Phillips’ Prototypes

The concepts that Eliminator and Nebulus evolved from

Ammotrack was John Phillips’ working title for an early iteration of Eliminator. Like Eliminator, Ammotrack involves speeding around obstacle-laden tracks in a futuristic, armed vehicle, but it additionally charges you with racing opponents while trying to reach checkpoints before a countdown hits zero. Alternatively, you can opt to blast your competition off the road before collecting missiles, lives, fuel or time power-ups left behind in their burning wreckage. Although just a prototype, John kindly released a playable version of Ammotrack into the public domain, which subsequently appeared on a cover disk attached to Zero magazine’s December 1991 edition.

There’s a more complicated backstory to Enigma, which started out as John’s first draft of Nebulus. Inspired by Uridium and coded for the Spectrum, Enigma depicted a scrolling horizontal tube rotating in space and orbited by aliens sworn to destroy a ship piloted by the game’s protagonist. Unfortunately, Enigma’s horizontal tube didn’t work well on the C64, and when John stood it on its end, the fresh perspective inspired him to completely rethink his ideas. Fast-forward to July 1989, however, and we find the original Enigma concept revitalised as a ST demo given away with

ST News magazine.