I don't know what you are talking about. The links I had to Daze Before Christmas and Road Runner 2 have comments from two Sunsoft employees saying the games were canceled due to Sunsoft going bankrupt. And the Wikipedia link states they went through restructuring in the face of bankruptcy (ie Chapter 11). As an example, GM declared chapter 11 bankruptcy in June, but they are still out there making cars.



Unfortunately, video game reporting was extremely poor back in 1995, and I couldn't find a published source to confirm this (note the lack of sources on the Wikipedia page as well). I am inclined to believe what the producer at Sunsoft during the time has to say, and he says bankruptcy. Here is an excerpt from an email I got from the producer at Sunsoft:



-----

Last info I want to share with you is the reasons for the cancellation.
Although I've conveyed here that the game lacked depth by that point, the
big event was Sunsoft's closure for bankruptcy. Casualities were:

SNES:
Sylvester & Tweety (Nice artwork - A single level demo with you controlling
Sylvester was shown at E3 or CES around 1994 or 1995. I think it was in
development by Visual Concepts.

Kung Fu: The Legend Continues (Yes, based on the lame tv show! We had 2
levels, and the main character moving around. It was in development by Park
Place. It was cancelled when we found out THEY were going bankrupt, several
months before the axe fell at Sunsoft too).

Most other games that were not near enough completion met similar fates.
Those that were pretty much at the 95% or higher completion were finished
and sold off to Acclaim Entertainment for distribution. These included:

Looney Tunes BBall
Speedy Gonzales
Justice League Task Force
Scooby-Doo Mystery
possibly more...

Evan: You made THIS comment:

A more likely reason is that Sunsoft of America was starting to have troubles by 1994. There are a bunch of unreleased SNES games that never made it out of the door because Sunsoft was done sometime in 1995."

You said Sunsoft was "done", meaning you implied they dissolved, not restructured. You've cleared up what you actually meant, but yes, there were issues of bankruptcy but the company kept going. They never stopped but they took on many hats...they even got into Game Boy stuff with Final Fantasy and Tale Spin among other stuff (though I am confused about the dates on those) but it is clear they were around until 2001 or so when they shut their doors, threw things in the dumpsters, and cleaned out storage. The last two games they made were Blaster Master Blasting Again and Eternal Eyes that did not get released for almost a year or so until Crave released them as budget games (dates might be crazy on those too).

Reminds me....I have an unreleased arcade game called Punky Doodle with marquee and sideart that came from the gentleman that created the game, and he had some pretty fond times over at Sunsoft...it's one of those places I would have loved to work but in the 90s I was working at a video game magazine when Sunsoft was making stuff like Chameleon Twist...

They were done in 1995! They went bankrupt! They sold off their games to Acclaim!



Sure, they restructured and ended up publishing games later, but in 1995 the studio was in deep trouble.

Semantics... it is amazing how picky people can be.

Had to chime in here heh. I am pretty sure there is a rom of the NTSC US version floating arround, I used to have it in a file with the PAL and NTSC J.

If there is then it was never distributed and you somehow got someone's private ROM. Or maybe someone did a hack? It would make sense.

Well sir you must now find said ROM, and then a cart can and will be made.

All I know is the studio did not close, LOL...I thought you told me on IRC you "liked" drama, hahahah

Mr. Gimmick: Had to be a hack, I don't even have my own dumped.

It very well could have been a hack, no idea. I will have to dig through my files and see if I can find it. Hack or not it would work either way on a cart most likely,

Ufouria (US) would be another casualty of this Sunsoft nonsense, I'd imagine.

Both games are amazing.

I really think it is difficult to get on to a cart...it's an MMC5 maybe? I don't know, but it's definitely something relatively tougher and expensive..

Yeah, I believe sunsoft had their own custom mapper, so that makes things pretty tricky to repro.

You know, anyone wanting a Gimmick "repro" should just get the Famicom cart instead. It has the music chip, and the only difference between it and the Euro/U.S. game that I know of is the title screen.

Quoted for the truth!

Tho the carts are pretty rare and will run you $40 or so, and CIB will run you about $90. Still way cheaper than PAL and the extra sound is totally worth it!

The only US game that uses this same mapper is Batman: Return of the Joker.  It would definitely cost a bit more for donors than it would on most projects, but a repro run of 25 or so would not be out of the question.  At the same time, I'd have a hard time sacrificing a relatively uncommon game to begin with, but others may be more willing.

Although I don't know for a fact, I bet some talented people could manipulate the game to work on a more common mapper, though it could be a big job.

Here: http://nesdev.parodius.com/bbs/vi...

I would imagine that a small run (25/50?) requiring a Batman donor cart (if that's the only way a repro could be made) would still be filled pretty quickly, the game is known to be amazing.


Oh? Does the Japanese game have no text, even in the ending(s)? Also, won't the added music channels only play on a Famicom?

Another little difference is that the PAL version gives you 5 lives while the Famicom version only gives you 3.

It shouldn't be too hard to make a PAL repro using the Batman cart but then you still have the graphical glitches when running on an NTSC system. As for running a (J) NTSC cart I thought there was some character changes when it was released for Europe, I would assume the same for the NTSC proto as well, I could be wrong and confusing it with something else though. Also I dont think the (J) version of Gimmick will work with the (U) version of Batman either maybe someone with more knowledge of these mappers could join in and elaborate.

Didn't you look at that thread I posted? You can get gimmick jap running on a batman cart. And with some added hardware (a sound chip and some decoders) you can get the extra sound running. (if you mod your nes to actually mix it in)

Sorry for bumping this topic, but can you also emulate the japanese gimmick rom on a nes with resistor mod and get the extra channels, or doesn't powerpak emulate the special sound chip?

Yes it does, I just played it. You will need resistor mod and Loopy's mapper set, I think are all included in the latest release mapper pack on RetroZone.

Ah yeah, there's no text or anything you have to worry about in the Famicom version. Even the credits are still in English anyways.

I have no problem dumping NTSC Gimmick for monies but we know how that goes over sometimes, LOL

Maybe instead of a community dump we could do a community purchase(assuming it's for sale?) Once we buy the game we could dump it/make repros/whatever to recoup some of the expenses. Once it's dumped/repro'd/etc maybe auction the cart off to benefit NA? For $20 you'd be making the NTSC version possible, and be able to get a repro(maybe a discount on repros for those who donated $20), plus you'd be benefitting NA... and get a cool new icon next to your name!(right???) =)

RetroZone would make so much money if they reproed it. It seems like an obvious conclusion.