More Game Boy prototypes added to the Games That Weren’t archives, with a set of Tip Off ones for the Nintendo Game Boy. However, there are also an interesting set of early Game Boy Color versions that we have also included. More on that a bit later.
The Game Boy prototypes date from the 10th November 1992 to 22nd February 1994. There is a build that had a timestamp of 22-10-99, but we think this was just from a backup, the same as with another from 2021.
Within the builds are a Japanese and US build, with slightly different titles and credits. Overall, we don’t think there are many differences compared to the final retail releases, though they could be lacking final bug fixes and other fixes. If you spot anything, please get in touch.
What is particularly interesting though are the set of Game Boy Colour early conversion attempts dated from the 31st August 2000 to 2nd September 2000. These were created by Charles Doty, who was given the task of re-purposing the Tip Off codebase to create a new game for Datel called Hang Time Basketball which was eventually released.
These builds just show initial conversion work, getting the old code compiling and converting the tiles to a new format ready for supporting colour usage throughout. We’re not sure if Charles was the final developer of the Hang Time Basketball game, but we assume that he was. Because the builds are so close to Tip Off at this stage, we’ve kept everything together here.
With a huge thank you to Mark Greenshields for allowing us to preserve.
Downloads
Video
Gallery
Thanks and it was great.
Race Time —> Re-Volt
Fulltime Soccer —> Super Kick Off
Hang Time Basketball —> Tip Off
I do recall Neil Stanford (the Race Time coder) worked for Digital Creations Studios in 2000 for a Game Boy Color prototype.
As a bonus, I think the unreleased Road Runner by Mindscape for the NES is the same game as the unlicensed Road Runner by Tengen for NES since Beam Software, the converter of Road Runner for NES also ported 720 and RoadBlasters for the NES by Mindscape.
Thanks Duc Nguyen! Will be interesting to learn what Neil was coding, not seen anything in the archives just yet.
Ah that’s interesting about Road Runner too. I wasn’t aware of the unreleased Mindscape edition. It’s plausible that its the same game, though Beam did a lot of work for different publishers, so it could be co-incidence. Or perhaps Mindscape didn’t realise Tengen had the licence and Tengen just picked up the game Beam had developed. Will be interesting to learn more.