Adventure of the Mummy Head is a cancelled game that was in development by Taito for PC Engine around 1991. The title was advertised in a few gaming magazines at the time, but as far as we know they never showed any screenshot, just artwork of the main protagonist. In one of these ads there’s a short description in Japanese: if you can translate it, please let us know in the comments below!
Thanks to Celine for the contribution
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Update: thanks to Metal we found out this was a port of a Japanese PC game that was released on the NEC PC-9801 and Sharp X68000!
Imperial Force (インペリアルフォース) is a cancelled space-combat simulator / strategy adventure that was in development by SystemSoft around 1992 and it would have been published by Takeru (AKA Sur de Wave, mostly known for being the developers of Little Samson and Cocoron for the NES) for PC Engine. A short preview for the game was published in PC Engine Fan magazine (May 1992) and japanese collectors even found an early prototype of the game, that was sent to the gaming press at the time. In the end Imperial Force just vanished and we don’t know if this PC Engine port was ever completed before being canned.
If you can translate the most important details found in the japanese previews preserved in the gallery below, please let us know in the comments!
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Angelus 2: Holy Night is the cancelled sequel to Enix’s Angelus: Akuma no Fukuin, once in development by Asmik Ace Entertainment with such names as Yuzo Koshiro and Hiroyuki Kitazume working on the project, planned to be released for PC Engine and PC-98. The first game was a beloved visual novel, released only in Japan around 1988: Angelus 2 would have continued the story, left unfinished with a huge cliff-hanger. Somehow a CD-R containing data from this unreleased sequel was found some years ago by collectors, who later uploaded the content online: it seems the main plot was complete and you can listen to audio files (in japanese) to understand what would have happened in the final game:
“Angelus 2: Holy Night’s protagonist is Brian Pearl, the same reporter from the previous game. After the incidents seen in Angelus: Akuma no Fukuin, Brian and Ellis left London and had their wedding in New York. Two years have passed since then, and Brian is asked to cover a series of deaths happening in New York, caused by a strange disease (just like in the first game). He declines this request, as he doesn’t want to be involved again in a bizarre incident. Unfortunately his editor receive a letter warning of the next murder: the minister who witnessed the marriage of Brian and Ellis would be killed. Brian goes to the church, but the minister is already dead. He then decides to cover this case, because the mysterious disease has spread to people close to him. However, people involved in Brian’s life are dying one after another. As he continues his investigation, he discovers the existence of a group of evil spirits behind the incident and the resurrected demon Seva.”
In the end it seems the game was canned because the team switched development to the PC engine CD-ROM2, but the hardware sold poorly and they just decided to stop working on it.
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Uesugi Genjin (possibly related to Uesugi Kenshin, a japanese feudal lord lived in the Sengoku period of Japan) is an undeveloped war strategy RPG set in the Bonk (PC Genjin) series, that was proposed by Red Company / Hudson among many other joke / potential titles in Gekkan PC-Engine magazine. Bonk creators would often appear in the magazine to show their weird ideas for new games, but most of them were just funny gags that were never intended to be fully developed.
Only a few of them (as it happened with RPC Genjin) got more attention, some mockups were produced and even playable prototypes. Unfortunately we don’t know how much Uesugi Genjin was really developed into a war strategy game by Red Company, but at least they shared a single screenshot in the April / June 1991 issue of Gekkan PC-Engine magazine.
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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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