I have to admit, I was surprised to see that a Miami Vice game actually went unreleased when Frank sent me the details of this one. Surely a game based on such a huge TV show could find its way onto the market? A little digging around brought forth possible reasons as to why it may not have come to fruition.
Firstly there had already been a Miami Vice game released three years earlier across the 8-bit platforms. Its not that perhaps the market was saturated already, but the fact the original game got such bad reviews, the C64 version getting a mere 30% in Zzap! Magazine. On the other hand, a successful use of the license would surely have overcome the hurdle of a stinker of a first game; a different company would have produced it after all.
Another puzzler is the fact it was planned on being released around Christmas 1989. Surely a game based on a hit TV show, released at Christmas, would be like a license to print money?
Looking at the databases on World of Spectrum, GB64 and CPC Zone, it seems that Softek weren’t exactly prolific games developers, and their only entries I could find on WoS are for games compilers and on CPC Zone. I only found one game entry. On GB64 there were relatively more, with eight entries going back to 1983, whether it was the same Softek trading in 1983 as 1989 I simply don’t know, but perhaps there was an inexperience or inability to get games onto the market, or maybe there wasn’t enough of a cash flow to see
Miami Vice to fruition after paying for the license. Certainly their last entry on GB64 is from 1988, the year before Miami Vice was due to be released suggesting they were struggling by the end of the eighties.
Nothing else was known about the game, the only reference we had is a passing mention in Zzap magazine, so we don’t even know the possible storyline or style of the game, but I’d guess that this is yet another game to fall by the wayside whilst a dying software house tried to save itself from going under.
Martin Smith dug out some info however: http://www.worldofspectrum.org /infoseekpub.cgi?regexp= ^Softek+Software+International +Ltd$ shows that Softek released quite a few Spectrum games and also owned the ACE and Edge labels. It’s very likely that they folded before getting the game released. http://hol.abime.net/search .php?N_ref_publisher=182 suggests that they did one game in 1991 but nothing else after 1989.
A Capstone advertisement was found in a US sales catalogue from 1989, so it does seem that a game was on the cards. It is currently listed as abandonware on the PC Dos platform.
Martin/Stadium 64 then in October 2017 dug out some flyers from a sealed copy of Intracorp’s Pro Football Facts and Predications (released in 1989). This shows that Miami Vice was supposed to be released in July 1989.
Martin suggests that the Capstone and Softek versions could be two separate editions, though my theory so far is that Softek were producing the game and Capstone to distribute in the US. We need to get proper credits though to fully confirm. Martin suggests that Capstone released the Tynesoft version of Superman, so it seems plausible. Maybe even Tynesoft were involved?
More details needed, but progress being made!
Contributions: Andrew Fisher, Martin Smith, Martin/Stadium 64
Not to be confused with Miami Dice I assume? :) Lovely Whittaker song. Like a Casio MT-88 keyboards default rythm section, tune #08 (or thereabout).
It is strange that early advertisements show quite a number of platforms, incluing Commodore 64 and Amiga, while the game was only released for IBM PC and Atari ST. Maybe that was the confusion with the 1986 game of the same name for Commodore, or maybe the game turned out to be so bad and unwelcomed, that other editions were not realized after all. And the game was not actually good, indeed.
But this game has nothing to do with Softek – it was developed by Capstone / IntraCorp (and Richard Leinecker in particular). The description of the Commodore 64 / Amiga versions is exactly the same as for PC and Atari ST (with the exception of airplanes – that could be something that never made it into the game).
Hi Uka, it could well be that the cancellations were due to the poor reception of the IBM version. Certainly worth considering!
We’re not sure just yet if Softek were producing the C64 version for Capstone (possibly from spec) or if there were indeed two separate developments overall that were being produced at the same time. There is an instance where Capstone released the Tynesoft version of Superman, so it is plausible that Softek were doing the work for them at least for the C64 edition.
But it is also very plausible that we are dealing with two very different developments. Ideally, we need to find someone who was involved at Capstone to try and reveal more details.
I found to floppies for miami vice but I’m missing disc 2. The 1989 release for the ibm