A bit of a surprise spotting in the preview section of Zzap!64 issue 52 in 1989. It seems that the Last Crusade action game was to feature multi-coloured based graphics instead of the hi-res ones we all know.
What we initially guessed was that the developers found it hard to get the lighting effect working on the first level with multi-colour graphics, so switched things to hi-res. Or overall that it was felt the low res graphics were just not working and were re-done from scratch.
However, in the comments on the game on Lemon 64’s entry, Mark Tait in 2003 says that he was originally working on the game and had to hand it over due to having to commit to music developments.
Could it be therefore that this version was Mark’s original version, and the released game was a version started from scratch? More soon we hope from Mark on this!
Would be very interesting to find this earlier version of the game, complete with a more colourful status panel. It might be very difficult to find nowadays now.
What is interesting is that Zzap Italia reviewed the game, showing the colour screenshots (see scans below). Surely they must have been provided preview screenshots from Newsfield by accident to use?
If you know anything more about this earlier version, then please get in touch!
Contributions: Stephen Stuttard (Hi-res scan)
