Yet another Codemasters title that never was. This time, Codemasters put out an advert in a magazine – giving rates for conversions of their titles to other platforms.
Transmuter was listed, with a £2500 bounty to convert from the Spectrum to the C64. Other titles listed were Pro Snooker Simulator, Ghost Hunters and Grand Prix Simulator.
We are guessing that someone must have taken on the project – but who was it, and what happened to it? The game itself was relatively simple and wouldn’t have been too complicated to convert. Maybe sales were bad that they decided to can it?
The game was also later converted to the Atari – so its likely something could be out there still.
Very early days. Do you know more?
Contributions: Avram Dumitrescu, Adam Markey, thecodemastersarchive.co.uk
Hi.
I’ve found the magazine advert mentioned in this article.
It was in “Popular Computing Weekly” around April 1987.
https://thecodemastersarchive.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Advert_PopularComputingWeekly_Apr1987.jpg
The advert also lists other existing games that were never ported onto the following:
— Armourdillo – Spectrum
— Ghost Hunters – Atari 800 and MSX
— Pro Snooker Simulator – C Plus/4
— Grand Prix Simulator – C Plus/4
Thanks Adam! That’s brilliant – just added to the page and made a note about the others to try and cover quickly sometime. I might do some quick entries for them and a digest post highlighting them all.
Just a correction for my previous comment
Maureen Copeland was actually Ian Copeland’s sister
http://atariage.com/forums/topic/168128-if-you-want-to-see-brian-joblin-zybex-draconus/#entry2080023
http://forums.atari.io/index.php/topic/1440-games-that-pushed-the-atari-8-bit-computer/page-2#entry14792
Yes there was a Atari 8bit version by Maureen Copeland (Chris Copeland’s sister) according to
http://atariage.com/forums/topic/168128-if-you-want-to-see-brian-joblin-zybex-draconus/#entry2079943
And yes Atari 8 bits and C64 shared the same CPU -6502.
But in Atari run almost at ~180% frequency @ 1.77 MHz (PAL)1.79 MHz (NTSC) Vs C64 0.985 MHz (PAL)@ 1.023 MHz (NTSC) so direct porting Transmuter a game that already looks a bit slow and chunky in Atari 8bit considering also its a shoot ’em up is nt that
promising ……
Was also available on the Atari 8-bit – http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-transmuter_5466.html
Cheers Avram, added a link!