OUTRAGE C64

OUTRAGE title - the longest video game development in history

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

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).

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A young Panther from Cosmos Designs

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”.

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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

OUTRAGE ingame screenshot - intro
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BOEDER competition - winner announcement

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!

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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

Panther from Cosmos Designs - bad mood
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OUTRAGE - original floppy disks

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!

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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

Cosmos Designs Homepage
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The Protovision Team

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.

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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

Psytronik logo
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Arny and Panther from Cosmos Designs

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.

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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

OUTRAGE manual
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the Cosmos Designs Triumvirate

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!

 

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The OUTRAGEOUS CHRONICLE collects all publications from online and offline press.
We update regularily and you get free excerpts from retro mags!

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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!

OUTRAGE logo

1990 - 2020

finally brought to you by

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