Some wackos at LoadingReadyRun.com have started a charity event near and dear to my heart, and certainly to this site.
Remember Desert Bus, the infamous and evil mini game designed by Two and a Half Men producer and former Saturday Night Live writer Eddie Gorodetsky? It was included on the unreleased Sega CD title, Penn & Teller’s Smoke and Mirrors, described on this very site in early 2006. The premise, if you don’t want to click on that handy link, is simple: players must drive a full-sized bus from Tucson, AZ to Las Vegas, NV, an incredibly boring drive through endless desert. The bus never goes over 45 mph, and it veers to the right ever so slightly, meaning that you can’t simply tape down buttons and walk away; if you do, the bus crashes, and a tow truck takes you back to the beginning, in real time. Oh, also, the trip takes eight hours. Eight real world hours of endless desert.
The game was meant to be a tongue-in-cheek response to anti-game legislature of the time from former Attorney General Janet Reno, an answer to the controversy that games had become too violent. Desert Bus was publisher Absolute Entertainment’s first in a line of games “stupefyingly like reality,” an alternative to ultra violent games like Doom or Night Trap. Rather than simulating gun-toting or, um, trap-springing, players would simulate real world ordeals, like driving a bus for eight boring hours.
The LoadingReadyRun guys are playing a huge marathon session of Desert Bus in an effort to raise funds for Penny Arcade’s Child’s Play charity; the more that is donated, the more hours they put in. As of this writing they’ve been playing for two days and eighteen hours, and still have about thirty-two hours of driving ahead of them - which increases as more donations come in! And in a move that just warms my damned heart, Desert Bus creator Eddie Gorodetsky and Penn & Teller themselves have contributed a significant amount to the $11,000 that has been raised so far.
Available for sale at RetroZone is a first for Nintendo Entertainment System enthusiasts, a mass-produced cartridge of a previously-unreleased title, Airball.
Originally a computer game published by the relatively obscure and long-defunct MicroDeal (my personal favorite title of the company’s being Cuthbert Goes Walkabout), the NES version of Airball was being ported for publishing outlaw Tengen in the 90s, just in time for system sales to be completely destroyed by the new 16-bit consoles.
The developer behind this particular port was none other than Novotrade, which was primarily a port house at the time - in fact, its only other documented NES development is Impossible Mission II. Novotrade eventually found their shining star with a time-traveling dolphin named Ecco, changed names to Appaloosa Interactive, developed one of my personal favorite B-games, Jaws Unleashed, and then kind of disappeared…does anyone know if the company’s still around?
The game itself is a pseudo-3D isometric fetch-quest, along the lines of Knight Lore, Alien 8, Batman and the like (or, if you’re only console literate, Solstice on the NES). As the NES-exclusive opening cinema shows, an evil wizard has turned the player’s human character into a ball, and sets him on a journey around his castle to find a handful of items he’s misplaced. The catch, though, is that the ball has a slow air leak, and will turn into a useless, immobile pile of rubber when it runs out. The player must balance his or her efforts between locating scattered air pumps to stay mobile, dodging all sorts of pointy things that the castle seems to be entirely constructed out of, and locating the wizard’s crap, the actual locating usually being only half of the puzzle with the rest consisting of tricky jumps, item manipulation, and luck.
Novotrade’s port shows a lot of loving care, with thought put into making a notoriously difficult computer game accessible to a console audience. Exclusive to this version are Easy and Normal modes, which tone down the amount of damage the ball can handle, eliminate the danger of over-inflation on the air pumps, and rearrange the quest items to much more easily-accessible rooms. Hard mode is an accurate recreation of the original computer game, which makes the quest longer and more dangerous with one-hit kills and entire castle wings that are unnecessary to visit at lower difficulties.
Other new touches include an original soundtrack, awesomely crappy voice samples for the wizard’s dialog, the ball’s ability to automatically shift to the nearest “track” when the player stands still (very handy when exact placement is necessary to avoid death), and both opening and closing cinemas.
The physical product, currently at $35 USD, comes in a custom-made clear plastic shell, and includes a glossy label, manual, and even a box! The ever-vigilant NES World has an extensive review that includes new images and video, for those curious. There’s also a game solution available at GameFAQs which is, to my knowledge, the first walkthrough to appear online for any variation of this game.
Earlier this year on our forums, I came up with a stupidly clever way to let everyone play the massive backlog of unreleased NES games we had piled up. Every Monday, when Nintendo released fun, classic games on the Virtual Console, Lost Levels would release a bad unreleased game that no one had ever heard of.
From February through June we managed to nearly release one brand new, previously-unreleased NES game every week, with very little fanfare. This was stuff that we didn’t get around to writing proper articles for, so they never quite reached the front page here. And, surprise surprise, no blog or news outlet picked it up. Well, here fellas, I’m going to make it easy on you, with links to each forum thread for further information.
Eleven Previously-Unreleased NES Games for the Discerning Software Pirate
Buzz & Waldog is a pretty interesting cartoon platformer from Korean developer Daou Infosys. This was going to be published in the United States by a company called Innovation Tech which, if I’m not mistaken, was the short-lived (as in, they never released anything) publishing arm of a mail-order games company called The Ultimate Games Club. If you read game mags at the time, you might remember Innovation for Video Games & Computer Entertainment’s coverage of The Dinosaur Dooley, a rather bland Game Gear game that used unauthorized 8-bit renditions of Nirvana and Ugly Kid Joe songs. Actually, that one didn’t come out either, maybe I should make a post about it.
Scarabeus is a puzzle game with mechanics similar to Polarium on the DS, developed by Source the Software House for the extremely short-lived video game division of Matchbox. This game actually did come out in simplified form on the original Game Boy, with the title Pyramids of Ra (this is why the graphics are in black and white!). Game designer Ross Harris stopped by to discuss this title, among other games, in the above-linked forum thread. Apparently, Scarabeus was reworked at one point to be a Wizard of Oz tie-in, of all things!
This is another unreleased port from the Game Boy, this time from British developer Elite. In this game, Dr. Franken must find the scattered remains of his dead girlfriend by running around in his pajamas and jumping over things. Those British developers sure did enjoy the “run around a large map and collect keys” genre, and this game is a shining example.
Eon Man is a pretty decent platformer develped by A.I. for publisher Taito that readers of my old TheRedEye.net site may remember. British developers may love the collectathons, but man, Japanese NES developers sure loved recreating Ninja Gaiden back then. The gimmick this time around is time travel, with Eon Man braving different eras to stop bad guys from copying the plot of Terminator. I did a video feature on this back when I thought Lost Levels should have a Youtube show, but I got lazy and never finished it.
Note that the version of this game previously floating around the internet was some kind of strange Chinese bootleg, this particular ROM is from an authentic Taito cartridge.
This is one of those oldschool first-person RPGs that only masochistic supernerds still talk about. Originally a computer game by Interplay, this NES port was done for Kemco. This was released in Japan, but the above is an unreleased English translation, which unfortunately isn’t complete in the build we acquired. Not very fun, but I do have a soft spot for old Kemco music, so it has some nostalgia value.
Probably the most exciting of the lot, Titan Warriors is a completely unreleased home conversion of Capcom’s top-down shooter Vulgus with tons of new material, not the least of which is an original soundtrack that sounds like it came right out of Bionic Commando or Mega Man 3.
Action RPG about the hero of Locksley. It’s in an early state, but it has some interesting features, including a full day-to-night cycle and the ability to club a bear to death for no reason. This game wasn’t entirely canceled, it was recycled and remade into the much more straightforward and boring Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves to coincide with the movie of the same name.
Another extended home port of a classic Capcom arcade game, this time Pirate Ship Higemaru. Unlike Titan Warriors, this port was released in Japan. The above English-language translation, however, is the only one currently known to exist.
This game wasn’t technically unreleased, though the final version, Kid Klown, did not feature Mickey Mouse in any way, shape or form. All in all, not a bad little platformer, with some interesting mechanics involving bouncing balloons. Oh, and the best intro screen of any video game, ever.
There’s been a lot of discussion lately about a new blog that, gasp, talks about unreleased games, and I’d feel pretty stupid not making a post about it!
Such Things That Never Was is set to detail all sorts of silly things that never made it through production, including movies and, in a very successful effort to steal the thunder away from my lazy ass, games. Its author, the mysterious Surfer Girl, seems to have some connection to the games industry that is more on the developer side than mine, as she’s dug up info on tons of recent projects that never got as far as even being announced.
The post most often discussed is “18 canceled games you never knew existed unless you worked on them,” which is just what it sounds like. And given that I didn’t work on any of these games, all of them were news to me, including an updated Joust (complete with screenshots!), Freelancer 2, an Alone in the Dark sequel by Computer Artworks (developer of the also-dead A Sound of Thunder game), a spooky action platformer by True Crime developer Luxoflux called Ghost World (unrelated to the comic book, I’m assuming), an Oni sequel by Angel Studios (now Rockstar San Diego), and tons more.
And hey, don’t miss her other, somewhat more random blog, Surfer Girl Reviews Star Wars, which has lots of interesting secret tidbits from around the games industry. I don’t know if any of these claims are true, but here are a few highlights that interest me personally: three new Wario games are in development, the Mario/Dragon Quest hybrid board game Itadaki Street DS is getting a release stateside, Ubisoft is working on sequels to both Beyond Good & Evil and Red Steel, Retro Studios is working on a new game that is not Metroid and not an FPS, a Chu Chu Rocket sequel is in development, and these apparently early screenshots of Prince of Persia 4 look a hell of a lot like Ico.
I have no idea who Surfer Girl is, and she wants it to remain that way (as expressed in our email conversations), but like my old boss Simon Carless, I do have a guess, and I’m sure it’s wrong. Assuming she’s not outright lying, here is what we know about Surfer Girl, mostly taken from her interview on Kotaku Australia (there’s a Kotaku Australia???):
Is a girl
Occasionally surfs
Was a journalism major
Is an industry “insider,” emphasis hers
Has been playing games for “15-20 years”
Is a fan of Lost Levels, but hates how infrequently I update (this one’s for you!)
Well, I’m a fan. Hats off to you, Surfer Girl, whoever you are. You had the balls to take one of my fantasies and make it real, and I’m a bit jealous because of it.
While browsing through the Mean Machines Archive today, I stumbled on something pretty unexpected: the first screenshots I’ve ever seen of Hard Drivin’ for the NES, Tengen’s unreleased port of Atari’s driving simulator-turned-arcade racing game!
Hard Drivin’ was an extremely popular arcade title for Atari in 1989, featuring what was then considered realistic driving physics, the first use of 3D polygons in an arcade racing game, and my favorite feature: an actual key you had to turn to start the ignition!
These scans come from Mean Machines #0, a promotional test market predecessor to the short-lived UK console mag. Mean Machines would eventually (more or less) become Nintendo Magazine System, the UK’s official Nintendo mag. Later, the magazine would change its name to Nintendo Official Magazine. Much later still, that magazine would hire me to do game reviews. And very shortly thereafter, that magazine would lose its official Nintendo licensure, its entire staff would get fired, and competing publisher Future would pick up the official Nintendo magazine title. So basically, these images that you’re seeing are from the very first issue of a magazine that I would one day kill.
Shouldn’t have given me that six-page Pokemon cover feature, Dean.
According to the preview, the NES port was being programmed by Mark Morris who, despite this MobyGames entry, I’m convinced is not the same Mark Morris who co-founded Introversion Software and directed Darwinia and Defcon. In fact, I’m also not convinced that he’s the same man as the THQ director currently claiming the majority of that same entry, given that this San Diego Union-Tribune interview accredits that Mark Morris’ first game as 1996’s Men in Black. It would seem that this MobyGames entry actually combines the credits for three different Mark Morrises. Yikes!
The game looked pretty faithful to the arcade original, as you can see in these comparison shots:
According to the magazine’s preview, the game was running smoothly. “Many thought that the original arcade machine’s filled-3D graphics which are used to portray the first person perspective action would be virtually impossible to convert to the Nintendo,” said the short preview blurb, “but programmer Mark Morris has surprised the cynics and come up with a system that runs them smoothly at a very high speed - a first on the Nintendo!”
It seems pretty obvious from the shots that nothing beyond a rudimentary track was implemented; notice that there are no other vehicles, signs, or even scenery! Still, though, this looks like it could have been a pretty impressive technical feat on the NES. Mark Morris, are you out there? Have any insight for us?
Check out a complete *.pdf of Mean Machines #0 here! It also features a rare screenshot of The Legend of Hero Tonma for the NES, another unreleased game.
Matt Kain, the gentleman who found a copy of Good Luck Charlie Brown for the Atari 2600 at a flea market which, ten years later, remains the only known copy, has uploaded footage of the game to YouTube. This is the first time Atari’s lost children’s game has ever been seen by the public.
Neat, huh? Obviously, the game is in a very early, unfinished state, lacking sound and additional screens (early previews suggested a second screen involving lawn mowing!), but it’s becoming increasingly likely that this is the only copy of the game to survive, so this is all we’re going to get.
Kain plans to sell the game sometime relatively soon. Interested parties should follow this AtariAge forums thread for details.
Today on Lost Levels, we examine Star Trek V, a cheesy NES platformer based on a cheesy sci fi movie that did not resemble a cheesy NES platformer at all and probably shouldn’t have been one. And, well, I guess it wasn’t, which is why we’re talking about it.
I’ve never actually seen Star Trek V, but our guest reviewer, DOCTOR ZERO, is a big fatty who has watched it thirty seven times and has an original script signed by the cast. He says that the plot is about finding God, and I’m forced to believe him.
If the game is to believed, God is a horrible looking face on the side of the mountain that William Shatner murders. Maybe I ought to see this movie after all.
Check it out here. And hey, don’t forget our happenin’ forums are open for posting.
It should come as no surprise that the worst Star Trek movie would have made the worst Star Trek game.
Review: Colors
In this exclusive Lost Levels review, we take a thorough, introspective look at Colors, the GTA-alike that would have
saved the Gizmondo. SPECIAL BONUS: Sodomy inside!
Elusions: Thunder Force VI
A brief retrospective of the butt-rockingest series of shooters that ever was, and the Dreamcast sequel that wasn't.
Spotlight: Pescatore
A glitchy puzzle game with multi-colored seafood that bears more than a striking similarity to PuyoPuyo? Not very fresh.
Elusions: Final Fantasy 64
Is it possible that yet another title from
this popular series has eluded fans for over a decade?
Spotlight: Bashi Bazook
We promise this is the last unreleased Jaleco game
we'll ever talk about. Maybe.
Posted on November 26th, 2007 by Frank Cifaldi 
Available for sale at 
Today on Lost Levels, we examine Star Trek V, a cheesy NES platformer based on a cheesy sci fi movie that did not resemble a cheesy NES platformer at all and probably shouldn’t have been one. And, well, I guess it wasn’t, which is why we’re talking about it.
