Now, this will be something people will maybe shed a tear for…. news that The Wild Bunch was indeed making its way onto the Commodore 64!
Though not quite in the Firebird release form you may have expected, but through C64 developer Jon Wells. GTW recently quizzed Jon about rumours he laid about a Wild Bunch sequel and Atic Atac 2 in a note file he once wrote. Although these were just vapourware and overexcitement, Jon did confirm excitingly that he DID have a Wild Bunch conversion well under way.
Jon was a huge fan of The Wild Bunch when he had a Spectrum back in the day:
"The Wild Bunch was a classic Speccy and Amstrad game that was programmed in basic, it was released by Firebird on their Silverbird label in the early to mid 80’s. It was one of those games that I enjoyed on my Speccy, before I got my own C64 in late 1987.
When I tried to see if a C64 version was made I was surprised that it had’nt been converted, so it was one of my wish list to do."
Then something that may interest you…
"I did create an 80% playable version in basic (before I learned machine code) which is sitting on one of my many development disks somewhere. I wanted to add music, sfx and the gunfight sequence, but never got round to doing that as I needed assembly experience which I never had at the time.
It was one of those projects I intended to revisit when I had the assembly experience, but didn’t get the chance due to the conversion work I did for Cult/D+H Games during 1988-91 and then projects like Sceptre of Baghdad and Treasure Isle taking presidence. If I can locate this it’s something I’ll send over for you to upload."
Being a fan myself of The Wild Bunch, this is a big wow for me… and I really hope Jon will be able to dig out the conversion for us to show the world. Maybe someone will want to finish it off as its so near completion?… It’s a possibility!….
Well, across 2008 and 2009, Jon Wells did something quite fantastic and decided to finish off the game thanks to this research and write up we did!…. You can now order a complete authentic Firebird tribute game or a Psytronik edition!…
It is a fantastic turnaround and another one saved, plus a long awaited conversion that has finally arrived!…
Case closed!…
Contributions: Jon Wells
