Legend was a rather nifty RPG released by Mindscape back in 1991 which has gone down as one of the best RPG’s on the Amiga. Originally though it was due to be released by Mirrorsoft before their collapse, and also on the C64 too!….
Development began to start with on the Atari ST after negotiations were concluded with Mirrorsoft, Amiga, C64 and PC versions were also expected. Z80 versions were never on the cards, as poor sales of Bloodwych on the Spectrum and Amstrad left the developers feeling that their day had come and passed.
Pete James produced the start of some graphics on the Commodore 64 and in an executable form which never really progressed beyond a rudimentary proof-of-concept demo. Pete James recalled to Richard Hewison that they found a way to make the characters look more colourful by having four colour characters but displaying a sprite behind them. Richard Hewison recalled seeing the demo back in the early days of development, as he was Project Manager for the game at the time before Mirrorsoft collapsed. He recalled seeing the characters walking into one of the isometric rooms, but thats about it. It certainly didn’t get any further before getting dropped – and was never really playable.
The reason given for abandoning the C64 version? … It was down simply to a lack of memory – otherwise it could well have been completed and released. Not sure though if Mindscape would have carried on with the conversion, as they never released Paperboy 2 or Captain Planet on the C64 like planned.
When asked if there were any remains of the C64 game, Tag said that he may still have some development disks – but packed away. Pete sady no longer had anything from back then. All hopes therefore are pinned on Tag digging out some disks, but Tag is very busy these days and it may never happen.
The Amiga version did surface and did very well. Later a GBA version was planned, but sadly never got released.
We just have to hope that we some day will see something of this game, otherwise it will be lost to time…
Contributions: Richard Hewison, Tag, Pete James
Rather nice making of… in Retro Gamer magazine issue 68.C64 version mentioned along with GBA version (90% complete, but sadly no publisher).