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Twoflower
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 434 |
Plotting, (C) 1990/91 by Ocean - please help out!
I have a request for a strange little arcade conversion from 1990, called Plotting. It was developed by Twilight (Stuart Cook and Peter Fotheringham) with music by Sonic Grafitti.
The game itself have been seen in several incarnations, the most wellknown of them is probably Plotting +4M. Additional fixes and stuff have been made by DOM, ATC, Legend and Mirage - but the original source seems to be the version from Electric Boyz.
A review of the game was made in the 1990 Christmas issue of Zzap 64 (http://www.zzap64.co.uk/cgi-bin/displaypage.pl?issue=68&page=81) with the reviewers giving it lukewarm reviews, save for the fact that it loaded really nice and fast - from cart.
I firmly believe that this is a lost cartgame. Checking out the unpacked files reveals that the levelfiles load into 800A-9FFF (Ocean cart-range minus the CBM80 and the pointers) and that the size is similar to other Ocean 128k cart games.
I also believe that the game never was released, and that the versions existing comes from a leaked original which found its way to Electric Boyz. The reason it might have gotten canned might be because it was released way after the Amiga-version and because the game was inferior to the versions on the other platforms. It wasn't developed inhouse, but by Twilight, probably to be finished in time for the christmas market.
So, what I ask you for is two things - please locate me the original of this game which were leaked to EB - or any proof that it exists as an actual original (box with C64 tags, etc). I believe that the original contains everything to compile this into a runnable Ocean .crt image.
EDIT: Just checked out the Electric Boyz version of the game, and in the trainerscreen it's clearly stated that this game was cracked from cart by Ironfist. I guess that it might have been cracked from one of the review-carts? |
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fgasking
Account closed
Registered: May 2005
Posts: 21 |
The rumour I heard a long time back was that Ewen Gillies (Who worked with Ironfist) was working very briefly at Ocean, and stole a master copy of the game whilst he was there. The game was then cracked and released before the game had even been released anywhere in the shops.
No idea about any originals existing on cartridge - could be that Ironfist anticipated Plotting to still be released? He's still hanging around and can probably be asked. As far as I know, the leak made of Plotting was enough for Ocean to can it's release completely... i'll ask Gary Bracey. |
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Twoflower
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 434 |
Since I need to mail Paul Hughes about some other issues, I might ask him about this aswell. I figure he added the cartroutines in the game. In which case, it's pretty damned annoying that there is another Ocean-cart file - but one which is cracked and which probably got the rom-handling routines stripped away. |
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Rough
Account closed
Registered: Feb 2002
Posts: 1829 |
Ironfist is on lemon occassionally. |
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fgasking
Account closed
Registered: May 2005
Posts: 21 |
Yeah - he's best bet. I've asked Gary, though sometimes I think he covers over some of the bad points in Ocean's catelogue and reflects more on the big stuff. Paul is more likely to remember a heck of a lot more on it. |
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fgasking
Account closed
Registered: May 2005
Posts: 21 |
Just had this from Gary...
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"If memory serves, I think Plotting was developed well after the C64 era, as I know it came out on the ST.
Even if it did, we would never have elected not to release a game because of a 'leak'. Commercially it would have been suicide as investment would have been made in development and depite the code possibly being owned by many pirates, there was always a healthy 'honest' market out there to justify any decent release." |
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Twoflower
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 434 |
Probably meaning that it was canned (just like that Amiga Ocean game and Street Hawk) since the commercial spots were long past (review in December, Amiga release a lot earlier), it was inferior to the other versions and that the cart technique was deemed too expensive to with the above two factors added to it. It probably wasn't really commercially viable to release it at the time?
Still have to question Paul Hughes about this though.
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EwenG
Account closed
Registered: Jun 2008
Posts: 6 |
I never stole it, I just forgot to put it back in the box outside of Colin's office where he kept all the crap discs. I was pretty messed up at the time and it was'nt until 6 months or so after leaving that I gave Russ a copy. It was disc - not cart. Maybe he did a cart version later on but there's the story and it's not ledgeable in court.
It was never going to be released as far as I could find out.
And Paul Hughes had left by the time I worked at Ocean - I had his job ;)
I met Gary once and he seemed to be the most decent person in the whole company. The worst had to be John Meegan who nobody seemed to like a lot. Overall it was an interesting "experience" working there for 2 months.
As for the "bad" points, I doubt there were that many "bad" things - just things that were a big naughty ;) |
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Twoflower
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 434 |
Nice to finally see a resolution on this issue, Ewen. There is no doubt that this game was intended to be released on cart, I believe. The datafiles seems to be located at the right adresses, the size is just right and the Zzap review was done from the cart-version.
I would really appreciate if you could locate the original (if you still have your old disks, and if it still exists) as it would be quite easy to build a .crt image out of it. |
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EwenG
Account closed
Registered: Jun 2008
Posts: 6 |
I _THINK_ I gave the disc to Russ. I do remember him saying the layout was for a cartridge format. I really did'nt have much to do with the cracking of it. So, sorry :( |
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SIDWAVE
Account closed
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2238 |
It's not on GTW ? |
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fgasking
Account closed
Registered: May 2005
Posts: 21 |
It is... but just the cracked version though:
http://gtw64.retro-net.de/Pages/p/Review_Plotting.php
Ewen - I will fix the review to reflect things differently. In hindsight I shouldn't put down such rumours without clarifying them first, so please accept my apologies. I'll try and avoid doing this in future GTW reviews. |
