW64 quickly purchased the title, and within a few days it arrived. The package has been quickly preserved in full and passed onto Gamebase 64 for posterity. Another game saved and one which you can now download if you wish.

For what it is, its a very polished piece of work and worthy of the 91% rating. Nice to finally put the last missing Fun School title to rest. And overall it confirms that the game was in fact released – just in very limited numbers it seems. As a result, it is thankfully…

…Case closed!

Contributions: Mark Healey, Denis Evans

Supporting content

• Downloads
• Gallery
• Creator speaks

Available downloads

• Game_Paint-and-create (zip)

Gallery

Creator speaks

Mark Healey speaks about work on Paint and Create:

“This is one my proud moments – I actually designed a large portion of this and did all the graphics – I can’t remember if I did P.C first or C64, but I’d love to find a disk image of this one. I don’t remember who coded the c64 version – it was either Andy Mucho or Chris Walsh, or both.”