A big part of my interest in the local games industry was due to Melbourne House and their ground breaking games in the mid 80's, but the next wave of interest happened a decade later during the reign of the Amigas and Atari STs when three guys from Brisbane took on the likes of dev giants, Lucasarts and Sierra Online, and brought out an extraordinary title called Flight of the Amazon Queen. It was a remarkable achievement and a notable milestone in Aussie game development.
Flight of the Amazon Queen was a point-and-click adventure game that was comparable to the best out there in quality and content, and now, fifteen years later, it's making a welcomed return! Development studio, iPhSoft, happened to be huge fans of the game and took it on themselves to bring the Aussie developed game to a new generation of gamers on the iPhone.
John Passfield, game designer, programmer, scriptwriter, tester and biz guy for FOTAQ, seems to be blown away that his game is so much more accessable for todays gamers...
(John Passfield) It’s amazing. Amazon Queen was built for high-end computers (at the time) and we were one of the first games to include full voice on CD-ROM. The blank CD-R’s that we used to burn copies of the game for testing cost $50 each! And they weren’t that reliable. To be able to play the game with full voice in the palm of my hand just blows me away.
What's worth mentioning is how John managed to retain the I.P of the game, even though FOTAQ was published by Renegade a decade and a half ago...
(John Passfield) I was extremely lucky to have worked with a great publisher called Renegade who, after the games initial sell through were happy to assign the rights back to the developer. I thoroughly recommend owning your own IP!
Be sure to check out Flight of the Amazon Queen at the Appstore!