Katakis is a space-shooter designed by the game guru Manfred Trenz for the C64 in 1988 that strongly resembles R-Type.

This resemblance was apparently too obvious, since Activision, which owned the rights for R-Type, was not quite happy about it and threatened with a lawsuit (today, suing somebody because of a game concept is something totally unthinkable). However, they recognized Trenz’s talent and offered him a deal: Rainbow Arts was supposed to program the R-Type versions for the C64 and the Amiga (the latter was delegated to Factor 5) and was in return allowed to sell an altered version of Katakis again.
The rest is history; R-Type was released for both systems and Katakis was altered for some parts and then remade and sold under the name of “Denaris”. This report compares the original version Katakis and the version Denaris.

Katakis	Denaris

Note: All of this refers to the C64-version. The Amiga version of Katakis is just this bad that you should avoid it like the plague.

The title

Of course the first thing to be changed was the title. Katakis became Denaris. This affects the game-packet as well as the title screen (but strangely enough not the ending sequence). Also an annoying flickering has been added to the logo on the title-screen.

Katakis	Denaris

The crystal-container

Apart from being flipped and monochrome, the container that has extra crystals inside had been a shameless 90%-copy of the Force-Pod of R-Type. It was clear that it had to go. Thus it was entirely redesigned in order to remove any similarities.



Altered Level 2

Katakis’ Level 2 looks very similar to the 1st level of R-Type; virtually it was a copy. In order to reduce similarities, some graphics have been altered and the floor changed its color from white to green. You can tell that the level is almost a copy from the C64-version of R-Type which reuses much of the graphics.



Altered enemies

Various enemies have been altered. The first one had a strong similarity to the Walker “Mr. Mee” from R-Type and was therefore completely redesigned. The second and the third (identical) resembled the enemy “Cancer” and got two new, differing sprites (one colored, one monochrome). The forth one is a funny case; it has probably been changed because it looked too much like a spermatozoon. Now it looks like some sort of green hawk.

Katakis	Denaris