Dominion - Genesis Project recovers a brilliant side scrolling Shoot 'em up for the C64!

Genesis Project was quick to give us the heads up via Facebook today, that not only have they released a game for the Commodore 64, but this game known as 'Dominion' by Micro Media, was found and recovered by Hedning of GP! As in the words of Genesis Project "A shooter that James Doyle & Mark Hughes made in 1988, between "Master Blaster" and "Black Tiger", which was shelved and forgotten about has finally been found when hedning struck gold on an old disk. It was given the Zyron treatment with a +2-trainer and a highscore saver, and playtested by Paladin. Blast away!"

And here's the full details contained within the text file! "This formerly unknown game, developed by some of the prominent C64 game makers behind Master Blaster (Zeppelin Games, 1988), Black Tiger (U.S. Gold/Capcom, 1990), and Hydra (Domark/Tengen, 1992) - namely Mark Hughes, James Doyle, Peter Wolfe, and Steven Chandler, with music by Mark Tait - was discovered on a random, likely Dutch, floppy disk. How it ended up there remains unknown".

"The game’s music, however, was already known thanks to a music demo released by Mark Tait - though there was no mention or trace of a game actually using it. To shed some light on this mystery, we reached out to one of the game's programmers; Mark Hughes - still active in game development today - and we’re delighted to be able to share some background on this remarkable find":

"As a bit of background, four of us on the credits were all friends from school, me, James Doyle, Peter Wolfe and Stephen Chandler. James and I had learned how to code over the summer of '87 (we were around 16 years old), made some demos, and sent them out to publishers in the hope of getting some work. Dave Baxter, a producer at Elite Games at the time, wrote back and suggested that we could rip off a new game that was going to be launched in the arcades later that year, Blasteroids". 

"He wanted to do this on the side though, not through Elite, so setup his own Company called Micro Media. Then he organized graphics and music from other people. We finished "Master Blaster" in early 88, and Dave started going round publishers trying to sell it. While that was happening, James and I started on Dominion, and enlisted Peter and Stephen to do the graphics".

"Master Blaster eventually sold to Zeppelin Games, so we thought Dave could maybe sell Dominion too, so we sent him a copy, then he organized Mark Tait to do the music. Once it was complete, Dave tried to get it published, but no-one was interested. By now Dave was working at US Gold, and thought our team might be a good fit to convert one of their arcade licenses, Capcom's Black Tiger, so we started working on that, and Dominion was forgotten about."

GAME CREDITS

• Programming: Mark Hughes & James Doyle
• Graphics: Stephen Chandler & Peter Wolfe
• Music: Mark Tait
• Co-ordination: David Baxter

CRACK CREDITS

• Original supply and this text typed in
•  by hedning
• Linking, trainer and hi-saver by Zyron
• Tested by Paladin

And that's all there is to say about this awesome release, so head on over to either link 1 or link 2, to check it out!