1994 Ocean Software
Platform: SEGA Game Gear
A new week brings another exciting recovery at Games That Weren’t! Today, we’re unveiling a previously unknown SEGA Game Gear conversion of Alien Olympics – a game we had no idea existed until just last week and has been lost for 31 years.
Originally set for release in 1994 by Ocean Software, this version never saw the light of day for reasons still unknown. Only the Game Boy and PC editions made it to market, and we suspect the Game Gear version may have been scrapped due to the platform’s declining popularity at the time. With a larger user base, the Game Boy likely took priority.
Whilst digging through some code archives, I came across a binary file for the Game Gear version, which appears to be complete, featuring all 15 events intact. There also seems to be a two-player mode, possibly allowing linked play between two Game Gear systems.
For those unfamiliar with the Game Boy and PC versions, Alien Olympics is essentially a Track & Field clone set in space, featuring eight alien competitors with different strengths, adding a layer of strategy to the gameplay.
The Game Gear edition offers a more colourful take on the Game Boy release and likely shares the same codebase, all developed by Richard Naylor – who also worked on Split Personalities for the Commodore 64 and later contributed to The Lion King on NES.
While I’m not usually a fan of Track & Field-style button-mashing games, this one has a good variety of events to keep genre fans entertained. It was a real surprise to uncover, as there’s no known record of a Game Gear version in old press materials.
If anyone has any information or press references confirming its existence, we’d love to hear from you! For now, check out the game for yourself and as more details and resources come to light, we’ll continue to update this page.
With a huge thank you to Mark Greenshields and Darren Melbourne for arranging the recovery.
Download
- Download temporarily removed. Darren just needs to get approval from the other owner of the game before we can hopefully re-instate.
Video with commentary
Gallery
