13 replies to this topic

[MrMark0673]

Add another unreleased NES game to my list! I just acquired this from an auction on Ebay and I've been able to mess around with it for a few hours now. Like all flight sims, the controls are pretty tough to get a hang of without a manual, but I picked them up soon enough. Pretty fun with just a minor glitch here and there (most notably at the title screen), and as far as I can tell it seems to be complete.

Some screen caps and a shot of the PCB for those interested:



























The two things that continue to stand out for me are:

- The digital voices. Every five seconds, Chuck says something bizarre like "Engage!" or "Out of Missiles" and my favorite "You call yourself a pilot?!"
- The "polygon" graphics that I never thought I'd see on the NES. For the hardware, I can't believe they can pull it off. Sure, it's primitive next to something like Starfox, but not bad at all for the NES.

Hope you guys enjoy, I'll be adding more stuff in the future!

[user42]

Congrats. 

I had seen that auction, so you are the lucky buyer....

Do you have any plans to, dump it...make repro's....release the rom....all of the above, none of the above?

[MrMark0673]

Though it's a bit down the line, all of the above sounds about right. As with all the unreleased games my brother and I own, he said it best with this break down:

"It will 100%, positively be reproduced, and the rom will be released for free after the fact. That's our ultimate goal for all such things.

- We make some cash back, and a small profit for our work.
- Collectors get a new snazzy game to put on their shelves.
- Freeloaders still get the rom without having to drop any $.
- The game is preserved and saved from obscurity.

I know that the prototype community doesn't share the same view when it comes to the ethics behind releases, but Mark and I feel like this is the best way to go about doing it. "

Couldn't have said it better myself. this one is higher on the priority list than some of the others, but we have another release we're finishing up first.

[user42]

All awesome. I'm glad the right person bought this.

[jaybird3rd]

MrMark0673, on Fri May 14, 2010 8:12 PM, said:

Though it's a bit down the line, all of the above sounds about right. As with all the unreleased games my brother and I own, he said it best with this break down:

"It will 100%, positively be reproduced, and the rom will be released for free after the fact. That's our ultimate goal for all such things.

- We make some cash back, and a small profit for our work.
- Collectors get a new snazzy game to put on their shelves.
- Freeloaders still get the rom without having to drop any $.
- The game is preserved and saved from obscurity.

I know that the prototype community doesn't share the same view when it comes to the ethics behind releases, but Mark and I feel like this is the best way to go about doing it. "

Couldn't have said it better myself. this one is higher on the priority list than some of the others, but we have another release we're finishing up first.

This is great news! The procedure you've outlined is exactly the right way to go about releasing these unreleased games, in my opinion. I never knew they made a Chuck Yeager game for the NES, so I'm especially looking forward to trying it.

As an aside, I couldn't help but notice that, for some reason, this ...



... reminds me an awful lot of this ...



I got a chuckle out of the idea of Chuck Yeager as Skylar. At least he says "You call yourself a pilot?!" instead of "Where did you learn to fly?!". I bet Chuck Yeager Fighter Combat has a higher frame rate than Cybermorph, too.

[SoulBlazer]

Never herd anything about this one. I see that on the game case that it was EA, but I don't think EA directly released anything for the NES -- they licenced a few games to other companies to release for them.

Does anyone have any details? Like release year, company that was going to publish it, why it never got released?

Too bad, I'm sure Mr. Yeager could have used the royalities.

[A.J. Franzman]

SoulBlazer, on Sat May 15, 2010 6:31 PM, said:

Mr. Yeager could have used the royalities.

I'm sure Major General Yeager is quite well-off financially. He was probably paid up front for his work on the game anyway (he may have also contracted for additional residual income that never materialized).

I was at his "re-retirement" (from flying with the Air Force as a consultant, rather than active duty, which he had already retired from in 1975) & wetting down ceremony at the Edwards AFB Open House a few years back (2005?), and got to hear what may have been some of the last sonic booms the great man got to make.

[Mitch]

I remember playing the PC version of this game back in the old DOS days. Brings back old memories.

Mitch

[Greg2600]

First, congrats on obtaining the game. Second, I'll be one of those happy freeloaders when the rom is released!

As for the game itself, the PC version was developed by Brent Iverson and his team at EA. He went on to develop the US Navy and Marine Fighters games, as well as WWII fighters, all of which are favorites of mine. His games were still fairly easy to play, before the flight sims became ridiculously complicated.

Edited by Greg2600, Sun May 16, 2010 10:56 AM.

[kool kitty89]

Huh, so it uses actual software rendering rather than frame by frame animation as used in the canceled Hard Drivin' port? (I think the C64 version of hard drivin was also frame by frame)
I know Elite is on the NES too. (and that has hidden line removal but no shading)

[Lendorien]

I'm curious to know what the frame rate and flicker is like on this game. It looks pretty good from the images. Is a video possible? I remember playign this on PC years and years ago.

[MrMark0673]

Lendorien, on Mon May 17, 2010 10:23 PM, said:

I'm curious to know what the frame rate and flicker is like on this game. It looks pretty good from the images. Is a video possible? I remember playign this on PC years and years ago.

I took a sample vid using FCEUltra, but it ended up being a massive file (like 2 GB) for a very short video. I figure we'll release this soon enough that hopefully screen shots will suffice for the time being.

[kool kitty89]

Lendorien, on Mon May 17, 2010 10:23 PM, said:

I'm curious to know what the frame rate and flicker is like on this game. It looks pretty good from the images. Is a video possible? I remember playign this on PC years and years ago.

I wouldn't think there'd be any flicker at all unless they used sprites for missiles or explosions. (software rendering should all be done on the tilemap background)

[7800Lover]

I remember the Chuck Yeager flying games released on the computer. Due to the different demographics between console and computer game players as well as controls (keyboards vs. joysticks and gamepads), I wonder how it would have done had it been released.

Some computer games did okay when put on consoles like King's Quest V for the NES (a fairly decent conversion IMHO). Some did not - I remember reviewers trashing Eye of the Beholder for SNES and Sega CD. Why? Wandering around aimlessly in a dungeon is for computer nerds and not for console gamers...at least according to them.

So how does this Chuck Yeager game stack up against its computer counterparts?