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1994 Trimark Interactive / Software Creations
As you’ll soon begin to discover, there are many times where games are fully completed, but strangely never allowed out of the doors. Moto-X was one such casualty that was completed and then trashed. Often you’d expect this to happen when a game is particularly poor (well, sometimes!), but there doesn’t seem to be too much wrong here…
Moto-X was developed for Nintendo by Software Creation’s Ste Ruddy (Bubble Bobble C64 fame) with a hand from the Pickford brothers over a period of 8 months. This was one of the first titles being developed by Ste Ruddy, after setting up the new Software Creations studio in America.
The game is best described as an update of Nintendo’s Excitebike on the NES and was actually the second incarnation of the game. An earlier version was canned back in 1992/93 which was to be a mix of Excitebike and Powerdrift (An interesting combination). Ste used some of the older game’s routines to create a much-improved title, and with the gameplay more focused.
The game, although playable, lacked depth according to Ste Ruddy. The game had three skill levels, each of which had five different tracks and a bonus level to get through. The lack of depth was down to the distinct lack variety between the levels. For a machine kicking out titles such as Mario Kart and Donkey Kong Country, Moto-X was distinctively lacking. However things were improved with some superb accompanying heavy metal tunes by audio masters Tim and Geoff Follin.
So with a fully complete game and full approval by Nintendo, the game was ready to go; but the publishers weren’t so keen. Trimark Interactive suddenly caught cold feet in the console games market, deciding that ‘Interactive Movie games’ were the future. Their interest wandered away from consoles and the game’s release was cancelled as a result. Software Creations were fully paid , so the developers didn’t miss out; but sadly gamers did.
Ste Ruddy still has the game on a prototype cartridge, but cannot release it due to legal ties with Nintendo. However you can check out some exclusive video of the game on this month’s coverdisc (thanks to Ste) to see what you are all missing, and it seems to be a lot sadly…