Scooby Doo  (Micro Illusions)
Original title: The Adventures of Scooby Doo
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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(From GTW64) :

1989 Microillusions
Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5

Coding: Peter Ward
Graphics: Les Pardew, Mac Sims, David Clayton, Lance
Sound: Paul Webb
Other: Hal Rushton, Sean B. Barger, John Motter, Anneli Motter, Curtis Norris
Also known as: The Adventures of Scooby Doo

Forumites on Lemon 64 were happily surprised on the 4th August 2014, when the developer of a long lost adventure game of Scooby Doo was recovered and uploaded for the first time in over 20 years, after being recovered from disks in his basement.

Peter Ward worked at Microillusions during the late 80′s, where he had worked on Main Frame for the same company just previous (before that he worked on Black Magic for Datasoft). His next assignment was on a Scooby Doo licence – which came about after Microillusions struck up a deal with Hanna-Barbera for a series of their licences.

There were to be a series of titles including Jonny Quest, Flintstones, The Jetsons and finally Scooby Doo across the Amiga, PC and C64 – possibly sharing the same engine to get all the titles out there quickly.

Microillusions made a terrible error though as they released The Jetsons to the world on the Amiga platform. They had shipped a Jetsons comic book serving as instructions with the game story background, which seemed like a great idea at the time. However, Hanna-Barbera never approved the title and were furious with Microillusions for releasing it. They revoked all their licences and this damaged Microillusions terribly – eventually contributing to them going bankrupt. As a result, most of the games never saw the light of day either.

What is surprising, is that according to Peter – most of the games were actually pretty much complete – so there is actually a series of titles like this one to still recover!

Scooby Doo overall is a lovely graphic adventure game for kids, with some cool action sequences. The game spans 5 D64 images overall and is packed with cartoon pictures. It’s probably the best Scooby Doo game on the C64, and a bit of compensation for Elite’s laserdisc style title never quite making it.
The game is not complete though – as a 4th ghost town mystery was never fully completed. However, it feels like a complete title and the 3 mysteries present provide pretty much a complete title. We’ll still list it within GTW64 as a “Preview” as a result of the intended content, and likely final fixes which were never done due to Microillusions going under.

It is a great finding and very kind of Peter, and we hope to see more in the future preserved like this! It’s great to see developers digging out their disks before its too late!

Check it out!

Contributions: Peter Ward, Christina Burroughs, Kevin Tilley

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“The story goes as follows…

Long ago, in MicroIllusions heyday… they struck a great deal with Hanna-Barbera for a bunch of their licenses. They were making games based on Johnny Quest, Flintstones, The Jetsons, and Scooby Doo. I was lead on the C64 of Scooby. Things were all looking sweet, as all the games were wrapping up. The Jetsons finished first and was released ( I’m sure you can find copies of it around ).

However, MicroIllusions made a fatal error with their product release… which would ultimately lead to the demise of the company.

Included with the Jetsons product, was a Jetsons comic book serving as instructions, and game story background. Hanna-Barbera NEVER approved this comic book, and were furious with MicroIllusions for releasing it ( they are VERY protective with their licenses! )

Ultimately, they revoked all their licenses from MicroIllisions. 
MicroIllusions shortly later went bankrupt, and most of those games sadly never saw the light of day.

This one has been sitting in my basement for over 20 years on 5 1/4 floppies.

I’m happy its finally getting out there!”

Then about the game itself…

“This was intended to be a PC, AMIGA, C64 release. I have the C64 version only ( will hunt around for the AMIGA )

This is a rather large game for a C64, spanning 4 disks. It contains 3 mysteries for the scooby gang to solve. Solving the mystery involves searching for items, talking to people to gather clues, finding secret rooms, playing arcade sequences, etc… etc…

The mysteries to solve are:

1: Daymen Mansion Mystery 
2: SeaMonster mystery 
3: SkiLodge mystery

A 4th, “ghost town mystery’, I believe was never completed.


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/scooby-doo/
