OUTRAGE
after 30 years
a legend is finally coming
to the Commodore 64
concept, development, graphic and design: Bernd Buchegger
production: Cosmos Designs
distribution: Protovision / Psytronik
OUTRAGE will delight you with
- 5 levels fully packed with finest arcade action
- each level with a monstruous endboss
- a shop to buy ammunition, smartbombs and more
- colorful graphics, animations and special effects
- beautifully crafted SID ingame music and sfx
- awesome handdrawn paper and PETSCII ingame manual
OUTRAGE is available as digital download and comes in two different COLLECTOR’ S EDITIONs.
Expect many special goodies and a beauftiful handdrawn manual in the boxes!
Order from Protovision (Cartridge) or Psytronik (Disk).
1990
The Journey’s Start
That’s me – a very young and highly motivated Panther, newest coder and graphic artist member at COSMOS DESIGNS. Encouraged by my fellow team members Arnold aka Arny [CD] (artist, social networker) and Hannes aka McSprite [CD] (coder) who both had accomplished several game developments the idea of creating an action shooter in the style of the legendary “Hawkeye” took shape. Thus, I started the development of my first Commodore 64 game “OUTRAGE”.
The Alpha
After two passionate years of intense assembler coding, pixel painting, sprite animating and level designing the first alpha version of OUTRAGE was ready. All my work was mainly performed during weekends and spare time since I was attending a boarding school.
1992
1993
The Competition
Unexpectedly, BOEDER and the 64’er Magazine started a game competition with the chance to win a game publishing contract and a travel to visit a BOEDER disc factory in France for the top 3 submissions. Hannes and me both handed in our games (COSMOX and OUTRAGE) and guess what: we both made it into the winners list! Oh boy, it felt like a dream became true!
The Notification
The winners were published so I waited patiently to get contacted by BOEDER for the next steps. It took several months until I finally got their notification letter. And a bomb dropped: BOEDER informed me that they have stopped all publishing activities for the C64 platform as it was not profitable for them anymore. My dream got crushed on that day – I felt totally devastated.
1994
2001
The Resurrection
The golden era of the home computer seemed to be over and personal computers started to rise. My focus was on my computer science study now.
One day I got contacted by Arnold who had the possibility to convert my original 5.25 inch floppy disks with the source code into a PC readable format (D64). After a long time, I finally played OUTRAGE again on a C64 emulator on my PC – what a moment!
The Memorial
Arny launched his fine-crafted retro-style Cosmos Designs memorial website at cosmos-c64.com packed with tons of material we produced for the C64. There were numerous demos, funny member pictures, copy party shots and all the games from Hannes.
And it included the first officially published ingame screenshots of OUTRAGE.
2002
2005
The 1st Attempt
It turned out that the C64 scene was not dead at all. In fact it was vivid as ever with a very exclusive but active community. One day Milo aka MacGyver from the German game publisher Protovision contacted me via ICQ after heaving read about the abandoned OUTRAGE on the GTW Games That Werent website. Protovision indicated their interest in taking over any necessary activities to finish the game. Consequently, I signed a contract with the guys and waited patiently for their delivery.
The 2nd Attempt
It turned out that things were not as easy as expected. Protovision struggled with the lack of resources and time they were able to assign to the required bugfixing. So we were forced to look for a new publisher and found it via a new contact from Australia. David Simmons and Psytronik took over the new lead of the project.
2010
2018
The 3rd Attempt
After a lot more frustration about not making any noticeable progress with OUTRAGE we were close to fail again. But then the persistence of David and the joint forces of Psytronik and Protovision finally pushed the whole project forward. Bugs started to get fixed, new title pictures and box covers were designed. It appeared as if our efforts finally paid off.
The Fine-Tuning
Several beta versions of OUTRAGE started to drop in. Meanwhile, Arnold and me documented the whole genesis of OUTRAGE as a trilogy in order to add it to the manual.
And then one day, a beautifully designed manual followed with incredible hand-drawn artwork and illustrations created by Lobo from Protovision – they are breathtaking and will all be included in the game box.
2019
2020
The Release
2020 will remain in our memories for many reasons, but not only because of this terrible pandemia. It is the year of the final release candidate for our long-awaited OUTRAGE.
And 2020 does also mark the moment where the legendary triumvirate from COSMOS DESIGNS finally reunited again. Best friends forever, mates!
This journey took incredible 30 years from start to finish line
and makes OUTRAGE the probably longest game development in history!
Is this world record? We believe yes.
But what did the global institution for world records – the Guinness Book – say?
Read the final chapter of our story to find out!
The OUTRAGEOUS CHRONICLE collects all publications from online and offline press.
We update regularily and you get free excerpts from retro mags!
All this was only possible with the great help from good friends.
Big shoutout and tribute goes to:
resurrection support by Arnold Blueml
additional development by Sidney Arbouw
quality assurance by David Simmons & Bieno Braitmaier
in-game-music and sfx by Roy Widding
original ingame and doc music by Karl Sommer
loading picture by Steve Day
loader system by Lasse Öörni
NTSC fix by Zack Thompson
IDE64 testing by Tomas Matys
C64 docs viewer made by Ruben Spaans, Kaare Johansen and Roy Widding
incredible manual artwork and illustration by Lobo Spitouf
PETSCII graphics by Cal Skuthorpe
psytronik box artwork by Trevor Storey
storyline by David Simmons
code coaching by Hannes Sommer
contact detection by Milo Mundt
additional packaging by Jason Mackenzie
production management by Jakob Chen-Voos
produced by David Simmons
Thank you all so much for bringing this journey to its happy ending!
1990 - 2020
finally brought to you by
