I'm not sure how they managed it, but some of these developers used up every trick in the book to try and squeeze as much out of the 6502 as possible. Games like Battle Command I believe used look up tables to try and help speed up on calculations.

@@GamesThatWerent Indeed, well designed lookup tables and intermediate calculations can do magic. Nowadays we can just play with math without even fully understanding how it works, back then you would need to understand it fully, and put a lot of effort to do all the calculations on the actual hardware.

Thanks @BlazeHeartPanther! Yeah, I'm generally an under the radar kind of person when I do this kind of thing :)

Ah, but this wasn't a game - it was only ever an animated demo. Perhaps you saw something similar back then?

@@GamesThatWerent Ah, I see. Weirdly similar but I suppose all graphics at that time would have to be.

@@Superkuh2 You may well have seen it - as its just come to light that it snuck out back in the day. Though the playable version you recall might be this one: www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-oil-wells_3771.html

@@GamesThatWerent @Superkuh2 There were a few games that come to mind. Another is "Oil Empire" (german name) / "Black Gold" (international) It is a business simulation but there are some 'action' sequences where you have to build a pipeline, control a fire, or drill for oil. There is also "Oil Barons" which apparently was the name for two different games, one released in 1992 and the other in 1983. I remember playing yet another game where the drilling sequences looked VERY similar to this video, at least in my memory. However, I am unsure if maybe it was just "Oil Empire" running in a graphics mode with limited colors.

@@knorker Oil Imperium (by ReLine) and Black Gold (by Starbyte) are two different games, one is about oil drilling and the other about coal mining.

Thank you for the kind words and glad that you enjoy it :)

:-) Yeah, i've always been pretty low key over the years. Only in recent years i've started to try and do more videos on the site. Many thanks for the kind words! :-)

Thanks pferreira - I agree, and i'll keep trying to cover different platforms where I can (unfortunately it just myself doing the write ups at the moment). I love the Master System and can't believe I haven't added any entries yet - i'll try and add a few over the next few weeks. If you have any suggestions for some SMS titles that haven't really been investigated/covered just yet - please let me know.

@@GamesThatWerent The Godfather and Dinobasher I guess are the obvious ones. Die Hard 2 was also going to get released. There's probably various more I'm not aware of.

Thanks @pferreira - some Godfather footage surfaced recently, so I may do a post on that first and then take a look at the others over time.

@@GamesThatWerent SMS Power forum thread about unreleased games is a great place to find all of these.

Thanks Andy, and glad you enjoyed it!

Thank you so much for the kind words, and i'm glad that you've been enjoying the findings so far. I still get excited when something new comes along, even after all this time!

Thanks Simon!

Thanks buddy! :)

Our pleasure, and thanks! :)

Thanks Paul! :)

Thank you and glad you enjoyed it! :)

Thank you very much, and no problem at all :)

That's correct! We have a page on the Amiga/ST version of Turbo Charge here with some screens and magazine snips: www.gamesthatwerent.com/2021/09/turbo-charge/ Not quite regarding the code though. Vendetta's driving code was all done by the late Stan Schembri, and TC was done by Chris Butler, utilizing and refining his Power Drift engine that he did a few years before. Basically, the link between the two games is that the driving part from Vendetta would inspire the creation of a completely separate racing game - resulting in Turbo Charge overall.

I think with Sensible Software, they loved having a bit of fun and knocking out quick budget games occasionally as a break from more involved titles like Wizball. A bit of piss-taking mixed in, and something they did quite a few times over the years (even on the Amiga). I can't imagine them being too jealous (if at all) of Uridium, but more just having admiration for the game and being fans overall - hence doing their own "terrible" budget rip off with some piss-take elements. Sort of their own strange way of showing how much they loved the original, if that makes sense?

@@GamesThatWerent Yeah that makes sense.

No worries at all - hope you enjoy the page on the company too, there's lots about the history there too.

@@GamesThatWerent loved it all! it’s Toby btw 😄 i’m logged into my company account

@@airtechimages 😆You caught me out there Toby!

Do you mean the unofficial clone Zany Kong Junior? bbcmicro.co.uk/game.php?id=126 ... This official conversion we've featured here was never released.

@@GamesThatWerent mmm. It was my understanding that Superior Software picked up the Atari soft conversions that were not published. Unless they are not the same at all, and I got it wrong.

@@virtuafighter3 It's certainly possible that they did, but I couldn't find any suggestion that it had been released. Only that they did the unofficial one - which I think got renamed at somepoint to Killer Gorrila 2?