A very short entry for a licence that would never actually get used in the end.
Elite Software were pretty on the ball along with Ocean Software back in the day, getting hold of high profile licences such as Airwolf and Rambo. Whilst talking about another unreleased version of a licensed game (Dukes of Hazzard V1), Chris Harvey mentioned that Elite had obtained the rights to the sequel to the 1984 Romancing the Stone film, called The Jewel of the Nile.
Although a popular series of films, Chris and Neil A. Bate went to see the film premiere in Leicester Square and rang Steve Wilcox to let them know that the movie was “ungameable”. Unfortunately though the deal had already been done.
Usually, Elite were pretty good at making full use of a licence (one of the abandoned Thundercats games becoming Bombjack 2 for instance), so its surprising that they didn’t do the same with Jewel of the Nile. Don’t forget, Airwolf 1 (and 2 in particular!) were not really faithful at all to the TV series, so it perhaps wouldn’t have been surprising if the licence had been applied to something else they had going at the time.
It is currently unknown if the licence was quietly dropped, or if it was given to someone else to have a go at. It seems it died a death pretty quickly and never got a mention in the press as part of Elite’s plans at the time.
Contributions: Chris Harvey
Weird that “mystery of the nile” by Spanish company Zigurat, was “an unofficial adaptation of the film The Jewel of the Nile, (and) when the game was distributed in the UK by Firebird an alternate cover had to be created, as in the original one of the characters resembled Michael Douglas a bit too much.”
https://www.mobygames.com/game/c64/mystery-of-the-nile
Might have just been the final straw for Elite -> too hard basket
Never knew that about Mystery of the Nile, thanks for that Max!