User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Mon Apr 04, 2016 11:21 pm

What looks and sounds like an R-Type clone originally planned for the Amiga platform has instead launched in a wisp of Steam.
Shenandoah: Daughter of the Stars, a shoot-'em-up made by four Swedish teenagers, was just about finished and ready for a release on the Amiga in 1993. Then the project collapsed, and its developers split up. Now, nearly 23 years later, the game has been reborn as 1993 Space Machine, and it launched [March 26] on Steam for Mac and Windows PC.
Now, if I had been part of the founding crew, I would have launched this game as a Kickstarter and offered a classic Amiga disk (or 2) in the pile of high-dollar loot! Even though this new game is running on an entirely new engine, they could have created a top-tier donor level for the Amiga faithful to play the original game, don't you think? And let's be honest. Instead of simply charging $12.99 for an R-Type clone, they could have charged over $100 for a couple of Amiga disks and a Mac/PC download of the more modern game. Rightly or wrongly, that's how it is done on Kickstarter. And it works.

The original game might have been found, but the opportunity has been lost.

UPDATE: more on the history of this game here.





Return to “The Lounge”