Famicom: July-Sept. 1990

OK, first off we have the most exciting pictures that I found: Early shots of Rockman 3!

The text below is the standard info about the game, but one very interesting point is that the 3 forms your robotic dog, Rush, could take were 1) a coil 2) a submarine and 3) a drill!!! The last one seems quite unique and different. Someone pointed out that perhaps the points in the stages where Protoman/Blues normally shows up would have been where Rockman would have to drill using Rush.

	--->	I've translated most of the text in the Famitsu article, and while (besides the Rush Drill) it's not the most mindblowing of information, you might find it interesting. Click below to view an English PDF file.

Ooh... look at those planets! Of course, this is Gemini Man's stage. The planets were taken out of the level design, but their character tiles are still in the CHR ROM of the final release of the game, and the palette still cycles as though they were there, glowing. Some of the planet CHR tiles were taken out as they needed space for the robotic penguins. It's just as well -- these planets don't look up to Capcom's standards anyway.

The robotic snake is more metallic here, as opposed to the scaly one in the final. The floor doesn't seem to move yet.

Now, Top Man's stage looks really interesting! Those look like guard towers and a city in the background. I think it looks much better than just the boring old greenhouse backdrop of the final.

Apparently, this part of Top Man's level is a bit different too, with the ceiling above the cat missing at this stage...

Finally, here are all the robot idea submissions (all 50,000 of them!) from fans:

Here is Legend of Hero Tonma for the Famicom. Irem did a switcheroo with Famicom and PC-Engine releases. Hero Tonma didn't get released on the Famicom, but came out on the PCE instead. And, the PCE version of MeikyuuJima (Kickle Cubicle) wasn't released. Instead, the Famicom version was. Weird.

Here's an unreleased game named "Jungle Taitei" starring Kimba, the hero of an old (but now famous) Japanese animation.

Shoshinkai Show report from Famimaga
Famicom Magazine did a report of Nintendo's 1990 "Space World" show with plenty of pictures. Among them were many beta/unreleased games, like Battle Ball (Bowl?), a football-like game where players literally battled each other to carry the ball across the playing field; and Daimeiro, a 3-D dungeon crawler (obviously).
Irem must have had a disappointing latter half of 1990. Of the 4 games displayed here, only 1 of them (Parman) got released! Legend of Hero Tonma and Geopolitic Island never saw a release on the Famicom, and Metal Storm was released 2 years later in Japan!

Below is a (yawn...) RPG by Software Kougyou that is said to look "exactly like Final Fantasy II": Space Opera. It went unreleased, of course. To the right is an earlier title screen to Sword Master, which actually did get a release. Dark Sider is a cool name I guess, even if it is confusing in a way only Japanese titles can be.

Here's the great Over Horizon, looking a little different from its release version.

Chip & Dale's Rescue Rangers Fishing Cheat!(?) Here is a very odd easter egg hidden in Rescue Rangers, as reported by Famimaga in mid-1990. The article to the right says that if you play your way to Zone E, go to the location pictured, and shoot a block straight up, a fishing rod will drop from the sky. Once you jump onto the boat, you will start fishing with the rod and catch flowers, 1-ups, etc. Now, I tried to do this a few times, and even checked the game's CHR ROM to see if there is even a pattern for this fishing rod, but I couldn't find anything. The cheat simply didn't work for me. I'll be the first to admit a fair bit of ignorance of Famimaga's sections, but I think their "Cho Ultra Technique +1" cheat section always has a fake cheat hidden among the real cheats in each issue. Readers can send in their guesses as to the hoax and win something. That "+1" is referring to a bogus cheat, I bet. Turn out I was the fish. Blah.