Irem developed and published many games for the NES / Famicom, such as Holy Diver, Hammerin’ Harry and Deadly Towers. They also had many projects that were never released, and this “Geopolitic Shima ni Okeru Kokka Kobo Ron” is one of them.
This is a really obscure and forgotten strategy / simulation game planned for the Famicom, and only a couple of images were found in a japanese magazine by Youlute.
It seems players would have been able to plan their war against enemy armies, to control the whole world. As it happens with old, cancelled 8 bit games, we don’t know much more about this one: at least we can now remember its existence. Maybe one day someone could find a prototype and share it with the world.
Moeyo Butaman (燃えよ ぶたマン!?) is a cancelled NES / Famicom game that was in development in 1992 and it would have been published by Sigma Enterprises. Only a couple of (tiny) scans from old japanese gaming magazines remain to remember the existence of this game.
The main protagonist was going to be some kind of super-hero pig, and as noted by GDRI gameplay could have been similar to Time Zone, another action platformer published by Sigma in 1991.
Indy the Magical Kid (Shounen Majutsushi Indy – 「少年魔術師インディ」) is a cancelled Famicom (NES) turn-based RPG that was meant to be published by IGS Corp. Somehow it looks like a mix between Dragon Quest and Mother / Earthbound. Previews and screenshots from Indy the Magical Kid were published in many japanese gaming magazines at the time and some scans of those were gathered by Video Games Densetsu on their blog. Character designer for the heroes of the game was Hiroshi Fuji (mostly known for Valkyrie no Densetsu and Valkyrie no Bōken), while enemy design was by Yūichirō Shinozaki (mostly known for The Tower of Druaga and Baraduke)
Indy the Magical Kid was based on a short series of “choose your own adventure books” with the same title, published in Japan by Futabasha / Recca-Sha. By searching for more details about these gamebooks, it seems Indy the Magical Kid was written by the same author as the Final Fantasy 2 gamebook and fans feel the two interactive novels are quite similar.
These japanese adventure books were more complex than the average “choose your own adventure books”: other than choosing different choices at the end of each chapter to change the story accordingly, readers were also able to use dices and gather money, items and experience, that would be used to resolve combats and other key events.
As in most gamebooks Indy the Magical Kid had multiple endings depending on your choices, so we can assume that the Famicom game could also have offered many different endings and multiple storylines. The plot of the game would have probably followed the one seen in the books:
“During the absence of his master, Indy – an apprentice magician – has unlocked the seal of the “Magical Inferno” for curiosity. In order to escape from this world he will have to exterminate demons with the help of master’s cat Miau and another magical girl, using weapons, rods, magic-letters, and spirits’ protection.”
As noted by GDRI a short video of Indy the Magical Kid was shown during a Japanese TV Show titled “The TV Power” and it could have been developed by Graphic Research. Looking at this footage (re-uploaded on Youtube by Dosunceste) it seems that by using magic portals players were able to jump into different parallel dimensions of the same world in which NPCs, cities and dungeons were slightly different from each other.
The Terror of Tech Town (also known as Tektown) is a cancelled NES game that was in development since late ‘80s by Mattel for their classic Power Glove motion controller. Players would move their “robotic hand” through corridors in a series of hi-tech buildings, interacting with objects and resolving puzzles to open doors and finally escape from the town.
One presumed screenshot of Tech Town seems to have been published in a Power Glove Press Kit showing an updated version of a 1985 Commodore 64 tech demo titled “Time Crystal”, created by Jim Sach. After Jim worked for a while on Time Crystal for Amiga, it seems he managed to sign a deal with Mattel to create a Power Glove version but we are still not sure if the project is the same as Tech Town, as concept gameplay footage of “Time Crystal Powerglove” looks really different from confirmed Tech Town gameplay footage from the Game Players Gametape (as seen in the video below).
The Power Glove Press Kit describes Tech Town with “As you travel through the “corpor-hoods”, the Glove can open doors, search through corridors, and even travel through time and space” so is still possible that the “outdoor environment with dinosaurs” could have been a different section of the same game in a different time. We could see more from the game in the soon-to-be-released The Power of Glove documentary, as another presumed screenshot from Tech Town was published in their Kickstarter campaign page.
In the end only two games created specifically for the Power Glove were ever released by Mattel: Super Glove Ball and Bad Street Brawler. The other 3 games announced (Glove Pilot, Manipulator Glove Adventure and Tech Town) vanished forever after the company and the market lost faith in the accessory.
Switchblade 2 is side-scrolling action title originally developed by Core Design and published by Gremlin Interactive for Amiga in 1991. A Famicom / NES port of the game, created by Kemco, was slated for release in november 1992. The player controlled a soldier, nicknamed “Switchblade”, who had to save planet F-S5 from an alien invasion. As in similar action titles, he was able to double jump, use blades, guns, and collect power-ups for the latter. More weapons and upgrades could also be bought in the store.
It’s unknown why Kemco never released their version of Switchblade 2 or if it had any major difference compared to the original Amiga version, graphics aside.
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