Galactic Gunners & the like
I've been playing the fantastic Galactic Gunners recently, and noticed it was completed it 1987 but the only release seems to be on an Ultrasoft compilation in 1992.
Is that right? did a cassette sit around in Miroslav Fidler's house for 5 years or did the world get to hear of Galactic Gunners sooner? If the latter then how was it released?
I find it a bit surprising it wasn't released on its own.
Also enjoying Maglaxians and (a bit less) Itemiada, were they released in any way during the 'Speccy era'?
Is that right? did a cassette sit around in Miroslav Fidler's house for 5 years or did the world get to hear of Galactic Gunners sooner? If the latter then how was it released?
I find it a bit surprising it wasn't released on its own.
Also enjoying Maglaxians and (a bit less) Itemiada, were they released in any way during the 'Speccy era'?
Post edited by R-Tape on
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So original release of these games was probably like that Fidler bring his game to some event and allow anyone who was interested to get a copy. Most likely for free.
After Velvet Revolution in 1989 we become a 'capitalist' country and some software houses were established, the biggest were czech Proxima and slovak Ultrasoft.
To extend their portfolio, these companies also distributed older homebrew games that were good enough.
This applies for many titles from Cybexlab, T.R.C, Fuxoft (and most likely Raxoft - Patrik Rak of WOS regulars)
Actually, Patrik Rak could have better information as he was part of this.
So do we know if Galactic Gunners reached its height of fame as a homebrew release, or did it explode when released in 1992?
Anyway by the end of 1992 Amiga was gaming mainstream even in Czechoslovakia.
Well, your info is pretty much spot on. Lot of companies approached us back then, trying to sell anything we had available. Proxima and Ultrasoft were the biggest players, but there were other local companies as well. That's why we almost never gave exclusive rights to anyone. Most of the time we got some share from each copy sold. Sometimes people opted for getting advances instead, though. IIRC Mirek F?dler sold Jet Story to Ultrasoft this way.
Anyway, all those Proxima/Ultrasoft versions in the archive are not actually THE original releases (except of those games which were created by themselves). The original releases were released earlier free of charge through the friends' network.
As for Galactic Gunners, the music was pretty famous because of Melody Music I (and for being a conversion of Fuka's Monty from FX Sound), but the game itself was almost impossible to get hold of. Even more so for the earlier Planet of Shades. People only copied what they liked, and these were likely overshadowed by foreign production. IIRC Starfox was Mirek's first shooter which got really well known, and the pinnacle was of course the Jet Story (and Belegost, but that's an adventure). Only after its release people started looking for its predecessors.
Patrik