u/KingK3nnyDaGreat

So, this is about some lost and obscure prototype games developed by Tengen (the console division of Atari Games). Particularly, most of these were revealed by a person who also happens to be obscure, Jun Amanai. He was a former employee at Tengen. His channel reveals 4 PC Engine/TurboGrafx 16 prototypes plus a Famicom version of one of those titles.

Of these titles, only the ROMS for "Off the Wall" (PCE) and "Popils" (FC) have been dumped. The "Popils" dump is natively silent, however, there is a patch hosted here & here, that adds audio. There are two dumps of "Off the Wall", one with the Jun Amanai label, and the other seemingly at a different state of developement. Btw when I link a TCRF page, be sure to also check the Hidden Palace page.

Anyway, what disappoints me the most is that all we got were teasers without updates. Pretty much, what you see is what you get, unless you pay thousands to get a physical copy. So, yes, unfortunately, Jun was more interested in profiting off of these prototypes, rather than preserving them. 3 of the 4 PC Engine games he showcased were sold here. "Popils", prior to Aug. 2017; "Peter Pack Rat" seemingly in early 2022 (or late 2021); "Off The Wall" some time betwixt Apr. 2025 and now. The very latter isn't too big-a-deal since it's already dumped.

That's all according to the archived pages. So, as long as whoever purchased these prototypes doesn't dump them, I think it's safe to say these ROMs are gone. "Marble Madness" is still remaining up for grabs and hopefully the right people cop it, and release it to the public. I, initially was just interested in "Peter Pack Rat" & "Marble Madness", however, I think no matter the game, preservation is important. It would've be very cool, if these were not only dumped/restored, but maybe even completed.

I believe someone skilled enough with programming assembly could make it work. It's not like these are absolutely complete, though "Popils" is supposedly nearly finished. I'd say one good thing is, that in the "savejapan" site, there are full quality screenshots, which is much preferred over the LQ videos on YT (not like YT vids are w/o compression). I believe the palette is in composite VCE mode. Evident with the grayish "black" and none of the 512 possible colors being in 9-bit/8-level RGB. On one hand, we won't have all the sprite data, just from the provided screenshots. On the other hand, it seems like the graphics were just ripped from arcade versions, well, besides "Popils" (though, as an early PCE game, the graphics are rather simple anyway).

As for sound, I, for one, can't tell you which exact waveforms are being used, though, they shouldn't be much different from contemporary games for the system. The OST & SFX at least don't sound too unique. That said, another thing is the sampling of the arcade games, which I assume would be fairly easy to implement. Then you have the assembly and gameplay. Luckily, despite the different architecture between the arcade games and PCE games, they still both utilize a 6502 related chip. So hopefully, a conversion shouldn't be too difficult. As for "Popils", we can reference the FC prototype and full GG version.

Speaking of the Game Gear, there is also a prototype of "Off the Wall" on the Game Gear, and the ROM was dumped. Although, I've not seen Jun's name mentioned with this port, he does acknowledge it in his "Off The Wall" page on "savejapan". I know this was a long ass tangent, but I didn't see many typing or talking about it, and I thought it should be discussed. It really sucks some of these prototypes may not see the light of day, but hopefully, we could receive some accurate remakes in the future.

Edit: As some bonus DLC to this post, since this is developed by Atari Games. There's also a laserdisc prototype for Road Runner on the arcade. Idk if this'll ever get dumped, but I'm just throwing this out there, because I might as well.

[ORIGINAL] Outkast - Skew It On The Bar-B (8 bit Remix)