More from Mastertronic, this time from Binary Design who did a number of titles for the budget label.
Speedboat Assassin was being worked on by Paul Gill and Haydn Dalton. Hayden was doing the graphics, with Paul Gill on the code.
The game was in the mould of Live and Let Die, and described as a Fire and Forget game on water. The Amiga and Spectrum versions managed to make it out, but sadly the C64 version did not.
It seems that the game was fairly playable on the C64 and was only a month away from completion (after around 6 months worth of work done on it). It seemed to be all shaping up well, but then Paul wasn’t getting paid for his work and left in the end before it could be finished off.
Paul was asked if the game still existed – but sadly he didn’t keep anything from back then. Haydn also never kept any of his work from back then (apart from of course Solar Jetman), so it is looking very bleak.
Could well be case closed i’m afraid…
Contributions: Haydn Dalton, Martin Smith, Paul Gill, Leszek Chmielewski
Supporting content
Gallery
Creator speaks
Paul Gill talks about work on 3D Boat Assassin:
“This would have been the begining of 1989 when I was working for Binary Design Ltd. In their infinite wisdom they decided to let a bunch of us work from home hence making a saving on renting an office. Alas, they also decided to make a saving by not paying us.
With no money coming in I- no pun intended- jumped ship and got another job.
The game was a 3d shoot ’em up. I remember rewriting the 3d engine several times before I had it running properly. I think I spent about 6 weeks working on the game, at home, before they stopped paying me what I was owed. My main recollection was that I existed on a diet of cup-a-soup, eek!
As I remember the core of the game was pretty much done before the money ran out. I guess another month of tweaking and it would have been finished. Shame really. ”
Haydn Dalton had the following to say:
“Yes I worked on 3D Boat Assassin, I knew it as Speedboat Assassin, so I’m not sure why the name was changed. This was the 2nd or 3rd game I’d worked on at Binary Design, but it was never released and I’m not sure why. Sorry I can’t be of more help, but I didnt keep anything from my days at BD, you may want to try and hunt down Paul Gill, he was the programmer on it.”
