Gretchen Leigh

@gretchenleigh

middle-aged multimedia queer

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gretchenleigh.zone/

Gretchen
The PlayStation Experiment | Game Mag Print Ads | Rando Chrontendo
software engineer @ Internet Archive
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trans lesbian 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

Gretchen Leigh @gretchenleigh8/18/2023, 3:10 AM

Unreleased (???) Mark Flint/System Sacom FM Towns game?

I'm scrubbing through this promotional FM Towns video from 1989, and there's an interview with a Kondo-san of System Sacom (not sure what his exact role at the company was) where he talks about Evolution (a Mark Flint/System Sacom game that DID come out for FM Towns) and Soft de Hard na Monogatari (a Novelware System Sacom game that also came out for FM Towns, among other platforms). But then there's footage of a fairly impressive (especially for 1989!!!!) pseudo-3D racing game apparently by Mark Flint and called Solid 1989.

Does anyone know anything about this? It doesn't seem to be documented anywhere.

Video is timestamped from when the footage begins.

https://youtu.be/YaUpRcrJKTg?t=1444

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in reply to @gretchenleigh's post:

@mooware8/18/2023, 3:16 AM

Unreleased Mark Flint game?! Incredible find!

Gretchen Leigh @gretchenleigh8/18/2023, 3:23 AM

Probably unreleased, but FM Towns games are pretty sparsely documented, so I wouldn't discount it existing in some form!

Vincent Kinian @Video-Game-King8/18/2023, 3:36 AM

I'm not sure this is a game so much as it is a 3D tech demo meant to show people what Mark Flint could do/was planning to with 3D in general. Assuming it was a game that was seriously in production, it couldn't have survived in that form; nothing at the time would have been able to run it. Compare: Hard Drivin' (1989), Microsoft Flight Simulator 4.0 (1989), Alpha Waves (1990).

Gretchen Leigh @gretchenleigh8/18/2023, 3:59 AM

It's definitely closer to a tech demo than a real game as presented, but it's surprising that they didn't turn this into something because it's really impressive.

It's not really doing anything that's beyond what the FM Towns could do. Even the lowest-end FM Towns was significantly more powerful than the average home computer in 1989. Games-centric 16-bit micros like the Amiga had decent graphics hardware for 2D games, but were still running on 68K CPUs. A high-end PC compatible might have a comparable CPU to the FM Towns, but it would likely have limited graphics/audio capabilities (or at least, the audience that had the early high-end graphics and sound cards was too small to cater to at that point).

A better comparison point would probably be some of the later games for platforms like the Archimedes or X68K. Compare this with Starfighter or Darkwood for the Archimedes or Geograph Seal for the X68K, and it doesn't seem so far-fetched, just ahead of the curve.