Credits and Links
| Thanks go to... | For... | Optional link |
| Bruce Jordan * | Time, much info, help on translation, agreement to publish many files, humour and everything... RIP. | |
| Mo Warden * | Time, much info, games reviews, Damocles for PC pictures |
Personal information
Grafixation site (web design and more) |
| Adrian Hurt | Much info | |
| Mark Sachs | The Hitch-Hicker's Guide To Damocles | Personnal site |
| Simon Berry * | Time, much info | |
| Mooz | Incredible looking maps for Mercenary 1 and 2nd City | Personal site (dead link, see on Wayback Machine) |
| Peter Tucker | Scans | |
| Jeremy Smith | Scans ! (Targ survival Kit, Interlude on Targ novella, Mercenary Compendium) | Games Novellas Homepage (including Interlude On Targ) |
| Simone Gremmo | Scanned Damocles for PC pics, Gamma System Explorer, cheats | All Simone's works around Mercenary, lots of interesting things. |
| Neil Toulouse * | Info | |
| James Kracht | Mercenary has inspired him a novel, The Rise And Fall Of Shimmerism | Official site (dead link, Wayback Machine backup) |
| Andrew Williams | 1st scan of the Mercenary 1 Orbital Complex (from the Targ Survival Kit + hi-res map), C64 emulator section | |
| Peter Pachla * | Info | |
| John Selck | Excellent maps for Mernceary 1 underground and orbital complex, Amiga HD installers, maps for The Second City | WHDLoad |
| Ulrich Jerono | Scan of 2nd City magazine maps | |
| Peter Young | HTML games reviews | |
| Neil Crump | HTML games reviews | |
| Dave Weeks | Scanned games reviews | |
| Lorenzo | Scanned Mercenary 3 cheat part 2 | |
| John | Sent a 2nd City solution | |
| Roadki11 | Amiga emulator info | |
| Frank Schröder-Höftmann | Info | |
| Pawel Garycki | Much Mercenary 3 and Damocles info | Personal site |
| Alain Decayeux | Scan of Mercenary 1 Underground Complex (from a French version of the Targ Survival Kit ?) | Games nostalgia website |
| Glenn Andrews | Info | |
| Stewart Gilray | Info (his name is in Damocles' Novagen Cabinet :-) | |
| John Milford | Info (his name is in Damocles' Novagen Cabinet too :-) | |
| Guy Havers | Offered to scan the Targ Survival Kit | |
| Nova | Has started a website for the Mercenary 4 project | Mercenary 4 project (dead link) |
| Roy Griffiths | Has written the solution for Mercenary - Escape From Targ | |
| Nick Bacchus * | Much info | |
| Michael Rooke * | Much info | |
| Achim Haertel | Excellent maps for The Second City underground and orbital complex | |
| Paul Dixon | Complete and detailed solution for The Second City | |
| Derrick Bill Newall | Scan of Damocles for PC preview in Edge magazine | |
| Graham H Dodsworth | Color maps for Escape From Targ | |
| Jonathon Wild * | Information about '95 Damocles for PC version | Psygnosis! |
| Wepl | Amiga HD installers | WHDLoad |
| Andy Krouwel | Mercenary 1 reviews, many information. | |
| Timo Weirich | '95 Damocles for PC pictures | |
| Szymon Ender | Mercenary 1 theft solution and other information | Solution on Szymon's website |
| Angus Manwaring | scan of Amiga Power #1, page 12 | The Amiga Games Database |
| Iain Smith | scans of the Amiga Damocles Mission Disk 1 | |
| MetroMaster | Saitek X-52 joystick configuration file for the MDDClone | |
| George Nakos | Damocles and Mercenary 3 for Atari Falcon | D-Bug team |
| Ben Hill | Located the antenna in Second City solution | |
| Szymon Grygiel | Some hints in Mercenary solution | |
| Allan Ullmann | Scans of Mercenary 1 boxes, tapes and manuals | |
| John Pollard | Hints from unknow source for Mercenary 1 | |
| Steven Sargent | Info (his name is in Damocles' Novagen Cabinet too :-) | |
| Stephen from Australia | Sent info about music for Mercenary 1 C64 US Gold release | |
| Gabor Kiss | Corrected several things in the Damocles guide, solutions videos, great HTML5 maps | Damocles solutions on Youtube |
| Andrew Griffiths | Took Paul Woakes' photo in 2002 (see Paul Woakes tribute page) | |
| Tom Davies | Shared Paul Woakes' photo from 2002 | |
| Hyper Sonic | Corrected details on the 2nd City solution | |
| Juri Fossaroli | Information for the Damocles guide | |
| Graham Crump | Information for the Damocles guide | |
| Stephen Stuttard | Many scans: boxes, manuals, ... | |
| Jacob de Meza | Various pictures: maps, boxes, ... | |
| Ross "the furthest man from home" | Info | |
| Robert Lawlor | Info | |
| Paul Huhges | Info on Novaload and UK's game industry | |
| Andreas Eversberg | Mercenary Reloaded and playable Damocles demo | |
| Darren Whiting | Information about the Targ Survival Kit | |
| Eddie Fisher * | Info | |
| Gary Walton * | Info | |
| Stewart Burne-Jones | Youtube videos (see links section) | |
| Ian Thompson-Yates * | Info | |
| Jason Paul Bowker * | Info | |
| Russ Lanier | Info | |
| Mike Clarke | Info about Psygnosis | |
| Andreas Wallström | Allowed to use material from c64.com website. | www.c64.com |
| ARTICLES | ||
| Title | Content | Link |
| The making of Mercenary
and many other goodies! |
Andy Krouwel's excellent article, published in Edge #153, is online. If you scroll down the page, you will find invaluable material from Bruce Jordan and Mo Warden, including Damocles for PC music, the Continuum storyboard (the last Novagen game project), and Damocles and Encounter sketches. Also, don't miss the small comment about it on Andy's main page, really worth reading IMHO ;)
Many, many thanks to Andy for having opened his treasure chest to us! |
The making of Mercenary |
| The First Open World | Electrondance blog has this full 3-parts article on Mercenary 1 by Joel Goodwin. It's excellent! | Part one
Part two Part three |
| Origins of the Open World: Mercenary | Another good read, about the 3 episodes, by Pete Davison. With pictures taken from this site ;) | Read on US Gamer site |
| The Digital Antiquarian: Mercenary | Yet another interesting read by Jimmy Maher, on The Digital Antiquarian website. | The Digital Antiquarian: Mercenary |
| Eurogamer: Mercenary retrospective | Check this great article on Mercenary from Tony Coles, for Eurogamer. Very nice read! | Mercenary retrospective |
| Livejournal: on the death of Paul Woakes | Andrew Gillett is paying tribute to Paul Woakes with memories of Mercenary III | Andrew's article |
| Amiga Reviews website | Very nicely designed website of magazines reviews for Amiga, re-creating in HTML the articles from the 80s and 90s. Especially holding reviews of our favourite three games. | Mercenary reviews
Damocles reviews Mercenary 3 reviews |
| Amiga Magazine Rack | A large review database which is linked to tens of thousands of scanned pages, including several reviews of Mercenary, Damocles and Mercenary III (for Atari ST too). | Amiga Magazine Rack |
| ZX Spectrum Reviews | Articles compilations from spectrumcomputing.co.uk, about Mercenary 1 Escape From Targ and The Second City. Quite interesting to see the various articles dates (hence games releases or re-releases). | Escape From Targ
The Second City |
| The Amiga Games Database | Angus Manwaring and Dennis Smith's Amiga Games Database: a collection of Amiga Game reviews by Amiga players, including several reviews of Mercenary and Damocles. | Amiga Games Database |
| Mercenary walkthrough | The nice Aaron Littlefield's Mercenary walkthrough, for Sepctrum computers. | Mercenary: Escape from Targ (walkthrough) |
| AtariCrypt blog: the Mercenary site | I was interviewed by Steven Gregory, who wrote a nice entry on the AtariCrypt blog about Mercenary and this website. | AtariCrypt blog |
| Sinus Iridum | I stumbled upon a blog (apparently shelved since 2006) by Mo Warden, with a detailed post about her games industry career. | (shelved) Mo Warden's blog |
| Coming Soon magazine | A preview of Damocles for PC, from 1995... | News article about Damocles '95 |
| Atari Explorer (dead site?) | Excellent review of the three games at Atari Explorer website | link on wayback machine (Old link). |
| Player Spirit magazine | A French magazine who did a 14-pages long article about Mercenary origins and legacy. It's not online, it's in their 5th issue from spring 2019, and it's in French. | Player Spirit website |
| Retro Gamer magazine | Retro Gamer issued a few very good articles related to Novagen: an interview with Mo Warden (2017, issue 166, p.92-97), and two pages about Paul Woakes passing (2018, issue 179, p.8-9). There's also in interview of Tony Takoushi saying a few words about his experience with Paul Woakes. I guess you can still buy them back. | Retro Gamer website
Tony Takoushi interview online. |
| SOFTWARE | ||||||||
| Title | Content | Link | ||||||
| MDDClone | Amazing complete remake of Mercenary, Damocles and Mercenary III for Windows. Also exists in an SDL enhanced version (Mercenary only) by Szymon Ender. | MDDClone page (this site) Szymon's MDDClone SDL page | ||||||
| Mercenary Reloaded | Andreas Eversberg's great enhanced OpenGL quality port of Amiga versions of Damocles and Mercenary III. See also on our dedicated page for details. | Mercenary reloaded | ||||||
| TADPSID | TADPSID is a virtual environment based on Damocles for PC with the released screenshots as a reference, made by Simone Gremmo. He turned it into a specific story, based on his ideas for a 4th Mercenary episode. See also Simone's other Mercenary projects in the "related sites" links. | TADPSID website | ||||||
| MERC, Mercenary-like game | Gabor Torok's "Merc", an interesting very Mercenary-like game, which he describes as his lost sequel to Mercenary, currently in development.
|
Merc 0.62 | ||||||
| Little Green Desktop (old!) | If you had an Atari ST, this old Little Green Desktop website used to be a reference. It can still be useful though, if you're willing to emulate games using old PCs: try the PaCifiST or WinSTon emulators from their emulators section. But you'd rather use Steem now ;) | PaCifiST
WinSTon Steem | ||||||
| D-Bug team website | The Automation and D-Bug team website, where you can find lots of Atari ST games patched to run from hard-drive and for Falcon, including Damocles and Mercenary III games. They got two links, but it's the same site. | d-bug.mooo.com
d-bug.me | ||||||
| icu64-hacking-games | Hyper Sonic sent me a link to this site, demonstrating how he managed to handle corrdinates in real time with The Second City running on a C64 emulator. | C64 Mercenary Second City coordinates | ||||||
| Mercenary on Jaguar project | Lawrence Staveley was working on a Jaguar port of Mercenary. As far as I know, it remained unfinished though. | Conversation at Atariage forum | ||||||
| RELATED SITES | ||
| Title | Content | Link |
| Mercenary BBS | After the old Mercenary BBS disappeared, Simone Gremmo set up a new BBS on Reddit. | Mercenary BBS |
| Telegram group | Szymon Ender set up a Telegram group for Mercenary players. Feel free to join in! | Telegram group |
| Devil Master's Mercenary fan works | Simone Gremmo's many projects around Mercenary: TADPSID, Gamma Explorer, Duke Dammocles, Mercenary 4 April fool's joke (and the "behind the scenes" section, explaining how the joke was created), Dark Mercenary, Gamma system for Celestia, and a full analysis of the first Damocles for PC pictures that were publicly released. | Simone's Mercenary projects |
| Commodore Plus/4 World | Amazing site dedicated to the Commodore Plus/4 computer. Search for Mercenary, you should find an extremely detailed page for each release of the game, with also maps and other items! | Commodore Plus/4 World
Mercenary page |
| Page 6 magazine | Site dedicated to the old Atari magazine from Birmingham, linked to the Birmingham User Group (BUG), which Paul Woakes visited at the time he began coding. | Page 6 magazine |
| Zogging Hell!!! | Zogging Hell is dedicated to vintage computers and consoles, with a specialism in the Atari ST. The Damocles Demo from ST User was found on Zogging Hell website - check their great Atari ST coverdisks section. | Zogging Hell website |
| From Bedroom to Billions | Very good documentary about the beginnings of the video games industry in the UK. Very nicely done, holds many interviews, including Mo Warden - though her contribution is a bit short to my taste in the final movie, wish they published the full interview some day. They also have another movie about Amiga games, which I haven't seen. | From Bedroom to Billions |
| The Rise and Fall of Shimmerism | Did you know that Mercenary has inspired a novel by James V. Kracht? The old website seems down (www.shimmerism.org), so I added links from Wayback Machine, of the newest website version, but its FAQ hasn't been archived, so I also added an old version of the FAQ. And also the order link from Amazon. | Site backup
Old FAQ Amazon order |
| Australian Fiction | David Hearne's website. David is a screenwriter (2 short films made, 3 books) inspired by (among others) Mercenary. One of his latest feature screenplay features a robot named Benson. He's trapped on a Comedy Cruise space liner called 'Targ' which he cannot escape from. | Australian Fiction site |
| RZX Archive | Daren Pearcy's website dedicated to action replay recordings for the ZX Spectrum computer. On the site is a walkthrough recording of Mercenary, which can be played back in any supporting Spectrum emulator (listed on the page). | RZX Archive |
| Novagen Games Tribute Site (down?) | John McCullagh had build a very nice site inspired by this one, which sadly disappeared with Geocities - unless I missed some new URL. Here's a link from one of those Geocities backup sites. | John McCullagh's site |
| VIDEOS | |||
| Title | Content | Link | |
| Mercenary for the Atari 8-bit family | By Highretrogamelord, who doesn't seem to know he can go underground ;) This was the 1st version of Mercenary. | Mercenary for Atari 8-bits | |
| Mercenary - C64 Longplay | Solution in English, by DerSchmu. Exists in 240p or 720p. | 720p
240p | |
| Mercenary - The 8 Bit Face-Off Kerfuffle | By Mamemeister, taking a look at the various 8 bit versions. | Mercenary 8-bits versions | |
| Mercenary - C64 Playguide Review | Mercenary: Escape from Targ for C64 by LemonTube64 (Lemon64.com). Solution in English, loaded from tape with Novaload music. | Lemon64.com solution | |
| Mercenary - Plus/4 Speed Run (solution) | Mercenary: Escape From Targ - Speed Run solution on Commodore Plus/4, by ulysses777x. Speed Run means the fastest possible way of finishing the game. | Commodore Plus/4 solution | |
| Mercenary - Plus/4 various videos | Fonsisweb has many videos of Commodore Plus/4 games, including several ones from Mercenary. | Commodore Plus/4 videos | |
| Mercenary - Spectrum walkthrough | Spectrum walkthrough by RZX Archive. 51 mins long! | Spectrum walkthrough | |
| Mercenary - Atari ST | Let's Play 1001 Games - Episode 130, by Gaming Jay. Shows the Atari ST version | Atari ST game | |
| Mercenary Compendium, Escape From Targ - Amiga | By petsasjim1. Obviously he doesn't really know what to do, but shows the Amiga Compendium loading screen, selecting between Targ and 2nd City. | Amiga Mercenary Compendium | |
| Mercenary, random walk - Amiga | '256 Colors' offers a video of Escape From Targ, with a good part in the underground complex. | Mercenary Amiga | |
| Mercenary - MDDClone-SDL | By EnjoMitch. Enjo made a SDL port of the MDDClone, for Mercenary 1, which you can download from this site, but he also made a video so you can see the result ;) | MDDClone-SDL | |
| Mercenary - destroy Mechanoids sites - MDDClone | Electron Dance shows the Mercenary 'military solution', using MDDClone. Check their great article link in the... Articles links! | Military solution - MDDClone | |
| Mercenary - Paul Woakes tribute - MDDClone | Still Electron Dance, in this Paul Woakes tribute mainly showing Mercenary and Second City, but also Encounter, Damocles and Mercenary III. | Paul woakes tribute | |
| Mercenary demo - Gameboy Colour | Three demos of the unreleased and scrapped Mercenary conversion for the Gameboy Colour. (c) Thalamus Interactive 2000, thanks to Games That Weren't. | Demo 1
Demo 2 Demo 3 | |
| Second City - Stealing ship solution - Atari ST | Video from coy8149, showing how to escape from the 2nd City, by stealing the interstellar ship. | Thief solution - Atari ST | |
| Second City - walkthrough - Plus/4 | By fonsisweb, a speed run winning game (less than 7 minutes!). | Walkthrough - Plus/4 | |
| Second City (Compendium) - beginning - Amiga | By petsasjim1 again, launching the 2nd City on the Mercenary Compendium for Amiga, which shows the specific selection screen at start. | 2nd City (Compendium) - Amiga | |
| Second City - random walk - C64 | Checkpoint TV showing the Commodore 64 version of 2nd City. Not much happening there, but it gives an idea. | Walkthrough - C64 | |
| "Third City" - C64 | This is a funny curiosity posted by A Retro Syntaxing Era {ARSE}, Created in 1989 by Kyle Arnold: a text-based version of Mercenary ;) | The 3rd City, text based - C64 | |
| Damocles - Atari ST demo | The Atari ST Damocles Demo, from ST User magazine coverdisk, on Vimeo or Youtube, thanks to '256 Colors'. | Damocles demo (Vimeo)
Damocles demo (Youtube) | |
| Damocles solutions - Amiga | Discigabi (Gabor Kiss) made a video for each possible solution of Damocles, playing on Amiga.
Novabomb on Damocles - Novabomb on Icarus - Damocles destroyed by Author's Computer - Icarus destroyed by Author's Computer - Damocles destroyed by Magic Crystal - Damocles and Eris saved by Magic Crystal - Explosives on Damocles - Explosives on Icarus | ||
| Damocles review - Amiga | Interesting and well-documented review, by Amigos Retro Gaming. The review itself begins around 25mins. | Amigos: Everything Amiga Podcast 212 | |
| Retro Recipes: Peri Plays Damocles - Amiga | 3 hours long full (emulated) Amiga longplay of Damocles, with a live chat and apparently a lot of people watching. | Retro Recipes Live: Peri Plays Damocles | |
| Atari ST A to Z: Damocles | Pete Davison explains the game story and gives a try at playing again... And fails at saving Eris, hence the title ;) | COMPLETE FAILURE - Damocles | |
| Damocles and Mercenary III - Atari ST emulator | StooDogg had made many videos of Damocles and Mercenary III, including solutions. Follow the link to have the full list. | StooDogg's videos | |
| Damocles and Mercenary III - Mercenary Reloaded | Andreas Eversberg's trailer for Mercenary Reloaded. | Mercenary Reloaded | |
| Mercenary III, Ain't Played In Ages - MDDClone | By JimPlaysGames, extended play in ten parts (hours!) using MDDClone (and not a ST like stated). Part 9 is especially funny when he gets out of money, and kicked out from a taxi in front of a bank giving him 10 millions - amazing luck ;) | Jim plays Mercenary III | |
| Let's play Mercenary III - Amiga | GrafDuster plays the game on Amiga, commenting in German. | Let's play Mercenary III | |
| Mercenary III solutions | There used to be a complete set of solutions, in French, by "Beussa Beussa". Saldy the link seems dead right now - adding it just in case it ever comes back. | Mercenary III solutions (Fr) (dead link?) | |
| Damocles '95 for PC | Videos made in 2008, see the Damocles for PC page for details. The Mercenary Site got the "go" to share them so here they are!
Intro - Getting the limo - Getting to the Pres - Brief - Get the key - Get the Dart - Stumbling around and some news - Vesta - Lucan - Dion, Moseley Road - Dion, splash - Atropos, wandering - Cronus, a beacon - Cronus - Wandering around, a transporter - Transporter - Suffocated (bug!) | ||
| Damocles remake - Concept Trailer | In 2016, by JAW Ltd. Stewart's project to re-make Damocles, sadly shelved since the Intellectual Property could not be clearly sorted, though Paul Woakes was OK. | Damocles - Concept Trailer | |
