Upcoming Games

A Cinemaware Update: ‘King of Chicago’, ‘Wings’ Coming

News of an upcoming retro classic-gone-iOS has recently landed, and it should put a smile on the face of gamers that have been around for the long haul. Famed Amiga-era game studio Cinemaware has announced that King of Chicago, originally released in 1986, will soon be coming to the App Store.

The game, set in the 1930s, is an action adventure that puts the player in Capone-era Chicago on a bid to become the mob-boss of the city. Gameplay involves plenty of illicit activities such as gambling, payoffs, bombings, and gang-land drive-by shootings. The iOS title is being put together in-house at Cinemaware and consists of the original Amiga version of the game wrapped in Manomio’s iAmiga emulation system.

Cinemaware has also been in the news lately for their recently launched Kickstarter campaign to develop a complete HD remake of their highly popular 1990 action game Wings. The campaign is targeting a set funding goal of $350,000 to develop Wings: Director’s Cut, at title to feature actual 3D models, completely redone visuals, and a re-scored soundtrack, to iOS, Android and Windows PC. Cinemaware notes that if higher funding levels are achieved, they will additionally add “new missions, new diary entries and story elements, new landscapes, more & better animations, additional music tracks, and maybe even more combat sequence mini-games…" The studio is offerings a wide array of swag for many different levels of funding, but it looks like they’ve got a good way to go before hitting the minimum funding level by the deadline of Sept 11. And we would remind readers that, as with all Kickstarter campaigns, there’s a chance things may not go quite to the funders’ liking, as the project organizers modify their pitch to try to generate more interest and hit their goal.

Cinemaware’s Kickstarter news prompted me to check in with the man behind iAmiga, Stuart Carnie of Manomio, who put together last year’s release, Defender of the Crown for iOS ($2.99), in conjunction with Cinemaware. We knew that Stuart was working with the studio to bring the original Amiga version of Wings to the App Store, utilizing the same core features of his iAmiga technology that were used in Defender of the Crown. Stuart assures us that classic Wings is still on the way, as a separate item from the Wings: Director’s Cut effort.

We will keep readers in the loop on these coming titles, with more details as they hit the App Store.