Pit Fighter 2 prototype found

[O Ilusionista]

GameHistoryOrg recently released a batch of TENGEN materials, and among them is a prototype that appears to be an early build of the long-lost *Pit Fighter II*, which was planned for release in late 1993 for the SEGA Mega Drive.



It was a prototype we'd only seen in a few rare magazine photos from that time, as the game was canceled to focus on Guardians of the Hood, a beat 'em up using the same digitized character technology (several characters that appear in this prototype appear in Guardians).

Pit Fighter was a game I played a lot on my Mega Drive back then. I got the "cartridge" from a friend, which only had the PCB, without even the plastic parts. When we wanted to play, we'd disassemble a Quackshot cartridge and put the PCB in it, and after playing, we'd store the PCB in a cassette tape case. That's forever etched in my memory

Obviously I can't post the link here.

Preview

 

[DCurrent]

GameHistoryOrg recently released a batch of TENGEN materials, and among them is a prototype that appears to be an early build of the long-lost *Pit Fighter II*, which was planned for release in late 1993 for the SEGA Mega Drive.

View attachment 12911

It was a prototype we'd only seen in a few rare magazine photos from that time, as the game was canceled to focus on Guardians of the Hood, a beat 'em up using the same digitized character technology (several characters that appear in this prototype appear in Guardians).

Pit Fighter was a game I played a lot on my Mega Drive back then. I got the "cartridge" from a friend, which only had the PCB, without even the plastic parts. When we wanted to play, we'd disassemble a Quackshot cartridge and put the PCB in it, and after playing, we'd store the PCB in a cassette tape case. That's forever etched in my memory

Obviously I can't post the link here.

Preview

That's cool. I remember the magazine articles and being disappointed when it just puffed away. We never heard anything about Guardians of The Hood until it was a historical footnote.

Pit-Fighter actually has an interesting and surprisingly deep set of mechanics - it's just they were all thrown together with poor coding and not much thought of the overall result. So the only real strategy is evade dash behind, cancel into your back elbow as you pass by, rinse and repeat till they're dead. Maybe throw in a little something else here and there for fun if you're feeling risky. You can easily 1cc the Arcade with Ty or Buzz. Sadly for Kato, he can't do that since his evade is a jump.

Another aspect I find interesting is the enemies are more complete than they look. ROM hacks to access the NPCs show they aren't quite as equipped as players, but do have moves the CPU never uses. Ex: Southside Jim and Angel both have working kicks. I always thought it was a real short sighted move not to make all the characters selectable.

DC

 

[O Ilusionista]

I always thought it was a real short sighted move not to make all the characters selectable.

yep, I think it would be cool to be able to control some of the enemies too. Like you defeat one enemy and then you can control it.

Pit Fighters is one of the members of my "I will remake this game someday" list.