John Phillips is linked to Roadstar XRi, and Your Sinclair detailed the game as follows:
“Due in late August, it’s described as a racing shoot-em-up puzzle game (well of course), in which you fizz around 3-D tracks on an air vacuum (eh?), shooting your path through the maze of obstacles. Sounds weird.”
It almost sounds like Eliminator, but not quite. John was also linked to this too.
Now, Roadstar XRi was mentioned in The Games Machine as coming soon to Spectrum and C64, so there is the C64 confirmation for you.
We know little more apart from that though and the above that we’ve managed to uncover. So now its down to finding John to learn more and see if infact this was just the early stages of Eliminator for Hewson in 1988. Evidence so far suggests that it is indeed the same game and underwent some changes. But why?
Well, thanks to Nemo – we learn that the name was simply changed as it sounded a bit boring. So the game was released as Eliminator and just had a name change.
Case closed!
Contributions: Nemo
Supporting content
Update history
26/07/16 – Game name change confirmed – case closed.
;-) Had thought you were already aware of this 1 Frank, that’s one of my Q’s as Rogue Trooper.
Completely missed that, sorry Ross!
:-) That was one of my Q’s as Rogue Trooper I put to Andrew.
As a side effect to Astaroth research
https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/astaroth/comment-page-1/#comment-3707
i believe the hypothesis that Roadstar Xri = Eliminator is confirmed .
Aside
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0001600
there is
“Q:Some of your games changed name during development (Eliminator was originally ‘Roadstar XRi and Astaroth originally known as Azimodius, if I’m thinking straight) any reasons for the name changes?
-I remember we changed the name for Eliminator because we felt Roadstar was a bit boring. I’m not sure about the other one.”
Source : http://www.retroisle.com/pubspotlight.php?n=Hewson%20Consultants%20Ltd
Thanks Nemo, will update that now! :)