No Chaos on other 8bit Systems?

[SteveSmith]

This probably isn't much of a thread, but I've noticed that, as far as I can see, Chaos was never released on the Commodore, Amstrad or BBC, either back in the day or a new homebrew remake. It's not exactly the most processor-intensive game. I wonder why?

[catmeows]

Not exactly answer but there is an interview with Julian Gollop that gives some details how he created the game.

https://web.archive.org/web/20171107025 ... ollop.html

TLDR: bedroom coder, writting his first pure asm game using 2 microdrives and printer, soon after release publisher withdraw from computer games (Games Workshop had always core business in table top) and Gollop himself moved to another project

[StooB]

Games Workshop's software department only lasted for 6 months and Chaos was the last of only 5 releases. It might have been ported but they closed down the department quite suddenly even though they had new releases planned, and they didn't even manage to get the C64 versions of their first two games out (Battlecars and D-Day).

[TMD2003]

TLDR: bedroom coder, writting his first pure asm game using 2 microdrives and printer, soon after release publisher withdraw from computer games (Games Workshop had always core business in table top) and Gollop himself moved to another project

Given that starting point, the next question is...



...for the CPC and/or MSX at least. Now here comes the SC equivalent of Richard Hammond to reply with "DON'T SAY THAT!"

The SC equivalent of James May, who's a double agent for Lemon64, has already disassembled the Z80 code and is beavering away translating it into 6502, taking advantage of the C64's colour palette to make the monsters match his favourite shirts.

[toot_toot]

The other thing to take into consideration is that Chaos wasn’t a big (or well known) game when it was originally released. It wasn’t really well known until it was included as a YS Cover Game in 1990, by that time Julian Gollop’s other games were quite well known and you had the sequel Lord of Chaos being released (which was released on a LOT of platforms!). I had a lot of copied games back then and I never came across Chaos. Plus it was never really mentioned in any magazines after its initial release. It was re-released by Firebird as a budget game, but again I don’t remember seeing it anywhere in the shops, despite it getting a decent review in Sinclair User..

And while it didn’t make the “official” (i.e. Stuart Campbell’s) YS Top 100, interestingly it was no 5 in the readers top 100. So I think it’s one of those games that just built up a following and now it’s considered a Spectrum classic. And one of the contributing reasons to this (I believe anyway) is that it wasn’t available on any other platform. If you want to play the original, you have to play it on a Spectrum. Like 3D Death Chase.

[SteveSmith]

It's ironic that, according to Julian's blog, the very first version of Chaos was written by a friend on his BBC. Purely text based though.

[PeteProdge]

Back in 1996, when I was an Amiga user on the internet, there was someone on a ZX Spectrum forum making an Amiga homebrew version of Chaos, with myself and Antony Chapman of Collapsed Lung (yes, the ones that did Eat My Goal) being playtesters and creative consultants.

It never did materialise finished, but I did get to play what was a rather empty version of Chaos (still in development of course) that looked and sounded EXACTLY like the Spectrum version but did at least let you use your mouse, which is an objectively better method than the keyboard. I do wonder what happened to it.

(And yes, I realise the Amiga isn't exactly an 8-bit system. Ahem.)

[TMD2003]

You mean...

Back in 1996, when I was an Amiga user on the internet, there was someone on a ZX Spectrum forum making an Amiga homebrew version of Chaos, with myself and Antony Chapman of Collapsed Lung (yes, the ones that did Thundersley Invacar) being playtesters and creative consultants.

...much better.

[Matt_B]

There was an excellent, if unofficial, port of the game to the Atari ST made by Martin Brownlow in the early 90s.

[PeteProdge]

Thundersley Invacar

...much better.

Yes, I agree, but don't overlook HTV on their new album

The thing I remember about the discussions on the Amiga conversion is the developer telling me with glee that he even copied the rude four-letter-word from the source code, doing a cut-and-paste of it to be as 'pure' as possible.

It's ironic that, according to Julian's blog, the very first version of Chaos was written by a friend on his BBC. Purely text based though.

As much as I love Chaos and recognise it as The Greatest Game Ever Made, I really couldn't get on with that. Well, I'd like it, but it's not going to touch the Speccy version. File it away with Lords Of Chaos and Chaos Reborn, I guess.

[Quazar]

We had a Chaos inspired game on the SAM Coupe: "Mage*Fire". First released briefly in 1996 and re-released it on the cover disk with issue 26 of SAM Revival magazine in the mid-2000s so it's still available.

[SteveSmith]

There is this page that lists loads of Chaos remakes: https://chaosremakes.fandom.com/wiki/Chaos_Remakes_Wiki , although being a Fandom page, brace yourself for an assault of adverts. And I'm also working on Yet Another Remake myself right now.

[Quazar]

issue 26 of SAM Revival magazine in the mid-2000s so it's still available.

No idea why I typed issue 26... it was issue 12! Do'h!