15 replies to this topic

[atari2600land]

Hey, NintendoAge has cool info on just about all the Tengen unreleased games except three: Cyberball, Hard Drivin' and Licence to Kill. Does anyone have any info, or better yet, screenshots for these games?

[The_Laird]

I remember seeing a preview for NES Hard Drivin' in Mean Machines magazine over here in the UK. There is a site that carries scans from that magazine, not sure if its every issue. But might be worth googling it to see if you can find it?

[atari2600land]

Did a search and found a few screenshots from issue #0 of "Mean Machines", also found a whole website devoted to cancelled games, but it is rarely updated and has no search function. Lost Levels. This is where I found this article:
Hard Drivin' for the NES.

[The_Laird]

They were the screenshots I was thinking of, glad I could be of help!

[MrMark0673]

atari2600land, on Wed Oct 13, 2010 3:22 AM, said:

Hey, NintendoAge has cool info on just about all the Tengen unreleased games except three: Cyberball, Hard Drivin' and Licence to Kill. Does anyone have any info, or better yet, screenshots for these games?

Although not released under the Tengen moniker, Cyberball was released as a licensed game for the NES. It was eventually released by Jaleco and is one of maybe 4 games (Gauntlet, RBI Baseball, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom I want to say are the other three) that was license but does not appear on Nintendo's official releases list.

As for the other two, what is know about Hard Driving has already been posted and there is very little info out there about License to kill. Hope this helps!

[Supergun]

atari2600land, on Wed Oct 13, 2010 3:22 AM, said:

Hey, NintendoAge has cool info on just about all the Tengen unreleased games except three: Cyberball, Hard Drivin' and Licence to Kill. Does anyone have any info, or better yet, screenshots for these games?

Hard Drivin' was already discussed but yes,
all these NES carts were most likely INTENDED to be Tengen games:

Cyberball & Rampart (Jaleco)
Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom / Road Blasters / 720 / Gauntlet 2 (Mindscape)
Marble Madness (Milton Bradley)

After Atari lost its battle with Nintendo for the Tetris home console rights, they fell from grace in Nintendo's eyes and despite the fact that Tetris was supposed to be LICENSED release number 4 for the NES (Pacman / Gauntlet / RBI Baseball), sadly it would never happen.

I remember calling the Nintendo Game Play Counselor hotline late one night purely to "cause problems" by asking for help with NES Gauntlet. When the counselor graciously replied by saying: "oh I apologize son, but we cannot give any tips on unlicensed software for the system" (which I expected of course) I then proceeded to argue my case that I purchased my LICENSED copy of the game at full price from an authorized Nintendo retailer and that they had no choice but to make an exception. It didn't matter how legit my argument was, they still refused.

Anyhow, had the relationship not gone so bad between them, Tengen may very well have been like Konami & Capcom with dozens of titles released for the system. As it stood, they still managed to make quite a few games, but many of them were apparently delegated to other licensees as a "work-around" of Nintendo's revocation of their license.

This brings us to our next topic, NES License to Kill. (the original title for the movie was License Revoked, but much like Revenge of the Jedi, the title was changed prior to release) Anyhow, the game never saw official release by Tengen on the NES, but it did see release on the Sega Genesis. "Domark's James Bond 007 The Duel" was the eventual mutation of the License to Kill romset.

I can provide some screenshots of the NES License to Kill proto so you can see what the game looked like if your interested.

Edited by Supergun, Wed Oct 13, 2010 8:22 PM.

[atari2600land]

Supergun, on Wed Oct 13, 2010 8:20 PM, said:

Hard Drivin' was already discussed but yes,
all these NES carts were most likely INTENDED to be Tengen games:

Cyberball & Rampart (Jaleco)
Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom / Road Blasters / 720 / Gauntlet 2 (Mindscape)
Marble Madness (Milton Bradley)

After Atari lost its battle with Nintendo for the Tetris home console rights, they fell from grace in Nintendo's eyes and despite the fact that Tetris was supposed to be LICENSED release number 4 for the NES (Pacman / Gauntlet / RBI Baseball), sadly it would never happen.

I remember calling the Nintendo Game Play Counselor hotline late one night purely to "cause problems" by asking for help with NES Gauntlet. When the counselor graciously replied by saying: "oh I apologize son, but we cannot give any tips on unlicensed software for the system" (which I expected of course) I then proceeded to argue my case that I purchased my LICENSED copy of the game at full price from an authorized Nintendo retailer and that they had no choice but to make an exception. It didn't matter how legit my argument was, they still refused.

Anyhow, had the relationship not gone so bad between them, Tengen may very well have been like Konami & Capcom with dozens of titles released for the system. As it stood, they still managed to make quite a few games, but many of them were apparently delegated to other licensees as a "work-around" of Nintendo's revocation of their license.

This brings us to our next topic, NES License to Kill. (the original title for the movie was License Revoked, but much like Revenge of the Jedi, the title was changed prior to release) Anyhow, the game never saw official release by Tengen on the NES, but it did see release on the Sega Genesis. "Domark's James Bond 007 The Duel" was the eventual mutation of the License to Kill romset.

I can provide some screenshots of the NES License to Kill proto so you can see what the game looked like if your interested.

Yes, please provide some screenshots of the Licence to Kill proto. Has it been dumped yet? Your Game Play Counselor story is quite amusing. Makes me wonder why Nintendo didn't like the Game Genie. You'd think MORE people would run out and buy NES games because they'd be easier.

[MrMark0673]

Supergun, on Wed Oct 13, 2010 8:20 PM, said:

atari2600land, on Wed Oct 13, 2010 3:22 AM, said:

Hey, NintendoAge has cool info on just about all the Tengen unreleased games except three: Cyberball, Hard Drivin' and Licence to Kill. Does anyone have any info, or better yet, screenshots for these games?

Hard Drivin' was already discussed but yes,
all these NES carts were most likely INTENDED to be Tengen games:

Cyberball & Rampart (Jaleco)
Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom / Road Blasters / 720 / Gauntlet 2 (Mindscape)
Marble Madness (Milton Bradley)

Having purchased a Marble Madness proto in person from one of the higher-ups at Rare during the NES era, I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that it was never intended to be released by Tengen. I don't have much to add on the others, though I do own a License to Kill Genesis proto with prototype box art if anyone were interested in that.

[Greg2600]

Have you dumped the Genesis License to Kill? Is it like The Duel? Every other version of License to Kill that Dormark released on various computer platforms feature top-view gaming. Levels were like Tiger Heli, Jackal, Cobra Triangle, and Spy Hunter. Bare little resemblance to The Duel though.

[MrMark0673]

Greg2600, on Thu Oct 14, 2010 9:34 PM, said:

Have you dumped the Genesis License to Kill? Is it like The Duel? Every other version of License to Kill that Dormark released on various computer platforms feature top-view gaming. Levels were like Tiger Heli, Jackal, Cobra Triangle, and Spy Hunter. Bare little resemblance to The Duel though.

Oops! I have a proto of The Duel, NOT License to Kill. My mistake, was going by memory.

It appears to be near identical to finished version. My apologies.

[The_Laird]

Greg2600, on Thu Oct 14, 2010 9:34 PM, said:

Have you dumped the Genesis License to Kill? Is it like The Duel? Every other version of License to Kill that Dormark released on various computer platforms feature top-view gaming. Levels were like Tiger Heli, Jackal, Cobra Triangle, and Spy Hunter. Bare little resemblance to The Duel though.

You mean Domark. They published all of Tengen's computer games and Megadrive games in Europe.

[Greg2600]

MrMark0673, on Fri Oct 15, 2010 4:32 AM, said:

Oops! I have a proto of The Duel, NOT License to Kill. My mistake, was going by memory.

It appears to be near identical to finished version. My apologies.

That's okay. This is the list of Tengen unreleased games:

Airball
Cyberball
Hard Drivin'
Licence to Kill
Police Academy (Version 1)
Police Academy (Version 2)
Technocop
Tetris (Licensed)
Xybots

I think all of them were complete, except maybe Police Academy. These are the mag scans Lost Levels did for License to Kill. As a big Bond fan, I wish someone would release the rom, even though the PC version is not a great game.

[MrMark0673]

Greg2600, on Sat Oct 16, 2010 12:35 AM, said:

MrMark0673, on Fri Oct 15, 2010 4:32 AM, said:

Oops! I have a proto of The Duel, NOT License to Kill. My mistake, was going by memory.

It appears to be near identical to finished version. My apologies.

That's okay. This is the list of Tengen unreleased games:

Airball
Cyberball
Hard Drivin'
Licence to Kill
Police Academy (Version 1)
Police Academy (Version 2)
Technocop
Tetris (Licensed)
Xybots

I think all of them were complete, except maybe Police Academy. These are the mag scans Lost Levels did for License to Kill. As a big Bond fan, I wish someone would release the rom, even though the PC version is not a great game.

Yeah, I own one of the (four?) builds of Airball as well as one of the two known copies of Licensed Tengen Tetris, so I'm very familiar with those two. Like I said before though, Cyberball was very much released and is the same game as mentioned on the Tengen list, that's for certain and why it's one of very few games that does not appear on Nintendo's official releases list.

You really think Hard Driving was finished? The screens that I have seen are VERY early and seemed to push the limits of the NES. I'd be shocked if they completed that one and then shelved it.

[Greg2600]

No you're right, Hard Drivin' wasn't finished, missed that one. It would have been horrible, the SEGA Genesis version is a pile of dung, I can't imagine an NES version.

[OldAtarian]

Was Tengen part of Tramiels Atari, Atari Games (the arcade division), or part of Warner?

Edited by OldAtarian, Sun Oct 24, 2010 1:41 AM.

[The_Laird]

Tengen was the name Atari Games used to publish games for home systems to get around the agreement that they couldn't use the Atari name in the home market.