the cutting room mirror

Cyberboard Kid

This article has a talk page!
view on tcrf.net

This page details pre-release information and/or media for Cyberboard Kid.

This needs some investigation.
Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page.
Specifically: The announcement post mentions screenshots. Can these be tracked down, and if so, do they have differences?

Development Timeline#

1995

  • April 7 - Stuart Mackereth from Reality Interactive puts out a call for someone who could code a good scrolling engine for 386/486 PCs. He mentions that four attempts of their own engine didn't "fully support the features" they needed, and that they "are running out of time in a hurry."1
  • April 19 - Stuart Mackereth announces the game, aiming for a release in July.2
  • April 30-May 2 - The date of most files in the CYR1.ZIP distribution of the shareware version.
  • July 12 - Programmer Gordon Tyler drops some technical insight on the game, mentioning that it has yet to be optimized.3
  • September 14 - Reality Interactive asks for feedback on their Mode X resolution.4
  • November 29 - The date of RSLIB.002 in the CYR1.ZIP distribution of the shareware version.
  • December 6 - Reality Interactive asks if someone in South Africa could lend them a Diamond Stealth video card, due to potential issues with that card when using DRAM.5
  • December 14 - The date of the executable and RSLIB.001 in the CYR1.ZIP distribution of the shareware version.
  • December 15 - The date of RSLIB.001 in the commercial version.
  • December 19 - The game gets a rating in Australia.6
  • December 29 - The date of most files in the commercial version.

1996

  • January 17 - The date of the executable and other files in the CYBERKID.ZIP distribution of the shareware version.
  • January 24 - The game is rated by USK.7
  • February 7 - The date of various files in the non-game directories of the commercial version.
  • February 16 - Cyril Cyberpunk/Cyberboard Kid is released for DOS, with the shareware version being uploaded online by Reality Interactive.8

Apogee Publishing#

The game was originally set to be published by Apogee Software under the title Cyberpunk Kid, but this ended up not being the case.9 The final game lists Apogee as the game's distributor in the US and Canada, but according to Apogee's Joe Siegler, this was done without the company's knowledge.10

References#

  1. Reality Interactive: lookingfor coders/scrolling engine↩︎
  2. "Cyril Cyberpunk" by Reality Interactive↩︎
  3. Jazz Jackrabbit scrolling.... "BTW, for our new game, Cyril Cyberpunk, our main game engine is a sideview platform scroller that uses all the various triple buffering and hardware scrolling techniques, and we're getting 60 fps on a slowish 486. With 2/3 48x48 sprites on screen and foreground & background tiles. And it has yet to be optimised. So it *is* possible. We're hoping for 60fps on a 386dx40 when we're finally done."↩︎
  4. Mode-x resolution instability↩︎
  5. Diamond Stealth D RAM↩︎
  6. CYBERBOARD KID (aka CYRIL CYBERPUNK) | Australian Classification↩︎
  7. You searched for cyril cyberpunk - Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle↩︎
  8. Cyril Cyberpunk↩︎
  9. The Apogee FAQ: Section [2.5]: Cancelled Projects↩︎
  10. Re: To APOGEE. "It was released with that info in the game quite without our knowledge. Cyberboard Kid was a game we were working on with Reality Studios, but we cancelled it."↩︎