Beneath A Steel Sky (Amiga, Amiga CD32)

Beneath A Steel Sky
Developer: Revolution Software Publisher: Virgin Interactive Platforms: Amiga, Amiga CD32 Released internationally: March 1994 This game has a hidden developer message. This game has hidden development-related text.

Beneath A Steel Sky follows Robert Foster on his journey to escape from the city, but also finding out about its dark secrets along the way. Also, the Amiga version had fifteen floppy disks, with loads of disk swapping along the way.

To do: document the apparently pre-final demo

Developer Message

Inside of the game's main executable at 0x256 (Gamea on Disk 1 for the Amiga version or steelsky for the Amiga CD version), there's a small version string right at the beginning.

Version	Credit
CD32 demo (from Amiga Format issue 55 cover disk 2)	Virtual Theatre System 2.0 designed by Tony Warriner. All code, graphics & text (c)1993 Revolution Software Ltd. This version 17 \ 11 \ 1993
Original Release	Virtual Theatre System 2.0 designed by Tony Warriner. All code, graphics, text & sound (c)1994 Revolution Software Ltd. This version 10 \ 3 \ 1994
Sweden	Virtual Theatre System 2.0 designed by Tony Warriner. All code, graphics, text & sound (c)1994 Revolution Software Ltd. This version 24 \ 6 \ 1994
Italy	Virtual Theatre System 2.0 designed by Tony Warriner. All code, graphics, text & sound (c)1994 Revolution Software Ltd. This version 21 \ 7 \ 1994
CD-32 version	Virtual Theatre System 2.0 designed by Tony Warriner. All code, graphics, text & sound (c)1994 Revolution Software Ltd. This version 25 \ 10 \ 1994

This is followed by a story about the game's troubles to make it work on an Amiga.

At the beginning the programmers were happy and did rejoice at their task, 
for the Amiga before them did shineth and was full of promise. But then they 
did look closer and did see'th the awful truth; it's floppies were tiny and 
sloweth (rareth was its hard drive). And so small was it's memory that did at 
first appear large; queereth also was its configuration(s). 

Then they did findeth another Amiga, and this was slightly different from the 
first. Then a third, and this was different again. All different, but not 
really better, for all were psuedo backward compatible. But, eventually, it 
did come to pass that Steel Sky was implemented on a 1meg os-legal CBM Amiga. 

And the programmers looked and saw that it was indeed a miracle. 

But they were not joyous and instead did weep for nobody knew just 
what had been done.

(developer message: Angus Manwaring)