Mega Drive / Genesis

Zombie High [Genesis / MegaDrive – Cancelled]

Zombie High is a cancelled side scrolling action game that was in development by Electronic Arts for the Sega Genesis / Mega Drive. An incomplete beta rom was somehow leaked online

It seems that there are a few enemies at the end of level 1 that cannot be defeated with your default slime weapon. They can be defeated by using the book as a weapon by entering the door marked number 4 next to the enemies and the book weapon will appear. It is very difficult to defeat them without being defeated yourself.

Celine was able to find some early screenshots in Joypad magazine #10, in which we can notice that the main character sprite has some differences from the one in the playable beta. It’s currently unknown why this game was canned and never released.

Recently a debug mode was found by “The Jackal” by pressing start and A on controller 2 simultaneously. Using this debug mode we can get to see more levels,Music that was never used(which after some research appears to be music used in a later EA title “Crue ball” composed by “Brian L Shmidt” Weapon select,invincibility and disabling enemies. It appears a lot of the game was finished but the only things missing are an ending to the game and most of the minigames and dialogue sections that can be found by entering certain doors in various levels will not work properly unless accessed using the debug modes level select feature

The main characters name in this game according to the debug menu is “Travis” He is also referred to as Travis by some of the characters in the classroom sections

There is a movie of the same name released in 1987, This game may have taken some inspiration from this movie despite not being a game based on this movie, One of the in game characters is called “Emerson” there is also a character in the movie named Emerson, which further confirms this suspicion

The end boss of the game is loosely based around the appearance of Allister Fiend from the band “Motley Crue” EA also licensed Crue Ball a year after this games cancellation and Allister Fiend also appears in this game. The only difference in Zombie High is that he is blue

Crue Ball shares many things in common with zombie high, such as similar graphics design, and similar sounding music (one identical song) The designers of Crue Ball are called NuFx Who could be the possible designers of Zombie High
.

Thanks to Celine for the contribution!

Images:

Videos:
 

Converse Hardcore Hoops [Cancelled]

Converse Hardcore Hoops  (also know as Converse City Ball Tour) is a cancelled basketball game that was in development by Virgin Interactive Entertainment for the Genesis / Mega Drive, Super Nintendo, Playstation and Saturn. It was based on street basketball and there were 10 cities in which to play in 3vs3 half court matches. Converse Hardcore Hoops was shown at E3 1995 but after a while it vanished from release lists and it was never released on any console.

It’s unknown if the project was somehow connected to the Converse brand of shoes or  why the game was cancelled. Celine was able to find some screens from magazines GamePro #72 and CD Consoles #8.

Images: 

Popeye [GEN MD – Cancelled]

A platform game based on the Popeye character was in development by Technos Japan for the Genesis / Mega Drive, but in the end this project was cancelled. A Super Nintendo Popeye game was also developed and released in 1994 by Technos, but the sprite of the main character is much different from the one seen in the few Genesis / MD screens, so we can assume that these are 2 different games. As far as we know, Popeye for the Genesis / MD was never released in any territory.

Thanks to Celine and John Doom for the contribution! Scans from Console Mania #28, Game Fun #94 and Mean Machine #17

Images: 

Halloween Capsule [GEN MD – Cancelled]

Halloween Capsule is a cancelled side-scrolling brawler / beat ’em up with animals for characters, that was in development in 1994 for the Sega Mega Drive / Genesis (or Samsung Super Aladdin Boy, how the system was named in Korea) by the Korean company Softmax, best known for their War of Genesis and Magna Carta series. Halloween Capsule was one of their first projects, but it was never released for unknown reasons and only few screenshots were found in an old korean magazine.

Thanks to Derboo for the contribution!

Images: 

Bean Ball Benny [MD GEN – Cancelled]

Bean Ball Benny is a cancelled beat ‘em up / action game that was in development in 1990 / 1991 by Nuvision Entertainment for the Mega Drive / Genesis. Nuvision is a rather obscure company that only released Bimini Run before closing up shop and cancelling their 2 projects (Bean Ball Benny and The Swamp Thing), but with some researches it’s possible to find out some more info.

Thanks to an interview with Charlie Heath (who worked at Parker Brothers and Activision’s Boston office) at GDRI we can read more about the studio:

Nuvision was formed by a couple of Parker Brothers people, one an executive, the other a designer/artist. They had some venture funding, but got trapped in the credit crunch of 1990.

We had two additional games in the pipeline almost ready to ship, one called “Beanball Benny,” which was an original theme (baseball player/vigilante goes cruising around the city – streets, subways – trying to bean criminals and dodge obstacles. Modeled a bit after the old Keystone Kapers theme, but advanced by a decade), and the second, I believe, a licensed property called Swamp Thing.

Nuvision got caught with a bridge loan for the production of Bimini Run cartridges coming due at the same time that new credit was required to get the other two games from Alpha to release and into cartridge production.

In October 2009 The Red Eye shared the Bean Ball Benny’s CES flyer in The Lost Levels’ Flickr account. In March 2010, Bmpedrums from the Digital Press Forum found a playable prototype of the game and shared some screens and a video:

Beanball benny: playable, but very incomplete. The cutscenes even have developmental notes in them, like “Subway: trains not yet implemented”. Hit detection seems good, but instead of restarting the stage when you die, you actualy progress further in the game. There are also numerous places where the stage just simply cuts off and you’re walking in pitch black.

Thanks to Jason for the english corrections!

Images:

Videos: