Nuclear Nick was one of a few titles advertised by Electric Dreams back in issue 8 of Zzap 64 games. Nuclear Nick was to be part of a double pack with a game called Scooter.
It never quite surfaced, but after a bit of digging – we find that the game was released by Americana Software on the Atari
The game looks very much like Ollies Follies, which was released on the C64 by Americana. This suggested that Frank Cohen was the developer, but Ron Rosen is listed as developer for the Atari and did develop Polar Pierre on the C64. Ron later in December 2022 confirmed it was indeed his codebase and Frank did some of the graphics.
Art Huff has confirmed that he also did artwork (at least on the Atari version), but sadly no longer has any of his work. Art sadly passed away in later years, we were informed by Ron.
Thanks to Rich Hinton on the Commodore 64 Facebook group – Rich had come forward with a series of U.S. Gold master disks which he had from his childhood days, when a friend of the family would give them copies to try out. Within the set was a preview copy of Nuclear Nick, and was apparently still under development.
Rich passed on the disks to Peepo, where Sailor of Triad did some tidy ups for a proper release for the first time.
Overall the game is very similar to the likes of Ollies Follies, but it is a great discovery – and hopefully we will find out more and if the game was ever actually completed. Check it out!
Contributions: Brendan Phoenix, Rich Hinton, Sailor, Peepo, SLC, Jazzcat, Ron Rosen
Supporting content
Available downloads
- Preview_Nuclear-nick (zip)
Gallery
Update history
19/12/22 – Credit confirmations from Ron Rosen.
