Whatever Happened To… Joe Blade 4
Moustached mercenary Joe Blade successfully completed three missions before being declared MIA on his fourth. We interrogate those on the inside to determine his fate
Find out why the ambitious fourth game in this gun-toting series never came to be
If you search some of the murkier backwaters of the internet you’ll find a Spectrum game called Joe Blade 4. This is not the real Joe Blade 4; rather it’s a crudely hacked version of Prison Riot, another game on the Players label that was released in 1990. You can see the reasoning behind this amateur hack, as Prison Riot was extremely similar to Joe Blade 3 – Players just popped a warden’s hat on
Joe’s head, and voilà, a brand-new budget game.
Despite the obvious similarities, Prison Riot did not start out as the fourth Joe Blade game. “It was actually produced because of the Strangeways Prison riots that were happening at the time,” says Paul Griffiths, former programmer at Players. “It got slammed by the press and was even mentioned on the news. It was probably one of the first controversial games to actually get noticed outside the industry.”
While Prison Riot was testing the boundaries of taste, Paul was busy working on the real Joe Blade 4. “The original creator of Joe Blade, Colin Swinbourne, had left Players prior to progress starting on the next game,” he reveals. “As the previous games in the series were such good sellers, it was decided that I would write the fourth one. Martin Severn had already done some graphics for it so it was fairly easy to jump on board.”
The first three games were all pretty similar, but the plan was to switch things up for the fourth outing. “It differed in that it supported two players simultaneously, one playing Joe Blade, the other playing the main enemy. The screen was split into two, Spy Vs Spy style. Some of the gameplay elements from Spy Vs Spy were also going to be included to make it more tactical rather than just a run-and-gun game. It was still a bit Rambo-like, however. The objective was to rescue prisoners and also defeat the enemy.” The setting was changed too, with Joe dropped into a topical conflict. “This time, the scenario was based on a current event which was the first Gulf War,” says Paul, who remembers an in-game graphic of a Saddam Hussein wall poster. “Obviously, this was a little controversial back then. We were never really politically correct.”
From a gameplay standpoint, it sounds like a promising concept. You
“The screen was split into two and some gameplay elements from Spy Vs Spy were going to be included”
Paul Griffiths
can imagine sneaking around war-torn buildings, setting devious traps for your opposite number (with the series’ trademark puzzle sequences returning to allow you to defuse explosives, unlock doors and so on). But as Paul explains, it was sadly not to be. “The game never saw the light of day as [parent company] Interceptor went into liquidation and all development was stopped. I got back from a holiday to find out the company had folded, owing me thousands of pounds in royalties.”
As for the game itself, it was pretty close to being finished when work was halted. “The Spectrum version was roughly 80% complete. Most of the rooms and graphics were in and you could move around the map. It was more the ‘extra’ gameplay which wasn’t yet complete. There was also an Amstrad CPC version planned. It’s always a shame when a project
you’ve worked on never actually makes it out, but it happens quite often for various reasons.”
As the game was almost complete, there’s a chance that something might still exist. We checked with the game’s graphic artist Martin Severn to see if he had saved anything. “I’m sorry to say that I don’t have any of my work from back then. It was all produced on the Spectrum using Microdrives and I’ve no idea where the carts ended up.” He also reveals that unfinished projects were common at the company. “We were churning out a game every few weeks and there was so much work that got started and never finished, including a few full-price games. There were no producers back then and we were left to do whatever we liked. Looking back, I’m amazed we finished anything.”
There is a chance that Paul still has the incomplete source code for the game somewhere in his personal archives. “I think I have everything from 1986 onwards,” he teases, raising our hopes. “That’s 100-odd games, a lot of stuff. It’s just a case of digging it out. I may even have a screenshot somewhere if I can find it.”
As we await further discoveries, we asked veteran pixel pusher Jarrod Bentley (Crystal Kingdom Dizzy, Turbo The Tortoise) to mock up a couple of Spectrum screens to show how the game would’ve looked. Based on Paul’s information, they show the split-screen view, the Middle Eastern setting, and the concept of traps being used to thwart the enemy. Paul confirms that the screens are “pretty close” to his game, so for now this is the closest we’ll get to seeing how Joe’s final mission played out.