RPG

Blade Land [PC Engine – Cancelled]

Blade Land is a cancelled RPG that was in development by Nihon Soft Hanbai / Manjuydo for the PC Engine around 1990. For its time it looked quite original: with quirky characters and enemies moving around a modern-day city setting it reminds us of Shigesato Itoi’s Mother / Earthbound series. The game was shown in a few gaming magazines at the time, such as Famitsu and PC-Engine magazine: if you are able to translate these japanese scans let us know if there is some interesting information in there!

  

Blunders (Branders) [PC Engine – Cancelled]

Blunders (AKA Branders, ブランダーズ) is a cancelled cyberpunk RPG that was in development around 1992 by IGS (AKA International Games System, アイ・ジー・エス) for PC Engine. From the available screenshots it looks like players would have been able to explore sci-fi cities in a top-down view, with turn based combat similar to Phantasy Star. At the time PC Engine Fan magazine published a 2-pages preview of Blunders, so there are some details available: if you can translate the most important parts in English, please let us know!

Thanks to Celine for the contribution

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Monster City Naga (Irem) [NES / Famicom – Cancelled]

Monster City Naga (魔獣都市ナーガ – Maju Toshi Naga) is a cancelled JRPG that was in development by Compile and it would have been published by Irem for Nintendo Famicom (NES). It was quite an ambitious project for its time: it would feature an internal clock to track real-life hours (similar to Animal Crossing), so NPCs could move and act according to the time of day.

Japanese websites seem to indicate the game was completed, but never released for unknown reasons. In november 2020 some screenshots were found and shared on Twitter (thanks to Heimao!). By looking at these images the main protagonist looks a bit like the one from the manga “Bio Booster Armor Guyver”, but as far as we know they are unrelated.

Apart from its interesting real-time mechanic, gameplay seen in these images seem on par with classic 8-Bit JRPGs: world and city exploration, talking to NPCs and turn-based battles against monsters.

If you find more images or details about Monster City Naga in old gaming magazines, please let us know!

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The King of Cosplays [Neo Geo Pocket – Cancelled?]

The King of Cosplays is a cancelled RPG that may have been in development around 1999 – 2000 by Viccom, possibly to be published by SNK for their Neo Geo Pocket. This is quite the strange and previously unknown game, but our friend and Korean-gaming expert Sam Derboo found a short article about it in Korean Game Power magazine (July 2000 issue):

“The King of Cosplays supposedly in development 1999~2000 at Viccom, NGPC RPG where your characters get stronger the more convincingly cosplay as SNK characters”

Could Viccom and SNK really have been working on a Cosplay-RPG? While the concept sounds weird, we know there were quite some strange / original titles on Neo Geo Pocket, such as Dark Arms: Beast Buster, the “SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters Clash” series, Biomotor Unitron and Ganbare Neo Poke-Kun. Also as noted by Sam, “Viccom is known to have cooperated with SNK on several levels (development support / training for Fight Fever, NeoGeo distribution in Korea including NGPC, ties to The Real Kim Kap-hwan) so it’s not completely incredible.

At the moment this scan is the only proof we have of the existence of The King of Cosplays. Could this have been a Game Power magazine inside-joke? While we may never know the truth, for sure it could have been quite the amazing niche RPG if ever released. If you’ll find something else about this mysterious NGPC game, please let us know.

Thanks to Sam Derboo for the contribution! 

Meiyaku no Teigi [PC Engine – Cancelled]

Meiyaku no Teigi (盟約の定義, tr. “Definition of a Pledge”) is a cancelled RPG that was in development around 1991 – 1992 by Human Entertainment, planned to be published for the PC Engine. While in an old magazine ad it was labeled as “science fantasy”, from the look of its characters and settings it looked more like a traditional medieval-fantasy RPG.

Some more details were published in the “Human Club Vol. 8” promotional leaflet and PC Engine Fan Magazine, so if you can read Japanese and would like to translate a short list of its main features described in there, please leave a message below!

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