Denial

Yesterday at the Vintage Computer Festival 10.0, a woman named Alex came up to our FCUG table and said that she had an unreleased commercial game. The story goes that back in the 1980's she worked for Imagic, that the game was ready to go, and that Imagic went out-of-business before the game had a chance to be released. She said she had the only copy of it. I eagerly told her that she should release the game -- whether to the public domain, as shareware, or as a commercial release -- and that the VIC-20 users around the world would be appreciative. She was surprised that there was still a VIC-20 following. I assured her there was and gave her not only the address to our club's website but also the address to the Denial forum (which she inputted into her IPhone). I told her to register here to see the messages, and the thousands of VIC-20 fans were reading the messages here. Here's hoping that the game eventually sees the light of day.

So excited that I forgot to ask
the name of the game,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug
The Other Group of Amigoids
http://www.calweb.com/~rabel1/

OH MY GOSH!

MULTICART! (I know....there's no more room!)

OH MY GOSH!

Unreleased Imagic game for VIC (shock, ack....grabbing in the air for ghostly apparition of Imagic cartridge prototype).

Let's PLEASE make sure this is archived.

I hope YOU got HER phone number too, in case she just forgets about this...

ral-clan wrote:OH MY GOSH!

MULTICART! (I know....there's no more room!)

OH MY GOSH!

Unreleased Imagic game for VIC (shock, ack....grabbing in the air for ghostly apparition of Imagic cartridge prototype).

If you refer to Mega-Cart, don't worry if really this rom exist, is archived and she allows us we can ever remove something to get space for this extraordinary find !!!!

Given how technically advanced other Imagic games tend to be, I suppose this may be a cartridge only working with NTSC... but it would be a nice addition none the less, just like when Stonan archived that other previously vaporware OEM title.

Imagic games are of very high quality, so I am really hoping this one gets archived. I'm assuming that it would be a port of one of their previously released games. Let's see, we have:

Demon Attack
Atlantis
DragonFire

....these games are all on other platforms too....so what was the next title released by Imagic for the Atari/Intellivision? That would be a good indication of what this game might be for the VIC.

I sincerely hope that you also took down her contact info, Robert...

ral-clan wrote:....these games are all on other platforms too....so what was the next title released by Imagic for the Atari/Intellivision? That would be a good indication of what this game might be for the VIC.

Fathom ?

Moonsweeper ?


Take a look to this list.

That list obviously needs updating. While the VIC-20 is covered on the site, a couple of the major 3rd party manufacturers mentioned don't have the VIC titles in their master lists.

Furthermore, the existing list of VIC-20 games contain at least two games on the rumor mill: Donkey Kong JR and Track & Field, both from Atarisoft. Perhaps someone should give allgame.com a helping hand to sort out duplicates, vaporware and instead add all the real cartridge games they forgot?

By the way, the Digital Press online rarity guide (maintained by Mayhem, I believe) lists four Imagic games as part of the rumor mill: Fathom, Moonsweeper, Nova Blast and Wing War.

Reviving this thread in 2012. It's sad nothing became of this (read original post at top of thread).

It looks like this prototype got away. I wonder if there's anything we could still do to track this lady down five years later (if she hasn't thrown it out by now).

Maybe he should not have been trusted to get in touch. Efforts should have been made to get her name and information for a follow-up. I am guessing she may be too busy to be concerned with us. There really isn't a lot of motivation for someone outside the hobby.

That's what I'm thinking...if she isn't involved in the hobby then there's probably little motivation for her to get this prototype to someone who will do anything with it.

I wouldn't have let her leave without at least getting an e-mail address or phone number! I would have blocked the door! Haha!

Oh well, I guess at least Robert stated to her the importance of the unreleased prototype. Perhaps that will make her think twice about throwing it out when she does a Spring cleaning.

The fact that she was at a vintage computer festival gives some hope. We'll just have to wait her out.

There was one I had on the Intellivision back in the day... Beauty and the Beast.

It was a simple, Donkey Kong knockoff, but it had elements of Crazy Climber in it as well.

I haven't played that one in a while... I'd love to see that on the VIC!

The skeptic in me suspects the possibility that she might have wanted to make up a story to see what attention she'd get, and when it worked, she wisely decided to disappear and let her story take on a life of its own.

Jeff-20 wrote:The fact that she was at a vintage computer festival gives some hope.

Because there are no more Vintage Computer Festivals here in California and because it seemed that she was from the Silicon Valley, the only chance for her to show up again would be at a similar retro show in the area. Recently, the only shows in the area have been the Digital Game Museum's Atari Party which was held in Sunnyvale and the original Atari Party which was in Davis (which is actually rather far from the Silicon Valley).

If AP's organizer Bill Kendrick's invitation is still good, I would be able to set up a Commodore table at next year's Atari Party - http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/atariparty/ (Heh, Commodores among the many Ataris!) I could display C64 and VIC-20 set-ups and see who shows up.

Truly,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug