A small entry for what was to be a game produced to try and help the dying C64 gaming market and contribute something for people to play.
Being produced in the early 90’s, Gunz was a SEUCK effort where you controlled a tank and did battle against jets and other tanks. It was first brought up by Rohan on the Lemon 64 forum whilst recollecting about their Waking Dreams Software group.
A guy called Maverick was working on the game, and spent a few years on and off producing the title. According to Rohan, the game was rock hard! It was suggested that the game was to be used as a covertape game on a paper based magazine being produced called “Commodore Player”. As the magazine was never to be, the game never got properly released into the world apart from a few friends who were given a copy.
Unfortunately, around 1999 – the guys moved away from the C64 and on to pastures new. Disks were forgotten about and now the game is at large. Unfortunately Maverick no longer has any disks.
Rohan is still however in the process of going through his work disks with a fine tooth comb, so it is hoped that he may stumble across the final game (which he believes he was given at one point). It is hoped that some day this game could be preserved. Do you by chance have a copy?
Contributions: Rohan
Supporting content
Creator speaks
Rohan recollects about Gunz:
Full thread can be found here.
“Maverick learned to program assembly on the C64 at a young age, which was I’d imagine pretty rare at that stage in the C64’s life. He was self-taught, having only the C64 Programmer’s Reference Guide to guide him. We were both in the first year of secondary school, where we met in about 1991. We both had an enthusiasm for the C64, fuelled by Zzap! 64 and then Commodore Force. Maverick’s early efforts included Gunz, a vertically-scrolling SEUCK shmup that only masochists would enjoy, and Blurg!, a tape-based magazine. At that early stage, most of our friends were still using their C64’s, and nobody had disk drives. The recession had hit 80’s Ireland hard, so by the time the mid-90’s came around and young kids like us got into the scene, Commodore was on the brink of death and there were few to no people selling second-hand, and the only people selling new 1541’s were those who had stock left – and they were still expensive even then, I remember. This explains why Blurg! was a tape magazine.”
Referring to including Gunz on their magazine Commodore Player…
“I also remember that we were going to distribute Gunz on a covertape as a trial. We were really trying! But we had no real audience, no way of really distributing Commodore Player. And so, it died an early death.”
With some more recollections:
“In his spare time, or when he got tired of coding, Maverick kept improving Gunz, though he never really changed the difficulty level as I remember. Son of a bitch, that was a hard game! It was a tank-based shmup, and you had to fight other tanks and possibly aircraft. A good few people around our town played Gunz, but I doubt anyone remembers it. As it was due to be released on a covertape with Commodore Player, and as Maverick kept working on it, it did I suppose fall under the Waking Dreams label.
I guess Gunz was finished in early ’95, then. I found another mention in another noter but it was just one from me to Maverick accusing him of being a masochist for designing such a difficult game. Gripping stuff, I know. Other small bits and pieces included a mention of Maverick doing extractions on audio tunes, likely for the Music Mix that came out a year later in ’96, and something from me about how I was putting all this music to good use. What use? No idea!
When I get the new desk in here I will have finally set the C64 up properly and I will go through every disk, and clean every disk if needs be, to see what I can find. You never know, I may find my complete copy of Gunz… that’d be fantastic. Best not get my hopes up, though, if the best I’ve found so far is mentions of work in noters.”
I should have done this years ago, but as a small (and final) update, I have gone through all my disks and unfortunately I don’t appear to still have my copy of Gunz. I’m confused as to how as I had everything we worked on in one disk container, and I wouldn’t have put the disk anywhere else – and that container has stayed with me for all this time, untouched even for years. I have it with me still. But, no Gunz.
Very sorry to have to report this. Keep up the good work here, Frank :)
No worries Rohan and thanks very much for searching for us! :)