[TheRedEye]

Just when I thought we'd scraped old Nintendo Power issues for any unreleased game info, I found something that managed to get overlooked all these years.

In the Pak Watch section of the May/June 1990 issue (covering announcements from Summer CES, apparently), a talking hamburger mentions a whole lot of stuff coming from Mediagenic, which was at the time the parent company of Activision.

It mentions an "outer-space racing game" (Galaxy 5000), a "space exploration 'light rpg'" (Adventures of Rad Gravity), an "advanced flight simulator with cinema scenes" (1992's Ultimate Air Combat?) and "a NES translation of a Japanese action classic, Winchester."

Any idea what this is? The only Japanese game I can find with "Winchester" in the title is this adventure game from East Cube (the second game down, "白夜物語 －ウインチェスター家の末裔－"), but I doubt that's it...

[ICEknight]

Might be a very long shot, but perhaps they mistook it for, or could have been a localised title for Chester Field?

[TheRedEye]

Considering they'd already covered Chester Field in the Fun Club News about two years earlier, I doubt it.

The next time we see an Activision action game it's Sword Master, previewed in the February 1991 issue. This is actually my most likely candidate: either Sword Master is based on something I'm not familiar with, or there was some kind of communication issue with the original preview.

[KingMike]

Sword Master couldn't have been much of a "Japanese action classic" when it could've only been out in Japan a month at most by press time. (assuming the February 1991 issue actually came out in February, not like more recent magazine publication cycles. :P )

[kap]

I would sort of expect something named Winchester to be about or have something to with a gun, a winchester was a fairly famous gun in the old west.

Or it could've just been some generic guy's name and have nothing to do with guns, I don't know.

[Tongueman]

Sword Master's prequel, Castle of Dragon, was released in 1990. Maybe that's what pushed its sequel's US release back to 1992...

[eSPy]

not much new info, but here are a few links
http://www.nintendoage.com/index.cfm?FuseAction=Element.View&egID=2632&lgID=1155&sID=1155


also listed on the big list here, but only that it was unreleased and would have been by Mediagenic http://www.nationalgamedepot.zoomshare.com/1.html

[jordiway73]

Yeah I doubt that they would get the two games confused I would guess it would be like gun smoke.

[Brain Breaker]

Sword Master's original title during development was actually "Darksider".

It is interesting to note that the first game on that link you provided, "Ouji Binbin Monogatari", was actually announced for release on the Famicom, but never appeared. The adventure game, "Byakuya Monogatari" was not generally well received. However, it is conceivable that East Cube did think of porting it to the Famicom, as these sorts of menu-driven adventure games (often of the murder mystery variety) were at their peak of popularity at that time (circa '88/'89) as the Famicom market reached its zenith and niche genres like this were able to find their widest audience. Certainly not an "action classic" by any means, though! Anyway, the only game East Cube ever actually managed to get out on the system was the very obscure 1987 FDS shoot-em-up "Reflect World".

Thinking about this a bit further, one of the the only classic game titles that could sound a little like "Winchester" (if you botched the translation horribly) might be Thexder. By 1990, the original Japanese version was 5 years old and was definitely considered an "action classic" at that point. Sierra had licensed it from Game Arts and ported it to many different US computer platforms in '87/'88, but it doesn't seem Square (or any of the companies they licensed much of their Famicom library to) had ever shown any interest in bringing over the old Famicom port. Strangely though, the Amiga version was actually licensed to none other than Activision for release in the UK market.

So, make of that what you will, but most likely this is just something that was lost in translation.

[TheRedEye]

Oh, good, you're posting here now. You know stuff.