Roadsters 98 is a prototype racing game by Genetic Fantasia, with a gameplay similar to Micro Machines, that seems to have been cancelled in early development. A playable demo exists, thanks to a scene leaked ROM from the old GameBoy Color days. While there is a game called Roadsters released in Europe and USA in 2000, it is completely different from Roadster 98. The release group got access to some beta software which is normal but in this case they probably thought they’d do a nice pre-store but the final game never appeared – unless this is an insanely rare special release no one knows about.
We can speculate that Genetic Fantasia worked on Roadsters GameBoy Color for Titus, but something went wrong and the publisher decided to release a different game.
Adventures of Pinocchio is a beta version of Ottifanten, an action puzzle game developed by Bit Managers and released in 1998 for the GameBoy, based on some german comics. While there is a released Pinocchio game for the Game Boy mono, “Adventures of…” is a completely different title and Bit Managers never listed this one on their homepage, only Ottifanten. A playable version of this beta was leaked online, and it’s often confused for an official released game. Trying out the game shows that you cannot lose any lifes – the counter won’t work. This is no final release and there is none because it’s an unreleased game.
As we can read in a Wikipedia entry, the game relies on 115 separate levels of puzzle action, played by viewing the playing field in isometric projection. Pinocchio’s main objective is to get to the arrow (the exit) on the screne in order to move onto the next level. If the player is able to navigate Pinocchio to the objective before the timer runs out, he gets a certain number of points equal to the time left. Once this number reaches 500, the Fairy will bestow Pinocchio with an extra life.
As noticed by BigFred, a closer look at the dump floating around will reveil a weird internal name “Infrey Quest”, so we can speculate that before Pinocchio and Ottifanten, Bit Managers tried to develope their own original IP. When they did not find any publisher interested in Infrey Quest, they changed the game in Pinocchio and later into Ottifanten, with their more recognized characters.
Ottifanten uses the same game concept as well and the same music as Adventure of Pinocchio. It even looks like the basic stage design is the same.
The released Pinocchio for GameBoy looks like this:
War Monster is a cancelled Real Time Strategy game that was in development by Wicked Witch Software for the GameBoy Color. The game allowed to feature over 120 units on screen at once with large maps for mining of resources (including trees) and building of towns, complete with town centers, barracks and towers. War Monster played amazingly well for a RTS on the GBC, but sadly the project had to be cancelled because they never found a publisher. A playable prototye of this game was later found on Ebay by UncleBob.
The War Monster IP was later reused to create another RTS released for Cellphones and also a tech demo for the DS (that probably will never be used for a full game).
As we can read on Wikipedia, Elite is a space shooter / trading game written and developed by David Braben and Ian Bell, originally published by Acornsoft in 1984 for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron computers. The game’s title derives from one of the player’s goals of raising their combat rating to the exalted heights of “Elite”. Elite was one of the first home computer games to use wireframe 3D graphics with hidden line removal. Another novelty was the inclusion of The Dark Wheel, a novella by Robert Holdstock which influenced new players with insight into the moral and legal codes to which they might aspire.
Despite being ported to virtually every home computer of that time, there is just one version available for a console and that’s Imagineer NES port, released only in Europe in 1991 ( the NES port is considered the best 8-bit version by the authors). However there were various attempts in early nineties to bring this milestone title to other Sega and Nintendo systems.
In fact Nintendo Magazine System issue 9 revealed how Hybrid Technology (developer of the Archimedes version) was developing the ultimate version of Elite using the Super FX chip. However , as Stern correctly noticed, the screenshots in the article were probably taken from the Amiga version. In the next issue ( #10 ) NMS unveiled ( this time for real ) the first official pics for Super Nintendo. Contrary to what they wrote in the previous issue, Elite for SNES wouldn’t utilize the SFX chip and despite that the game was said to have smooth framerate and Mode 6 ( SNES hi-res mode ). Super NES Elite had additions compared to the original title like a “planet buster” bomb and a more console-friendly interface that use icons ( like the NES version ) .
Those two article made clear how Hybrid Technology had yet to found a publisher for their project at the time so that’s likely the reason why it never come out.
Later on , in 1994, Hybrid Technology created two small tech demos as a pitch to port Elite to Genesis / Mega Drive and Game Boy however nothing came out from them. The two tech demos are available on Ian Bell ( Elite co-author ) ‘s website (backup at elitehomepage.org). You can watch two short videos about them below.
Article writteb by Celine, thanks to Steven for the contribution!
Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins is a platform game developed and published by Nintendo in 1992 for the original Game Boy. It seems that Mario Land 2 changed a lot through its development, as we can notice by a series of beta screnshots found by BigFred in an old magazine. As he wrote in our Forum:
None of these scenes exist in the game in this form. There is no exit shaped like a mushroom. There are also no mushrooms in the jelly (?) stage. The status bar is different and the world map doesn’t match the final release either. Compare to the complete maps on this website: www.vgmaps.com/Atlas/GB-GBC/
Also, ace.dark found a different title screen planned for the english version.
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