Center Court 2 [1997 unreleased Amiga AGA tennis game]

[Python1]

After a 19 years deep sleep, game was rescued on the 9th of July, 2016 AD, from a defective (head stuck on platter) Conner 64 MB hard drive from 1992. Big thanks to the author of the game who sent me his HDD and to the very nice local guy who helped me save this game with his A1200.

99% complete. 100% playable. Teaser picture:



Stay tuned as more is to come during the next few days: Teaser soundtrack, teaser video and finally the author of the game itself will come here and release Center Court 2 to the Amiga community.

P.S.: Would be great if a WHDLoad glory could WHDify Center Court 2 for the release (pm me if interested). Center Court 1 also lacks a WHDLoad install...

[Galahad/FLT]

Shame... would have been an excellent Scoopex release

[BarryB]

What's the 1% that's missing, other than a SCOOPEX release?

[s2325]

ball sprite

[DamienD]

Wow, awesome news indeed

Would be cool if there is a disk release for all that don't use hard drives / WHDLoad

[Python1]

Game only lacks a title picture at the beginning and a big part of the English translation (untranslated parts are in German). Otherwise everything's ready. An ADF release is out of the question: Center Court 2 wasn't intended for floppies as it weighs about 10 MB...

[-Acid-]

Nice, my friend and I really enjoyed the first game and played it a lot back in the 90's

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by Python1

Game only lacks a title picture at the beginning and a big part of the English translation (untranslated parts are in German). Otherwise everything's ready. An ADF release is out of the question: Center Court 2 wasn't intended for floppies as it weighs about 10 MB...

Pretty sure that can be rectified

[spudje]

Originally Posted by s2325

ball sprite

Nothing important I would say, just leave it out then that last 1% LOL

[happymondays]

Brilliant news, I never knew this one's ever existed. The first one is a very nice game.

[ransom1122]

Cool nice work. Looks great.

Originally Posted by Python1

Big thanks to the author of the game who sent me his HDD and to the very nice local guy who helped me save this game with his A1200.

The local guy just want to say thank you.
That was an interesting morning and a very exciting moment !

[Python1]

Originally Posted by eggman

The local guy just want to say thank you.
That was an interesting morning and a very exciting moment !

It's great you have registered here my saver. It was a pleasure to meet you. We were the first lucky guys of the millennium who played Center Court 2. We played it on the original author's HDD, spinning in an opened state! Of course we allowed us to do that after we have rescued all the data. Business before pleasure. And as I didn't forget to take my fav joystick with me (see my nickname, silent QS-130F version without micro-switches, not QS-137F that 'clicks'), I was able to be the first CC2 winner of the millennium :-)



For me it was also the first time of the millennium I saw again an Amiga in real and in action! And I didn't end up with any Amiga as eggman's A1200 is empowered by a Blizzard 1260-IV among other great hardware. Nice.

When the author will come on EAB to release Center Court 2 I am sure he will have a lot to tell about it (and CC1). But patience first...

...Next teaser is coming today evening.

[Sandro]

please relate how the old 64mb hardisk was repaired

I don't want to spoil Python1's story so I won't say much. He will probably say a bit more on the data rescue.

All I can say is that it was quite epic.

@Python1
It was a pleasure to meet you too and to bring the game back to light.

[Baboon]

Wow this looks great. I'm looking forward to the full story of the game.

[klx300r]

darn that looks like a great tennis game

[Python1]

Center Court 2 soundtrack: http://picosong.com/tXYW

Originally Posted by Sandro

please relate how the old 64mb hardisk was repaired

The HDD refused to boot but was attempting to as it was spinning-shutting off-spinning-shutting off-spinning-etc. After some research, I have learned one of the common failures for such an old drive could be a stuck head on the platter. The only way to be sure was to open the HDD to check. And indeed, the head was stuck in the parking zone and the solution was to carefully and gently release it with one finger immediately after you have powered on the hard drive. At this stage you should have seen the face of eggman when I told him "ok, let open this HDD and try to manually help its head while you power on the Amiga".

After that we had some difficulties with the PCMCIA CompactFlash reader and other CompactFlash-SD-MicroSD card adapters but fortunately eggmann just masters Amiga real hardware and software and in the end we were able to copy everything from the HDD to a CompactFlash card.

On a PC with an IDE-USB adapter, releasing the head with the finger also worked but for some unknown reason I didn't manage to make an image of the drive. That's why we needed a real Amiga for the rescue operation.

Hi everyone! I´m the author of Center Court Tennis for the Amiga back in the 1990s. I have been absent from the Amiga Scene for a long long time, but never got rid of both, my Amiga 500 and 1200 (the 1200 being my remuneration for Center Court 1 when it was first published by the german BlitzBasic crew ;-)

Here´s the story from my side:
4 years ago I was contacted by „Python1“, who had found out about me and showed interest in Center Court 1, which he started playing again in 2011 (on WinUAE). We shared some emails back then and once he asked me if I never had planned a sequel (sounded even like he had a dream). Now the story gets really interesting.

Around 1996/1997, I had indeed been working on a sequel, which had never been released and wasn´t even finished 100%. As the game had gotten too big for floppy disks I just had it lying on my harddisk and pretty much forgot about it as I didn´t use my Amiga anymore. So when Python1 asked me about a possible sequel to Center Court, I dug out my old Amiga 1200 to have a look, as I couldn´t even remember exactly how much finished the program was. That´s where the problems started. My Amiga refused to start from the HDD, I didn´t find any old floppy disks with CC2 and finally began to accept the fact that CC2 was gone.

I had been away from my Amiga long enough that I didn´t know where to start and wasn´t willing to invest in new hardware or a professional harddisk restoration company just to find out things were messed up.
Time passed by.

Luckily Python1 was really ambitious and kept reading Amiga forums about similar problems and never stopped thinking about possible ways to salvage the data. Actually he suggested a couple of ideas what to try out. As I don´t have the needed knowledge and/or hardware I offered to send him my harddisk.
A week ago he finally sent me the picture that he posted in these forums as a teaser. Now I knew he had succeeded, with the help of "Eggman" he was able to read the harddisk and copy all the data including the almost 20 yr old Center Court Tennis 2. Some days later he sent me the files and I was able to try it out with WinUAE. As far as I´ve seen, the gameplay is fully working, only some minor things are missing. There´s no title screen and the english translation is not complete. Otherwise I think it´s a nice improvement compared to CC1, as I tried to fix those things that were not so good in the first version. I made the gameplay a bit slower and tried to improve graphics and other stuff. The game also includes a career mode where you have to develop your character by winning in the lower class tournaments until you´re able to compete with the big boys or even in the Davis Cup for your country. It´s pretty fun to see all the names of the tennis pros that were active in the 90s…

Sounds like a really strange story? It is



Thanks a lot to Python1 and his friend for all their work, this really brings back nice memories for me.
Python1 plans to show a little video first - I guess after 20 years it´s worth the wait before I´ll share the game with everyone.

[spudje]

You did make a backup of the CF I hope