Chuck Rock 2 early assets (Commodore Amiga)

Many of you will remember the original Chuck Rock and its brilliant rock band title screen from the early 90’s. Although the game itself was nothing massively special, it revokes a lot of fun and happy memories for many of us.

It was therefore no surprise when a sequel was announced by Core Design, this time with Chuck’s son as the main protagonist. The game was released in 1993 for a variety of platforms, including Commodore Amiga, SEGA Genesis, Mega CD, Game Gear and Master System.

We’re not covering an unreleased version, so why are we even talking about the game? Well, thanks to Grzegorz Antosiewicz – we are here to highlight some early differences to the final Amiga release that were shown in the press at the time. Grzegorz has gathered different previews and cut scenes which we’ll talk through here:

First off is Amiga Magazin DE 1993 05 showing a screen with a different palette and level layout for the first boss on the left – followed by the final Mega CD and Amiga shots afterwards.

Clipboard01 — Early screen from Amiga Magazin DE

megacd chuck rock 2 3 — Final Mega CD version

Chuck Rock II Son of Chuck 1994Core 004 — Final Amiga edition.

Grezegorz also checked out the playable demo made for CU Amiga magazine 1993 04. Within one of the later levels, and at the end, there was boss fight with the same dinosaur, but completely green. It was also not scripted at this stage, and you can just walk away to end the demo:

Clipboard03 — Then another early magazine shot showing the dinosaur in green.

Then something else spotted was that preview screens in Joystick magazine 1993 02 show that the trees were based initially on ones used in Wonderdog – another Core platform game:

megacd wonderdog — Mega CD Wonderdog – check out the tree!

Then Joystick Magazine from 1992 shows on two pages even more interesting differences, like a collectable teddy bear (in the final game – replaced by candies), different stage background and an additional HUD element in left upper part of the screen. Grzegorz believes it was going to display the charge power of your club before hit and swing.

Chuck Rock II Son of Chuck 1994Core 002 — Now replaced by candies.

On the image below, there are tiny skulls on ground, probably some kind of level editor leftover to mark the surface areas that will damage you:

On the other screens below, there are more subtle differences – with elements are moved around in different places. For example, Clipboard09.jpg below shows characters located in different places compared to the final game, where they are nearer the house.