A HISTORY

The game Brataccas does not have a very pretty history. Most of it is fragmented. The game seems to have a curse about it. In the early 80's there was a company called Imagine based in Liverpool, England. Imagine had the great idea of making a MEGA-GAME. They called it BANDERSNATCH. In the 80's the video game industry was a flurry of rock star like programmers that appeared and disappeared, leaving in their wake many games. Imagine was made up of many such programmers. When the company went belly up the creators of Bandersnatch pretty much disappeared. One former member of Imagine, Ian Hetherington, went on to form a little game company called Psygnosis. I believe (Someone please correct me if I'm wrong) Brataccas was the first Psygnosis game. Psygnosis went on the greatness and the legend that was Bandersnatch, that became Brataccas, fell away somewhere in the Amiga/ST/Mac market...never to be seen again.

The Archives

The following links are not to the pages themselves but to archives of these pages which I have chosen to keep on my site. These are pages which I gathered information from relating to Brataccas. There are not many, and the few that there are tend to be somewhat obscure. To the best of my knowledge my page is the only page dedicated to Brataccas. If anyone finds other pages that they feel are significant to the game brataccas please post in the forum.

http://cache.cow.net/psygnosis/history/borrowedtime.html
http://www.mjwilson.demon.co.uk/crash/17/denton.htm
http://exotica.fix.no/gallery/games/b.html
http://www.sincuser.f9.co.uk/040/htsquad.htm
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~jimg/yr06/yr06_34.htm
http://www.atarimagazines.com/v5n2/STProductNews.html
http://www.uvlist.com/gameinfo/18854
http://www.atarimagazines.com/startv4n11/behind_the_scenes.html
http://www.mjwilson.demon.co.uk/crash/12/imagine.htm
http://www.zxgoldenyears.co.uk/imagine.html
http://www.sincuser.f9.co.uk/044/gremlin.htm
http://www.jonlan.demon.co.uk/spectrum/gamefaq/gamefaq5.html
http://tzxvault.retrogames.com/time.htm

The Source Code

I was able to successfully disassemble the Brataccas MAIN and BRATACCA.PRG files. It is available for download HERE.

I am attempting to start a project to have this converted to C++. Since I don't know C++ that well and know nothing about M68K assembly, it's not going well.

At the moment my primary goal is to extract the original graphics from these files (screen shots are not an option, there are way too many NPC's in this game, not to mention the strange animation techniques [how many times have you noticed that a characters arm will become detached from his body as he draws his sword too quickly!?], besides, I'm looking for perfect extractions, not rips.) By all means, however, if you feel you have the skill to do this please feel free to. You are more than welcome to post a message on my forum to announce the project if you like. Just please make sure you intend on completing the project before doing so.

If you know M68K assembly and would like to take on this project post on the forum, and have at it! It would be greatly appreciated if anyone would take on any part of this task. The only thing I ask in exchange for using the source code I disassembled is that you just let me know what you are doing with it.

I started a topic HERE regarding the disassembly. As of this writing no one has taken on the project.

Downloads

• Assembly Source Code