Yes, we are aware that Nightbreed was indeed released by Ocean back in 1990… but that was the arcade and an interactive movie game. Ocean had the licence to do three games, Arcade, Arcade Adventure (which never had a C64 consideration) and an RPG title. The arcade and adventure games got a release in some shape or form, but the RPG disappeared after initial mentions in the press.
The RPG game was being developed by Imagitec and was being overseen by David Wightman who was the project manager. The only programmer name we have is the Amiga programmer Adrian Waterhouse. Music was being done by Barry Leitch, but this is not in HVSC unfortunately at the moment.
Thanks to an interview with Kristi Louise Herd at C64.com , we learn that the game was being developed under the name of Cabal. She described the game as being a medieval themed title with full screen backgrounds. Unfortunately it never got off the ground as the game was being written and designed as they went along. Kristi sadly no longer had any of her disks, which were stolen some years ago.
We got in touch with Dave Wightman who mentioned that he had the music (Amiga and C64) on an Amiga floppy that he has been threatening to move to PC for some time. It is possible that the source code is on a 5mb Atari ST hard drive that has not been turned on since he left Imagitec. It’s unsure if it still works. We are hopeful that Dave will have a sift through at some point and see what is left over.
The game was itself was pretty solid as a playable game with all the sub-systems and a few levels in place. It is not quite remembered why the game was scrapped, but most of the actual code was re-used to become Daemons Gate. The C64 code was actually ported over to the Lynx for the game, though it is unknown how much of the code survived from Nightbreed.
It seems that overall it would be the flop of the movie which would result in the final 3rd game being cancelled. Hopefully some day we’ll find something of it.
Contributions: Jason Kelk, Barry Leitch, Dave Whiteman, Romppainen, Andreas Wallstrom, Fabrizio Bartoloni, Simon Golding
Luca just told me who did reply, it was an ex-Iguana Entertainment person who worked on early, canned version of Turok II along with other canned titles such as:
“Future Zone”, “Immortal Hockey” and a game based on the Tim Burton movie “Mars Attacks”….
So should make for a good read when interview goes live.
From what Luca has told me, of 11 ‘recent’ sets of interview Q’s he sent out (for the book and website) only 1 so far has come back in.
With regards to myself, 1’ve 1 we’ve had in (ex-Domark) for months, but we cannot put out online as it needs to be unlocked, person who replied needs to proof-read it so his answers don’t offend anyone he once worked with.
At least 3 others have been kind enough to let me know the are snowed under with work.
A couple i’ve heard nothing back from since Q’s were sent out……
But then that’s par the course with research like this is it not?.
Q’s have been forwarded i think.
They join the those from 15 others Unseen64 has approached lately and yet to hear any replies from, then there is the 7 or so i’m still waiting to hear back from, so it’s kinda a place your bets thing as to wether replies come in.
Hi Ross, didn’t get them sadly?
With a huge amount of luck, i might be able to get some more info on this.
Just forwarding the Q (and a whole heap more) to a source, well Unseen64 will be on my behalf.
Fingers crossed :-)
Awesome, look forward to it Ross :)
Interesting….
I’d read elsewhere the game was finished and delivered to Ocean, but Ocean just ‘sat on it’, rather than release it and Gary Bracey had refused to say why.
So it looks like yet another UK Mag claim was a load of cobblers.
Well, on the amiga\st\pc there was the Nightbreed interactive movie as well as the arcade game, but of course this rpg was a totally different game. I had never encountered Daemonsgate, so that was interesting to find that connection to nightbreed. I wonder if the interactive movie was ever planned for the 64 since Elvira 2 Jaws of Cerberus was on 64 I never say any game is totally off the cards for the 8-bit wonder :)