Coincidence!

[Einar Saukas]

Alicia en el Pais de las Maravillas

and


Alicia en el Pais de las Maravillas

[8BitAG]

Well, more of the fact the loading screen was ripped off than a coincidence.

The original Alicia (on the Microhobby cassette; the first image) iirc was something like the second text adventure released in Spanish; so was very well known.

It's archived now, but Pablo interviewed the creator of the original Alicia many years ago: https://web.archive.org/web/20210612140 ... c42.htm#a1

[Evil Genius]

That's not the only loading screen he ripped off...

[8BitAG]

Yes, there's Fairlight and Motor Massacre too.

[R-Tape]

Curses! They've seen through my elaborate obfuscation technique of mirroring the image.

[PeteProdge]

Curses! They've seen through my elaborate obfuscation technique of mirroring the image.

.ecirP S yrraH

[jpnz]

Open to all isn't it?



Compare and contrast...

[firelord]

Agent X and Turbo Esprit are different cars! You can see that the one is a Turbo and the other is an X1. This car mode was very popular during the 80s -especially in cyan color-. This explains that the images look alike -they had the same car model and they draw it..

In Alice images they are clearly diffent images since the one looks left and the other looks right. Also , the border is flashing in the one image. Those girls might be the childs of the designers and we all know that in the 80s blue and red clothes for little girls were very popular!

I can't undestand why people accuse other of copying their work...

[Lee P]

Agent X and Turbo Esprit are different cars! You can see that the one is a Turbo and the other is an X1. This car mode was very popular during the 80s -especially in cyan color-. This explains that the images look alike -they had the same car model and they draw it..

Yeah, right!

[Einar Saukas]

Curses! They've seen through my elaborate obfuscation technique of mirroring the image.

Like this:


Mantis 1


Mantis 2

[goodboy]

remembered

[Einar Saukas]

And this is the laziest case possible:


Ad Astra


Alien Kill

He didn't even bother to fully remove the original title underneath!

[Einar Saukas]

There are a few more cases here:

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/relations.php

(look under "LOADING SCREEN ADAPTED FROM")

Is anything else missing from this list?

[Daveysloan]

Open to all isn't it?



Compare and contrast...

Makes me wonder where the helicopter is from.

[PeteProdge]

He didn't even bother to fully remove the original title underneath!

Well, I am sure that is just a one-off and he wouldn't have done anything like that again...



...oh.

[Einar Saukas]

Ouch!

[Einar Saukas]

Also:

[Einar Saukas]

This screen also looks like it was taken from somewhere else, but I cannot recognize it... Anyone?


Helicopter

[ketmar]

sure. Super Chopper.

[Einar Saukas]

Thanks!

[Einar Saukas]

Curses! They've seen through my elaborate obfuscation technique of mirroring the image.

It almost fooled me!

[Lee P]

There are a few more cases here:

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/relations.php

(look under "LOADING SCREEN ADAPTED FROM")

One thing I didn't notice about Raid Over Moscow/Flak is they don't quite line up, Flak sits higher on the screen than Raid:



We'll never know which way round FD Thorpe drew them - the release dates are a bit fuzzy as Flak has 1984 on the title screen, but its one review is after Raid. Perhaps he did both simultaneously, sketching it out on graph paper using 256 x 200 squares, and made Flak (which has the full control panel) first in Melbourne Draw, then flipped it, dropped it 8 pixels and added the extra bits to the top of Raid.

[Einar Saukas]

My theory is as follows:

Flak is a low budget game, thus I'm guessing US Gold commissioned a low budget screen too.

For such low price, Thorpe's solution was to take his previous screen from Raid Over Moscow, and replace buildings with just a few lines in the horizon. However leaving most of the screen blank didn't look right, so he reduced the horizon by raising the cockpit and extending the lower part of the screen without adding much detail really.

The 2 explosions in the sky fit perfectly the scene in Raid Over Moscow, but look out of place in Flak. I'm sure they were created first for Raid Over Moscow, then reused in Flak just to fill the sky.

[Lee P]

I also wonder if Flak was rush released for the Speccy, as the Commodore version was released in late 1984 (or at least Commodore User etc were reviewing it around then)

On the other hand (and going off topic a bit), one way to get a more accurate date for Flak might be to look at Speedlock versions. I think Flak uses an older version of Speedlock than Raid Over Moscow. Most Speedlock games loaded the screen and code in one go, but there were a few early USG/Ocean/Ultimate games which loaded the screen, then there was another Speedlock header and one or two additional blocks. Knight Lore and Beach-Head were two examples, I think Pud-Pud too, and all of these were 1984. Flak also has this.

I'd need to check every single Speedlock game from 84/85 to work it all out, though. (I know some of the really early ones don't even have 0 REM Protected by SPEEDLOCK in the basic)

[firelord]

Also don't forget this steal:
The guys in Hewson must have used a time machine....
Firelord :

was a direct copy of this award winning top hit :
10D Bathroom Design


Additionally, they transformed a peaceful game in which a character holds a wrench to fix something into a violent slaughter game by replacing the wrench with a sword.