Games that are missing in action?

Discuss the games, programs, utilities... and vaporware!
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carlsson
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Games that are missing in action?

Post by carlsson » Thu Jan 03, 2013 4:56 pm

While browsing the box scans for some of the earliest releases, I noticed five titles not in the list of known software or ROM dumps:

The Great Rally
Haunted Villa
Astro Fighter
Pinball
Ga.....

Do we have any ideas about those? I understand Astro Pinball might've been just Pinball to start with. I don't know if The Great Rally can be explained as Auto Chase. I don't know about Astro Fighter as both Planet Defender and Sonic Invader are present on the same photo of a Creativision console and a pile of games. The bottom game is hard to tell what it is called.

I saw on later releases, the pile of games is different and only reflects known titles. I also saw that on the screenshot for the Multicart, titles such as Haunted Villa and Astro Fighter are mentioned on the mock-up menu that itself isn't included on the multicart.

Should the CreatiVEmu site anywhere mention MIA titles, or is such speculative matter only for the forum?
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MADrigal
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Re: Games that are missing in action?

Post by MADrigal » Mon Jan 07, 2013 3:14 pm

Hi Anders,
I'm back from my trip in Australia.
I was lucky enough to buy (via Ebay) a Rameses console, while I was in Australia. Seller shipped in Australia only, and at first he didnt even want to sell to a non Australian resident!
So I was very very lucky to be there in that exact moment.

Well the Rameses came with a bunch of boxed carts, one of which responds to your question: Ga.... in my opinion stands for "Galaxy Defender", that's Planet Defender of course. :-)

Astro Fighter in my opinion was the "work-in-progress" name for Sonic Invader.

But all in all... games with such titles were never released. Some of them were released with name change (Pinball for sure) but about the other ones, in my opinion they were nothing but "mock-up" boxes. :-)
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MADrigal
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Re: Games that are missing in action?

Post by MADrigal » Mon Jan 07, 2013 3:18 pm

carlsson wrote: > I also saw that on the screenshot for the Multicart, titles such as Haunted Villa
> and Astro Fighter are mentioned on the mock-up menu that itself isn't included
> on the multicart.
That's obviously a joke :-)
carlsson wrote:> Should the CreatiVEmu site anywhere mention MIA titles, or is such speculative
> matter only for the forum?
Well I discussed the whole thing with many people in the past, specially when updating/maintaining the Digital Press database. But I'm pretty sure the matter doesn't deserve to spend time discussing. It's mock-ups only. Pretty sure (and sad!) of this.
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carlsson
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Re: Games that are missing in action?

Post by carlsson » Mon Jan 07, 2013 10:41 pm

Ok, they may be mock-ups but as both Sonic Invader and Planet Defender are present on the very same picture, it doesn't quite make sense that they'd create multiple mock-up boxes for the same game using different names. For that matter, VTech could've come up with 10 different names for Sonic Invader and printed all on one box each.

How about Galaxian? It was a popular game that many companies made unauthorized clones of. As long as we don't know for sure, it is just speculation. I also noticed one more game, Parachute that is present in the pile on the back side.
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MADrigal
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Re: Games that are missing in action?

Post by MADrigal » Thu Jan 10, 2013 7:16 am

I think they were mock-ups of both the console and the game boxes. At that time they probably set up a series of mock-up for promotional purposes only (such as the modem, the floppy disk drive and the set of BASIC manuals which appear in promo pics), and in the meantime they were still engineering the console AND programming the games.
So I think they simply decided a set of "cool games" to programme, but in the end, they ended up programming different games, and lastly they changed the names for "appeal" purposes.
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carlsson
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Re: Games that are missing in action?

Post by carlsson » Tue May 28, 2013 9:14 am

So, does anyone (MADrigal?) maintain the list of vaporware?

The Great Rally
Haunted Villa
Astro Fighter
Pinball (probably the same as Astro Pinball)
Ga..... (Galaxian? Galaxy Defender = Planet Defender?)
Parachute
Skiing
Boat Chase
Jungle Adventure <- new from Mobsie's latest purchase
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Mobsie
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Re: Games that are missing in action?

Post by Mobsie » Tue May 28, 2013 10:34 am

Yes, very interesting.
From Skiing we have a picture on the Flyer. The question is now was the game in development or was the picture from another Computer/Console?
I try to contact some people to find out more about the "Pirate" Modules and list i have. It`s from an company/men (?) in Austria.
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MADrigal
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Re: Games that are missing in action?

Post by MADrigal » Tue May 28, 2013 11:36 am

Mobsie wrote:I try to contact some people to find out more about the "Pirate" Modules and list i have. It`s from an company/men (?) in Austria.
I'm pretty sure it was in Austria.

I have an identical pirate cart, which I also bought from Austrian seller.
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MADrigal
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Re: Games that are missing in action?

Post by MADrigal » Tue May 28, 2013 11:36 am

carlsson wrote: The Great Rally
Haunted Villa
Astro Fighter
Pinball (probably the same as Astro Pinball) -> I AGREE
Ga..... (Galaxian? Galaxy Defender = Planet Defender?) -> I AGREE
Parachute
Skiing
Boat Chase
Jungle Adventure <- new from Mobsie's latest purchase
The list is complete in my opinion. No other vaporware than that.
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Mobsie
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Re: Games that are missing in action?

Post by Mobsie » Tue May 28, 2013 11:44 am

Yes, it`s from Austria. The "Pirate" price list is in german and there is written that the prices later increase because they have not so much PCB at the moment.
So, they produce the Pirate cards, and maybe they have seen some unfinished games also.
I wait some answers.
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