Hired Guns

Cancelled successor

There was a newer PC version of Hired Guns that was going to be developed by Devil’s Thumb Entertainment, originally formed as a division of DMA Design, in Boulder, Colorado, and was built on top of the Unreal engine. Although the game was slated to be released in 2000, the game was cancelled because of Psygnosis leaving the American PC game market in 2000 for PlayStation games, and the VR1 acquisition of Devil's Thumb. However, except for Steve Hammond, who was produced the background materials of the game, nobody from original design team were involved in this remake. Prototypes of the game, however, has been leaked.

Copy protection

The Amiga version featured two-stage copy protection. Once the password protection had been removed, the game appeared to be cracked. However, the game would recognise that the copy was pirated, and refuse to save the player's progress.

Inspiration

The unmanned sentry guns that can be placed down are inspired by the similar ones in the Special Edition of the movie Aliens (1986) according to Scott Johnston, lead designer of Hired Guns.

Loading mechanism

Amiga version of "Hired Guns" as one of not many games (presumable the only one) contained a unique loading mechanism that was prompting the player which disk should be put next into the floppy drive. In particular it was useful for those who had two or more floppy drives and didn't want to waste time on disk swapping (they could organise the presence of the disks in drives) or stop listening to the excellent game's soundtrack (the appearance of "insert the other disk" screen disabled the music during loading time).

Level editor

A couple years after the premiere of the game Scott Johnston released a game editor. It gave the player the possibility to alter designs of the levels, enemies, textures and briefing texts. It was a nice addition to character's editor that was already delivered with the game. The character's editor gave the possibility to put your own photo as the face of selected character.

Pre-release

The game was first mentioned in magazines two years before its release, known as Hired Gun. At this stage it partially resembled the TV show The Crystal Maze, with the four-player and multiple-time-zone aspects emphasised.

References

The game contains reference to other DMA Design production - Lemmings. Lemmings' characters are not only an easter egg but they serve as regular enemies. However they are available only in single or two player missions and not in a campaign mode.

Information also contributed by ronalddvd and xxxxxxxxxxx