According a text source, Mutant was to be the next game released by Kris Hatlelid after Frantic Freddie.
When Kris visted Lemon 64 once, he couldn’t remember any games that he worked on that were never released. It might be a hard one to try and find anything more about. We got in touch with Kris where he said the following:
"I started Mutant on the Vic-20 as a prototype around a combination sort of Defender meets Choplifter. Imagine defender, but set on earth and having to rescue people from a city under seige from Aliens.
Goals were 1) rescue people, 2) preserve city. Frantic Freddie seemed like a better and more original concept (although it was pretty derivitive from a Vic-20 game called Panic City by a friend of mine that I worked with – Vince Sorrenson), and honestly more acheivable so we ran with that concept, and thought we’d get around to Mutant, but after I did some prototype work, it never really gelled. Additionally, Astroblitz came out and I wasn’t sure I could do better than that. ;-)"
When asked about the C64 version that was to be done…
"Sadly, Mutant (which I thought would be the next game from Greg and myself) never made it past prototype. I got sucked into BBS and copy protection development (which did get used by EA, where I later worked full time), and Greg and I kind of drifted apart.
I guess the good news is that I’ve taken an interest in remaking some of my old ideas, so it’s possible I get around to dusting off the concept as a mini-game. Unfortunately the source code is long since dead."
So that could be it… but it seems like Mutant is sadly dead and buried. Could Greg have a copy still?… Or is this it?
It looks almost like a open and shut case…
Contributions: Gary, Kris Hatlelid
