Explorer 2260

[Buleste]

I've recently been going through some of my old Amiga mags and remembered that when i originally saw the articles about this game i was very interested. Some of the Web pages are still running but i was wondering if this game ever got made?

[Harrison]

Do you have any more details about it? Year it was in development? Who as developing it? etc...

[Buleste]

It was being developed by World Foundry in 1997 for high spec PPC Amigas. Vulcan were going to publish it. It looked like the game was a cross between Freespace and Frontier. A whole encyclopedia was created for it. The Web page for World Foundry can be found here (http://dnausers.d-n-a.net/dnetEFoE/) with links to the game on it.

[Zetr0]

from the write up and some of the existing images it looks fantastic!

almost worth buying a PPC for lol..... almost...

[Buleste]

Not if it never got finished.

[Zetr0]

Not if it never got finished.

I dont think that it did to be honest....

still i will never know why PPC chips.... the x86's were more than fast enough and at the time less than a quarter of the price!!!!

sigh.....

[Harrison]

Looks interesting. A real shame if it never did get released. I wonder how close they came to completing it? Might be worth contacting the developers if we can and asking. If it is close to completion and will work then maybe we could secure the rights to release it in the PD via CA.

I will add an entry for the game into the main site and include the screenshots from their site.

[Zetr0]

lol HOL doesnt have an entry for it...

hmmmm amusing

[Buleste]

We'll have to see if they'll take "inspiration" from us.

[Zetr0]

LOL, oh the mocking......

[Harrison]

That will be so funny if after I add it in the entry appears on HOL. Who will volunteer to ask CJ about database theft then! ;)

[Buleste]

Let Zetr0. He'd love it.

[Zetr0]

LMFAO!

[Harrison]

I've just found a site dedicated to the development of Explorer 2260. It hasn't been worked on since the project was shelved, but it does contain a lot of details about the first 7 missions in the game, plus some other interesting stuff.

http://web13.globalidi.com/

I'm just creating the game's entry on CA at the moment and will try to include as much of this information as I can as I expect these other sites holding the info won't be around forever (they are already pretty broken).

[Buleste]

Going back to the World Foundry pages they also mention a C&C clone called Maim & Mangle but again it doesn't look like it was released. However sfter some extensive googling I've found that it appears to be under development for AOS4. Whilst the webpage for that game is under construction the webpage for the development team can be found here. (http://www.soft3dev.net/pages/amigaos.php)

[Harrison]

I've emailed the developers of Explorer 2260, along with Vulcan Software, asking them if they can give us any more information about the game. I included a set of questions such as how far into development was the game, who was part of the development team, is there any of the game's code still in existence, is there any supporting material still available that we could use on CA.

Hopefully we will hear back from at least one of them.

[Buleste]

Vulcan are a dead end. I've just found this (http://www.vulcan.co.uk/english/articles/diastat5.htm) piece of news archive on their website. I also found this (http://www.vulcan.co.uk/english/articles/011.htm) about Maim & Mangle.

[Harrison]

They might still be able to fill in some of the details if they are feeling nice.

[Harrison]

There was a series of articles in Cu Amiga magazine that followed the development of this game in quite some detail, including interviews with the artist involved. On the second site I mentioned above is a PDF containing all of the parts of these articles. It is quite big at 42MB, but I've had a play around and got it down to 17MB without too much image compression added. I will finish it off and add it to the site later tonight. It's definitely very interesting reading.