Already creating the cult classic Wizball, Sensible Software tried to take their success even further with a new game, and with a new perspective altogether.
Sensible Software decided to take a trip into the world of 3D games with an ambitious Elite style space trading game. The game was to be in the same style as Elite, taking over various space stations to help create a new universe which was destroyed after a huge war.
Most notable about Sensible Software’s promising game, was the inclusion of fast filled 3D vector graphics. Something which had not really been seen on a C64 before at that point in time.
Sensible Software released a sneak preview rolling-demo of all the ships and descriptions to readers of Zzap!64 on their first ever cover tape, The Zzap Sampler. This was an advert for a big game which Sensible were hoping to create, with the hope that a publisher would see and want to sign it up.
The game’s name “The Day The Universe Died” was only a working title, and readers of Zzap were invited to help come up with a new name. What was the winning name?…. Dominion.
What happened?
It subsequently disappeared off the face of the earth, never to be heard of again. Sensible went onto other greatness and didn’t look back. So what happened?
Jon confirms to GTW that the game never progressed any further, which is what we all thought really. Jon explained that it was canned mainly due to other projects coming along. He believes that Chris Yates would have got this working on a stock C64, and that the machine was not a limitation. However, it may not have been anywhere near as fast as what we saw in the demo. Check out the Creator Speaks page for Jon’s own words.
A promising demo, which will ever remain a promising demo.
Contributions: Andrew Fisher, Jon Hare
Supporting content
Available downloads
- Preview_DayUniverse.zip (zip)
Gallery
Creator speaks
Q) Did Dominion progress past the Zzap demo, or was this it?
“Sadly no it never got past the Zzap demo, I think we must have got into something else and left it out to dry”
Q) Could you guys really have got a fast running filled vector game working back in 1987?
“Of course… Chris could do anything on the C64… although I guess the word “fast” might be stretching it a bit”
Jon Hare .
This really annoyed me because they showboat something so cool and then do nothing with it :( Surely they could have created built an adequate game from it :(