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Post by theredeye on May 12, 2009 2:19:35 GMT -5
Hello all! Great site, I just discovered it recently. I come from a strange land called the United States where most of us grew up with home consoles instead of computers, so most of my Ocean memories come from them.
I'd like to ask any ex-Ocean guys out there if they recall any of the following games for the NES. All of these were announced or at least hinted at in the American press. Some of these could have been made up from thin air, in which case, it would be nice to know and properly document that.
Addams Family Values This was released for the 16-bit consoles and I believe the Game Boy, but not for the original NES. It was announced as coming in an old issue of GamePro, anyone remember if it was ever in development?
Dennis the Menace Exact same deal as above. When the 16-bit game was announced, an 8-bit one was mentioned as well. Was this being considered for release on the NES?
Dewey the Dolphin I had a nice chat with programmer Allan Shortt about this one a couple weeks ago, it sounded interesting. I know it didn't get very far before he was pulled onto some licensed products, but I'm including it here in case anyone else has memories of the game.
Prince Valiant This one came out in Europe, but not in the U.S. Any idea why? Might there be an NTSC build around?
Thanks in advance. I know this board does not get checked often, but I thought I'd give it a shot.
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Post by Paulie on May 14, 2009 16:30:09 GMT -5
I spoke to the chap that wrote Addams Family Values this morning (he works at our place) - and didn't know anything about a NES version existing. Sorry. Dewey was a lovely looking little demo (courtesy of the graphical talents of John Palmer and of course Big Al) but spent most of its short life on the Sega Megadrive which Allan had just reverse engineered with a swish in circuit emulator.
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Post by Mark Jones Junior on May 15, 2009 4:48:30 GMT -5
Yeah i remember seeing John Palmer's graphics for Dewey in the basement of 6 Central Street. Looked very nice. I remember him being VERY pissed off that it got cancelled. I seem to recall it was stopped cos 'Ecco The Dolphin' came out before they got a chance to finish theirs. Apparently they didn't even know another dolphin game was in production.
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Post by theredeye on May 18, 2009 18:36:41 GMT -5
Thanks guys! I was wondering if Ecco had anything to do with Dewey's cancellation, sounds like it might have. Here are the two screenshots we have, I believe these were photos taken at CES: Al mentioned the Mega Drive version too, I don't think it was ever shown publicly. Is anyone here still in contact with John? I'd be interested in seeing if he managed to keep art files from that one.
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Post by Gary on May 19, 2009 1:30:43 GMT -5
A little known fact is that we also started developing Dewey as a coin-op game (our first). It became a little ambitious/expensive, though.
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Post by Paulie on May 19, 2009 16:46:16 GMT -5
Blimey those images take me back - that would be around 1990 - when we were in Lancashire House. Gary - Cor! Was that an arcade game for the Data East board or the hardware Dave Collier was developing? Them were the days... do you remember the Konix Multisystem dev kit - I remember banging out 8086 code for that with Dave!
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Post by Gary on May 20, 2009 9:28:34 GMT -5
Was that an arcade game for the Data East board or the hardware Dave Collier was developing? I think it was for a proprietary hardware system that DC was doing (I *think*). I don't remember the Konix one too well, though I didn't think that was going to be a coin-op, was it?
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Post by Paulie on May 22, 2009 18:13:30 GMT -5
Gosh, no, the multisystem was destined to become the first "mega-console" complete with Space Harrier style chair, steering wheels, guns - the whole nine yards. It was actually a nice bit of kit (8086+custom blitter), shame the chaps at Konix wanted to completely self-fund, and not unsurprisingly ran out of moola.
I wonder what happened to that devkit? That would be a major collectors item - there were only a half dozen prototypes made.
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Post by theredeye on May 30, 2009 0:13:33 GMT -5
There was a really long article in Retro Gamer a few years back on the entire history of the Konix Multisystem. I didn't get a chance to read it because the magazine is way too expensive around here, but if you guys are interested in a nostalgia trip, you might be able to track down a copy.
Gary, are you the Digimask guy? I think we may have met during a Microsoft conference, I did an article on you guys for Gamasutra. I'll shoot you an email!
Also, I have no idea why I included a James Pond game in that initial post, that's not Ocean at all. Don't know what I was thinking.
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