Kickstarter

As promised, I've been panning for gold in the Sensible waters, and while rooting through the big bag of ephemera I politely ransacked from Jon Hare's house the other day, I came across a floppy disk from 1990 with the initials 'MLW' scribbled across the label. A quick call to Jon revealed the letters stood for My Little Warhead, a game that eventually became Mega lo Mania. I'll let Jon explain the rest:

'When Mega lo Mania was first created we set it way in the future. It started in about 2050 AD and went forward from there. The game was set in space and based around a nuclear arms race that was escalating beyond control. Players had to contend not only with managing their humans and building resources but also piloting spaceships to attack enemy territories. A great idea in theory, but the combination of management and combat became far too complex and eventually it evolved into a management-only game.

For about the first year of the project we called it My Little Warhead internally, just like Cannon Fodder was initially called Lemmings With Weapons. The My Little Warhead logo was a big pointy nuclear missile wearing a glistening pink My Little Pony wig. It was only when we saw Peter Molyneux's Populous that we decided to change the game to begin with cavemen and end just after 2050 AD. This required me to do a drastic last minute graphical sprint but it was worth it! Shortly before release we changed the game’s name to Mega lo Mania and the rest is history.

So thank you Peter Molyneux. Without your pixelated, land levelling cavemen our god game would have featured a dehumanised space race and been called My Little Warhead.'

Now, I know what you're thinking . . . Does that mean there are bits of that older game on the disk? I sure hope so. Accessing Amiga disks is notoriously tricky but thanks to some kind help from one of our wise and mighty backers I'll soon be able to snoop around and let you know what I find!