Up next is what we originally believed to be a GTW title thanks to Jason Kelk who highlighted it from a personal website, and which we don’t think has been spotted just yet until now.
The game is your typical 1984 shooter and has that early C64 feel to it, but with the action scrolling from right to left. You control a space ship which shoots both bombs and lasers using a single button, and you must destroy as many crafts as you can, including ground targets such as tanks and buggies.
Super Phoenix seemed like it didn’t quite make it back in the day from French company Loriciels in 1984, for reasons we were not quite sure of. However, the game’s author Lionel Briand got in touch with GTW and gave us a bit of background to the game:
"Like a lot of boy at this time I discovered the Commodore 64 computer when I was 14 years old in 1983, my father (Bernard Briand) bought one to learn me data processsing software. Quickly I developped a game in basic language but I was limited by the speed of the basic interpreter, so I decided to buy an assembler (called ARROW) for the 6510 Processor.
I couldn’t stop coding and trying all the possibilities offered by the commodore 64 after school and during the night, and day after day a real game appeared . My father who was a software developer at the time became interested in the project and began helping me with the landscape graphics, my sister wrote the music and I translated it to the computer synthesizer.
At the end my father and I had developed a real arcade game .
At this time of maturity we decided to propose the game to a Game company, So we went to Paris to propose the game to several companies. Loriciels was interested in publishing that game during one year because they hadn’t developed a lot of games on commodore 64 and it was for them an opportunity.
So we coded two versions, a french version and a Spanish version. It was a real success for us to see our game in France between 1984 to 1985. After one year they decided to stop work on commodore 64. What else, it was a very good period of work and a personal game passion. What could I add? The Commodore 64 is still a very good machine a I still have the Commodore 64 on which we developed the Game. (it works fine)".
So there we have it. The game actually was released, but in limited form within France (And we believe Spain). The game overall therefore is not a GTW, but is one which required preserving and has been preserved now. It is not the best ever C64 game, but is well worth checking out after all these years of being in the wilderness. A big thanks to the game’s author for sharing their work! …
Case closed!
Contributions: Jason Kelk, Lionel Briand
