/vr/ - Retro Games

Issues:
1 >>7962259
2 >>7970279
3 >>7971102
4 >>7980943
5 >>7981167
6 >>7989628
7 >>7989914
8 >>8001284
9 >>8001481
10 >>8015171
11 >>8015415
12 >>8026712
13 >>8026964
14 >>8037054
15 >>8037254
16 >>8051554
17 >>8051779

>>8065652
And here it is, the first issue I ever had.

>>8065756
>Kirk:I beat Mega Man 2 without dying once!
>Shaun:I beat Zelda 2 without dying once!
>Brian:I beat over 250 games!
>Lee:I can curbstomp Legacy of the Wizard in 38 minutes, you pussies.

bumping for OP

>>8065952
>Steve Wozniak
>Los Gatos, CA
Oh FUCK. That's THE Wozniak of Apple fame. He lived in Los Gatos from 1986 to 2003.

Issue #19 which I believe is the final guide issue.
>>8065964
Thanks.

More later.

>>8065961
>earthbound
Man this sounds cool, can't wait to play it.

>>8065983
Just bumping to point this out in case people didn't notice. Steve Wozniak sent in a photo to Nintendo Power showing his 500k high score in Tetris.

>>8066180
And you can get SimCity on your NES too at the same time!

>>8066180
>>8066263
>1994
>NP stops covering NES, games are no longer released for the console
>come to terms with the fact this Earthbound game and NES port of SimCity aren't happening
>2021
>can play both on my NES now
Kinda weird to be able to play a lot of the unreleased stuff from back then. SimCity NES, Earthbound(zero), Happily Ever After, Days of Thunder(Mindscape), etc.

Shit autism thread

>>8065925
>Gee Miyamoto-san, why does your mom let you have two bowsers?

>>8066302
fuck off idiot, OP's doing a service. have a bump

>>8066302
This. It couldve been another console war thread, or a low effort meme template thread.
>>8065652
How autistic would it be to print this out to keep in my game room?

>>8065974
>Bruce, 34

He looks 54. Just like that other thread was saying, you put a moustache on a man and it ages him greatly.

>>8065667
>God must be a girl.

>>8065696

Howard & Nester's Razor is hot.

Can't believe we are almost at SNES.

>>8065834
>And here it is, the first issue I ever had.

For me, this was one that was borrowed as part of a batch from some friends down the alley. It may have been the earliest one in the batch? Prior to this, I had the very first issue and a few scattered ones that I guess were purchased individually, but we wouldn't get a subscription until later.

>Kirk:I beat Mega Man 2 without dying once!
>Shaun:I beat Zelda 2 without dying once!

I wonder whether some of those feats were pursued solely so that the guys could have something to put into their little bio thingies there. The Mega Man 2 one smells that way, but who knows.

But yeah the Legacy of the Wizard guy was going above and beyond. He clearly was in it for the love.

>>8065841

Huh, they provided a "secret" that was explained in the game's manual. I guess that's a nice thing to do, since some people would have lost their manuals or never had them or carelessly ignored them. It's not like you'd normally expect to need instructions for something as simple and intuitive as Tetris...

>>8065846

Wait did they already cover the first part of Castlevania III? I don't remember seeing that. Are they just skipping that? Or did I skip some pages?

>>8065925

I don't know why I never bothered to try these tricks.

>>8065938

Mega Man 3 has the best challenge? Hmm I guess they are not considering the hardest games to be the best games. Poor Street Fighter 2010!

Castlevania III got a very high challenge score though. I assume that's because it has a password system...

Skate or Die 2 is another game that the softies at Nintendo Power apparently considered to be too difficult. In that case though, maybe they were right. Or if they weren't, then it doesn't matter so much because the game isn't all that good.

>>8069414
Dirty Harry got a 2.2 on challenge. Who the fuck are they kidding? That shit is a pain even if you are cheating.

>>8065947

Lolo 2 attracting the ladies!

>>8065971

This guy actually seems to have some interest in playing Nintendo, unlike many of the celebrities they interview.

>>8069431

Well like I said, if it's especially hard then they're probably scoring it low because they want just the right amount of difficulty.

>>8069414
>>8069431
>>8069519
Yeah, it might not be "this game is BULLSHIT hard" but more "does this game escalate in a fun and engaging way that keeps you coming back for more?"

>>8069431
>>8069519
>>8069764
>>8069414
Maybe they mean "balance" when they say "challenge"?

Did they clarify the criteria in any of the early issues?

>>8070009

I haven't been scouring them so far so I could easily have missed it. But as far as I know, from my skimming/reading of these magazines in these threads and from my reading of some of them as a child, they never properly explained what their rating categories meant. In fact I still wonder what exactly "theme & fun" is supposed to be...

>>8069431
>Big Bird's Hide and Seek gets a 3.0

>>8070009
I remember our local magazine, which used a similar rating system, got a question about this and explained that "if a game is difficult but not fun, it's not challenging, it's just boring. But a combination of good graphics and sound, excellent controls and high entertainment value provides an exciting challenge".

So yeah, this anon mostly got it right >>8069764. I remember British magazines tended to have a "lastability" score instead of a challenge one, which seems to be a better way of wording the same.

Thanks, OP.

>>8065942
So that's the volley ball game I played as a kid, I could never remember which one it was

>>8070918
Calling it "challenge" makes sense if you're talking about arcade games, where a game that provided a "good challenge" would be one you kept coming back to in order to improve your score, not a game that was just bullshit hard and killed you a lot. At the time this magazine came out, games where the goal was just to reach the ending screen at which point you had "beaten it", was still a pretty new thing.

>>8069519
>>8069764
>>8070009
>>8070109
>>8070918
>>8073728
Well, according to Nintendo Power themselves, it was just a raw score for how challenging the game is. Pic related.

>>8065760
>>8065762
>>8065769
>>8065774
>>8065782
>>8065786
>>8065790
>>8065793
>>8065797

NINE pages on Dr. Mario. That's some filler.

Been scouring through the NP issues, looking for mentions of games that were not released in the end.

Issue #1 mentions Chesterfield and Empire City 1931 by Vic Tokai as two future releases. Neither made it. Fan translations exist for both.

Issue #3 mentions the second Spy VS Spy game which did end up getting a Famicom release, but didn't get brought over to the US. Fan translation exists.

Issue #4 talks about Mask Rider from Bandai, The Battlefields of Napoleon from Lenar, and some game called Jump Burger with no other details. Mask Rider was going to be a localized version of Kamen Rider Club, half platformer and half RPG, no fan translation exists yet. The Battlefields of Napoleon was going to be a localized version of Napoleon Senki, a real time strategy game. No fan translation exists yet. Jump Burger is completely unknown, but given the name, odds are it got turned into Short Order from the Short Order/Eggsplode Power Pad game.

Issue #5 talks about Super Sushi Pinball from CSG Imagesoft(Sony), California Raisins from Capcom, and Ninja Taro from NMK. Super Sushi Pinball was supposed to have 3 tables and support for 4 players(long before the 4-player add-ons existed, probably hot-seat), and was cancelled due to being outright rejected by NoA. California Raisins was mostly completed, but cancelled due to the rapidly vanishing popularity of the Raisins in the early 90's. Two prototypes have been found since 2003 and dumped, and the game is fully playable. Ninja Taro (Sengoku Ninja-kun) was originally going to be an NES game, but ended up getting moved to the Game Boy where it was released in JP and the US.

Issue #6 talks about USA Bowling by some dev called Coconuts. Not to be confused with Championship Bowling. Coconuts was a JP dev known for gambling and pinball games, so it seems likely they were the ones making this game. No other information exists.

>>8073796
>Super Sushi Pinball

This sounds fucking amazing. Did it even get released in Japan or for another system?

>>8073796
Issue #7 has images of Journey to Silius before they lost the Terminator license(or failed to secure it). We did get the game officially released, so I don't count it.

Issue #8 talks about Wild Boys from Bandai, Web World and Urban Cowboy from Matchbox Toys, and some game called 10th Frame with no dev listed. A prototype marked Wild Boys was found in 2015, but Bandai themselves had already gutted the cart to use for testing Kickle Cubicle. That prototype was believed to be the NP prototype, so no other copies are known to exist, making it possibly lost forever. Was gonna be a beat-em-up where you could switch characters in-game ala TMNT. Web World was going to be a game where you play a spider and drag planets and moons into your web while dealing with black holes. Urban Cowboy was supposed to be a Trucker simulation with weather reports and traffic conditions and whatnot. Neither title is known to have any prototypes, and neither made it to release. 10th frame has ZERO information about it, no one knows anything beyond it's appearance in Pak Watch.

Issue #10 mentioned Miner 2049er, a microcomputer game getting ported over. It never made it, but did get ported to the Game Boy instead.

>>8073876
No, only a screenshot exists of what it might have been. Never got finished, never got released.

Issue #12 covers a lot.
The Loony Toons Cartoon Maker by Hi-Tech Expressions was going to be an animation program like Mario Paint for the NES. I'm pretty sure they realized they didn't have enough RAM to play around with for something like that and gave up. It was never made.
Days of Thunder by Mindscape is mentioned. It ended up getting cancelled in favor of another Days of Thunder game by Beam Software and was considered lost for a long time. The deceased lead programmer's wife sent a box of floppies to some game preservationists, and the source code and assets were found on 23 floppy disks. The game has since been assembled, and can now be played on a real NES. It stands as the most long-shot sheer-miracle recovery of a lost game yet.
Bruce Lee Lives by Mindscape was going to be an NES port of the relatively popular PC fighting game. Odds are they gave up trying to implement the "learning AI" present on the original. The game would "learn" your moves, and counter appropriately. So if you just used the same attack, it would counter you perfectly. Good luck doing that on an NES.
Lastly a game called Winchester is mentioned. No dev is listed. It's unknown if this was another attempt to bring over Chesterfield, or if it was some western themed game.

>>8073909
Issue #14 has U-Force Power Games, SimCity, and Super Password mentioned.
U-Force Power Games was a 4-1 minigame collection designed to use the U-Force controller. It got cancelled due to the poor sales of the U-Force. Two prototypes have been found and dumped, one clawed from the possession of known hoarder DreamTR.
SimCity's only known prototype sat in a desk at NP for ages, but finally got dumped and hacked to be playable.
Super Password was based off the game show, and was supposed to feature a lot of digitized speech. It never happened, and no beta's or proto's are known to exist. I believe there are computer versions though.

>>8074106
Issue #16 has a fuck-ton mentioned. Aliens VS Predator, War in Middle Earth, The Legend of Hero Tonma, Snow White, New Kids on the Block, Rodan, Pyros, Lord of Lightning, World Trophy Soccer, and Samurai Conflict.
AVSP was gonna be a game based off the Dark Horse comics, but it never happened. Eventually another studio made an Aliens 3 game for the NES. No other info exists.
War in Middle Earth was going to be an action/RPG using the engine from Robin Hood, but they either couldn't secure the license or lost it, and the game was cancelled. No other info exists.
The Legend of Hero Tonma was an arcade game that didn't get a home console port until the PC-Engine. No screenshots, betas, or prototypes of the NES version exist.
Snow White was based off of the non-Disney sequel Happily Ever After, and was eventually named Happily Ever After. It was completed, but cancelled due to legal issues the movie was having. The completed prototype was eventually found and dumped, can now be played on the NES.
New Kids on the Block was supposed to be developed by David Crane, but it was cancelled as the New Kids popularity vanished as quickly as it appeared.
Rodan was supposed to be Godzilla 2, but we got a different game instead.
Pyros was supposed to be a port of the arcade game Wardner, but it didn't happen.
Nothing is known about Lord of Lightning or Samurai Conflict.
World Trophy Soccer was an arcade game by INTV, was supposed to get ported, didn't.

>>8074120
And finally this thread's issue, issue #18. Earthbound, Euro Cup Soccer, Mechwarrior, The Magic of Scheherazade 2, and War on Wheels.
Earthbound(zero) got cancelled after being finished since the SNES was launching and the simplistic graphics weren't going to sell. It eventually got found and dumped, both the prototype dump and a fantranslation exists.
Euro Cup Soccer was another title announced by Matchbox Toys that never got far. Not even a screenshot exists.
Mechwarrior was under development by Activision, but nothing ever came out of it, Eventually another dev studio made Mechwarrior games for the SNES.
The Magic of Scheherazade 2 was obviously intended to be a sequel, but it entered dev hell for years. Eventually got renamed to Golden Empire and moved to the SNES, where it continued to sit in dev hell for years. Finally it got renamed to Scheherazade Densetsu - The Prelude sometime in 1996, and finally got cancelled for good. No screenshots, prototypes, or betas are known to exist.
War on Wheels was cancelled for getting poor reviews from the preview copies sent to magazines. The prototype was hoarded for years by DreamTR who sold reproduction copies of it. Eventually in 2013 someone bought a repro and dumped it and released the dump, putting a stop to DreamTR making money off of games he has no legal rights to.

Will cover any new NES games mentioned as they appear. See you folks in the next storytime.

>>8073759

Man those explanations suck. The challenge one is one of the better ones, though. It does make perfect sense, yeah. Not too easy, not too hard. But of course they have to decide beforehand how skilled and how determined the player can be expected to be, and if you're going for 1CCs in Castlevania III then you're beyond the bounds of what Nintendo Power staff expected of children then I guess. Which seems reasonable enough.

When I was a kid, Castlevania III did seem much more beatable than Street Fighter 2010, because it had passwords. The last time I played them as an adult, I tried for 1CC runs (so passwords stopped mattering) and they felt about equally challenging I guess. So now it feels weird to me that Nintendo Power gave them such different challenge scores.

Meanwhile - "Bright, sharp graphics" is just fluff. And "Who knows why" the theme & fun rating is chosen??? Nobody, apparently!

Another thing I remember from looking at these ratings as a kid is that I didn't really pay close attention to them or make any decisions based off of them. They didn't influence my opinions at all, as far as I can remember. I guess I just took for granted that they mattered and were important somehow, since they were in the video game magazine and anything having to do with video games was obviously important and good, so I respected them while mostly disregarding them.

>>8074106

I just watched SimCity a bit on YouTube. It looks pretty good!

>>8074106
Wait, SimCity for NES?

All these unreleased games sound fascinating.

>>8076749

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngu1kQATMdk

>>8076749
It was showcased on the same page as Earthbound NES.

>>8065846
Frankenstein's Monster

>>8073767
That game's fucking amazing.

>>8073895
>Urban Cowboy was supposed to be a Trucker simulation with weather reports and traffic conditions and whatnot.

This sounds awesome.

>>8065667
Imagine. Someone else bought those Game Boy carts that were covered in shit years later.

>>8065667
>>8068037
I bet she's the one who cut the power.

One time I was playing Crazy Cars 3 aka Lamborghini Challenge and for some reasons my version was bugged and I couldn't save. After more than 3 hours I was almost at the end and my sister come pestering me like "it's my turn to use the computer", eventually she hit the reset button, got her turn, played Solitaire for 2 mins, and fucked off.

I never beat that game.

>>8065774
Seeing how nicely formatted this magazine is makes me wince whenever I read the first Club Nintendo Mexico magazines.
They all looked like shit and used trippy horrible backgrounds that made text very hard to read and their cover barely got any coverage, only like two pages.
Not only that but sometimes there wasn't even coverage of it. The Super Mario RPG cover didn't talk about it at all.

>>8065851
>>8065854
>>8065858
This poster looks like shit

Stuck in town for a few days, and people keep bumping the thread instead of letting OP do the next issue, so I might as well go ahead and post this now. Second part of my list. Download links to all the Unreleased games that were going to be released, and links to the english translations for games that were going to be brought over but didn't make it. This does not include games than don't have a fan translation or english version.

Chester Field: Ankoku Shin e no Chousen AKA Chesterfield - Vic Tokai
https://www.romhacking.net/translations/100/

Magnum Kiki Ippatsu - Empire City - 1931 AKA Empire City 1931 - Vic Tokai
https://www.romhacking.net/translations/3166/

Nangoku Shirei!!: Spy vs Spy AKA Spy VS Spy: The Island Caper - Kemco
https://www.romhacking.net/translations/2387/

The California Raisins: The Grape Escape - Capcom
https://hiddenpalace.org/w/images/9/96/California_Raisins_-_The_Grape_Escape_%28Prototype_A%29.7z
https://hiddenpalace.org/w/images/f/f1/California_Raisins_-_The_Grape_Escape_%28Prototype_B%29.7z

Days of Thunder - Mindscape
https://github.com/DickBlackshack/Days-of-Thunder-NES-Unpublished/releases/download/1.0/Days.of.Thunder.Unpublished.Builds.2020-05-16.zip

U-Force Power Games - Bandai(original links are dead)
https://www.allmyroms.net/AllMyRoms.php?page=view-download&jeu=Uforce%20Power%20Games%20(USA)%20(Proto%201).zip&titre=Nintendo%20NES
https://www.allmyroms.net/AllMyRoms.php?page=view-download&jeu=Uforce%20Power%20Games%20(USA)%20(Proto%202)%20[b].zip&titre=Nintendo%20NES

Continued in next post.

>>8080150
SimCity - Maxis
https://hiddenpalace.org/w/images/4/48/SimCity_%28NES_prototype%29.zip

Snow White AKA Happily Ever After - Sofel
https://hiddenpalace.org/w/images/d/db/Happily_Ever_After_%28Prototype%29.zip

Earthbound AKA Earthbound Zero AKA Mother - HAL
https://www.romsgames.net/nintendo-rom-earth-bound-zero-neo-demiforce-v101-hack-2/

War on Wheels - Sculptured Software
https://hiddenpalace.org/w/images/5/59/War_on_Wheels_%28Prototype%29.zip

(missed this one somehow)Drac's Night Out - Microsmiths
https://hiddenpalace.org/w/images/3/3b/Drac%27s_Night_Out_%28Prototype%29.rar

All other games either don't have a fan-translation, or were never found.

>>8080150
>>8080198
Absolutely based. Also I'd rather there be discussions and stuff like this to the point where the thread reaches limit before I post the next issue desu.

Comfiest threads. Thanks and keep em coming.

>>8073909
>Days of Thunder by Mindscape is mentioned. It ended up getting cancelled in favor of another Days of Thunder game by Beam Software and was considered lost for a long time. The deceased lead programmer's wife sent a box of floppies to some game preservationists, and the source code and assets were found on 23 floppy disks. The game has since been assembled, and can now be played on a real NES. It stands as the most long-shot sheer-miracle recovery of a lost game yet.

This is incredible.

If I am Youturbing right, the Dayses of Thunder are as follows.

Unreleased: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63G9PrLLo_U
Released: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNwEp9Bz21Y

The released one looks pretty awesome, but people say it's very hard to control I guess?

>>8073909
>The Loony Toons Cartoon Maker by Hi-Tech Expressions was going to be an animation program like Mario Paint for the NES. I'm pretty sure they realized they didn't have enough RAM to play around with for something like that and gave up. It was never made.

There was something like this released for the system though.

>>8074120
>New Kids on the Block

Even given some of the ridiculous stuff that got licensed for games back then, this is still mindblowing to see. I am almost speechless that some thought to even do that lol.

>>8086056

I think it makes sense enough? I mean somebody made a Three Stooges game, somebody made a Hudson Hawk game... New Kids were hugely popular among actual kids, and we've just seen in the example of Ninja Turtles what that can do for a game's success. Granted, the New Kids fandom probably didn't overlap with the NES audience as well as the Turtles fandom did...

>>8085980
We got a Tiny Toons one that was kind of like that, but it was for the SNES:

>>8065669
uh what?

>>8080150
>>8080198
Not only did I miss Drac's Night Out for issue 18, I also missed Jack and the Beanstalk(Jack The Giant Killer in the screenshots) back in issue #11. Was only mentioned there. Known in Japan as Jumpin' Kid: Jack to Mame no Ki Monogatari, a fan translation exists for the title screen, since no other Japanese exists in the game.
Jumpin Kid: Jack and the Beanstalk - Asmik
https://www.romhacking.net/translations/5366/

>>8065734
>>8065731
>>8065725
>>8065731
>>8065719
>>8065716
>>8065702
>>8065707
>>8065709
>>8065713
>>8065716
Those Inafune style drawings are adorable, this was the best looking at the time.

>>8080150
>>8080198
>>8088742
Thanks for these.

Nice.

>>8086056
>>8086740
New Kids got a cartoon produced fast enough to ride the fad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDscgp0mvzk

>>8065652
Super comfy revisiting these last several issues. I had nintendo power one and the issue before the clay super mario cover. I loved these advertisements!