Games That Weren't 64^®

Following on from the recent look at the strange earlier (or later?) version of Super Hang On with larger bikes but less of them, Martin/Stadium64 highlights that there was a strange late US release which was to include a Commodore 64 edition.

Advertised as late as 1991, it was due for release in Summer 1991 (which is very late for a Commodore 64 release in the US). The game was however already promoted in a 1989 catalogue too. See gallery below.

So why not just release the Euro version? Well, that could be pretty obvious. Either they were developing a new version, or they just hadn’t anticipated how bad the UK version was before deciding to actually cancel the release.

Martin looked at the US box releases online, and it seems like Data East produced at least 2 different boxes. One has PC & Amiga screenshots on back, whilst the other has Macintosh screenshots. And at least one of them seems to have Commodore 64 system information – on the box front/long side. The Orange part present on several other C64 Data East releases.

In the gallery, you can see parts of that orange bit it on some of the pictures that Martin has provided. One front box – you can see the orange part behind the Amiga Sticker. So seems at least that a Commodore 64 box was produced.

So the question is whether a different development was started, or if it had been planned to use the Euro version all along (before they saw what it was like). One theory from Martin is that perhaps Enduro Racer V2 was intended to be the enhanced game.

Check the entry, but Nick Pelling oddly put “Super Hang On” in the score panel, even though it was clearly an Enduro Racer game. He also said the following:

“Yup, I worked on a version of Enduro Racer for Activision/Mediagenic: as I recall, it was intended as an enhanced disk-only version of the game for the US market (simply because at that time sales of the 1541 disk drive were low outside of the US). I can still remember the game’s version of the arcade music (though was that done by David Whittaker? I can’t remember). :-)

However, I’m reasonably sure that it got canned very close to completion and was never released. I certainly don’t recall getting any royalty statements. :-(“

Did Nick originally perhaps start doing the enhanced version of Enduro Racer after poor reviews before it was canned, and then resurrect the engine to potentially re-use for a new Super Hang On game? It seems unlikely, but with the odd “Super Hang On” mention at the top of the page – who knows if there is some bizarre twist about to surface.

Contributions: Martin/Stadium64

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