Andrew Challis is somewhat a bit of a C64 legend, being the coder of two particular games I grew up with and enjoyed a lot (Into The Eagle’s Nest and Trollie Wallie) and also produced some cool loader systems for Interceptor (including Micro Painter loader game for Players).
His very last C64 release shouldn’t have been Into The Eagle’s Nest, but in fact a game called Satar for the same company Pandora.
We know very little about the game just yet, but it was believed to have been a space shoot’em up with adventure elements to it.
For reasons currently unknown, it was never released – and was shelved. Andrew then moved onto pastures new and no more was seen by Andrew on the C64. Andrew decided to take a break from coding after 5 years or so, and left Interceptor to work for BT. The game then shortly afterwards lost momentum and others moved onto new projects. Apparently the game was previewed at a 1986/87 computer exhibition.
We are hoping to find out more about the game very soon, including if anything of its development ever survived (design docs, early demo builds etc). Sadly Andrew has confirmed that he no longer has anything regarding the game, so we hope to find Robin Chapman to see if by chance he kept anything.
Contributions: Graeme Mason, Andrew Challis
Supporting content
Creator speaks
Andrew Challis speaks about work on Satar:
“Satar was a game idea which was developed by me, Kevin Parker (Spectrum / Amstrad programmer) and Robin Chapman (graphic artist). I left Interceptor soon after it was started. I think the game development lost momentum and the others moved onto new projects. The game was previewed at a computer exhibition in 1986/1987. I’m not sure which one. I don’t have any of the Satar code or images.”
