FANTASTIC ISLANDAdrian Cummings -Status: Lost in hard disk calamityQ&AInterview with Adrian Cummings- Was all the work on Fantastic Island destroyed in a hard disk crash? Adrian Cummings: Yes this was also for Core and I had a lot of it working and ready. I switch on my A1200 one morning to start work and heard a strange high pitch noise coming from the hard drive - on later inspection (it took me days to get over the shock) I found that the drive had suffered a head crash - the 2.5 inch 20Gb drive was only 3 months old too - very bad!. I lost all of the Core story like animation too for the front of the game that was going to be a classic - all I have left or managed to salvage was the title screen (the snake graphic in it will be part reused soon on a forthcoming mobile game for Overloaded can you believe hehe). We use to have a saying 'Backups or Whack ups! :) - When did development start and end? Adrian Cummings: It started not long after Doodlebug was published and ended when the drive went down tha pan about 3 months later sadly. - What sort of game was Fantastic Island? Adrian Cummings: It was a Sonic style high speed platformer with a bit more depth in terms of story. - - Why did you take the step to publish the Value 'n' Fun Series 1-3 (Tin Toy Adventure - 1996, Tommy Gun - 1996, Castle Kingdoms - 1997) yourself? Adrian Cummings: This was the result of Core ringing me up one day and telling me they had heard the news that the Amiga in all incarnations was about to die in the marketplace as a viable platform - I went into shock again and thought bugger that I'll keep going it alone with the cash that I had made back then. - How were sales around this time, especially given the state of the Amiga scene? Adrian Cummings: Tin Toy Adventure as a self-published title did about 3000 units, Tommy Gun did about 550 and Castle Kingdoms did really bad at around 200 units. By then I knew it was really over - the golden days had passed and I had to move to PC to stay alive perhaps - very sad as I gave a lot of my personal life to he Amiga - the best computer ever! - Are there any other unreleased games not mentioned that we should also be covering? Adrian Cummings: Some others (all demos) from the pre Mutation Software Rob and Dave Amiga/Atari ST days were Pod (Platformer), Eliminator (Robotron clone?),Morning Milkie (Paperboy clone) Egg (Platformer never went too far after getting ripped off by Microtec/Big Shot) and I think there were about 10 other concepts that never made it but without going through my old Amiga HD I have since forgotten many of them. - Are you still involved in game development today? Adrian Cummings: Yes I later went on to work in PC, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance, PS1 and in 2004 Mutation finally died and I moved into Mobile Phone games development. www.mobileamusements.com and now supply content to publishing partners Overloaded/Mobile Media. - What are your favourite Amiga games? Adrian Cummings:
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