Why Was the NES Version of Black Tiger Never Released?

[ColecoFan1981]

Why exactly was the NES version of Black Tiger never released? Did Nintendo of America not like this Capcom game at all because of certain content? Would the addition of this game exceed Nintendo's third-party release guidelines (5 per year)? Was the release cancelled also because of the 1988 DRAM and ROM chip shortage that witnessed only a limited release of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link in its first few years?

Should it ever have been released, it would've been part of Capcom's 1989 NES cartridge release schedule given the five titles listed below that made up the 1988 release schedule.

Capcom games released for the NES in 1988 were:
1943: The Battle of Midway
Legendary Wings
Mickey Mousecapade (released in Japan in 1987 by Hudson Soft as Mickey Mouse)
Bionic Commando
Gun.Smoke
(that is exactly the five that Nintendo would allow Capcom to release)


~Ben

[treismac]

While I have no idea why Black Tiger never made it to store shelves, it seems a shame to me as it would have been a nice addition to Capcom's library of NES releases- unless it flickered as badly as Commando did. Man. I'd love to see a proper re-release of that game on the NES that looks and play worth a damn. Oh well. It almost justifies owning a 7800 just to play a decent cartridge port of the game.

[homerhomer]

It's really too bad that it was never released. I have wondered the same thing for a long time.


This is a long shot, but have you looked at Street Fighter 2010 for the NES? It probably just me but it has seems to have some similarities to Black Tiger. Mostly the climbing on the pillars and some of the characters look suspect to me. I'm wouldn't doubt that if there was a game that didn't get released, Capcom would just rehashed the code and created something new, a la Street Fighter 2010.

[Satoshi_Matrix]

Nobody's really sure why it was cancelled, but it must have happened early in development, as no screenshots have ever been released, and no prototype ever found, much less dumped.

lostlevels has a small thread on the game. http://forums.lostlevels.org/viewtopic.php?t=261&sid=6194d462302babcb02f40de6cf3f8e27

This can be easily compared to other cancelled games I really wanted from that time period, including the NES version of SimCity. Unfortunately, the prototype of that is at Nintendo head office, so there's pretty much zero chance it will ever be dumped.

[davidbrit2]

Nobody's really sure why it was cancelled, but it must have happened early in development, as no screenshots have ever been released, and no prototype ever found, much less dumped.

lostlevels has a small thread on the game. http://forums.lostlevels.org/viewtopic.php?t=261&sid=6194d462302babcb02f40de6cf3f8e27

This can be easily compared to other cancelled games I really wanted from that time period, including the NES version of SimCity. Unfortunately, the prototype of that is at Nintendo head office, so there's pretty much zero chance it will ever be dumped.

I believe there are maybe two screenshots of Black Tiger floating around. At least one of them was in that original black Nintendo player's guide that came out in the '80s.

[TheRedEye]

I believe there are maybe two screenshots of Black Tiger floating around. At least one of them was in that original black Nintendo player's guide that came out in the '80s.

There are two screenshots, one that was published by the media at the time (I think just in Game Player's Nintendo Guide?), and one that Chris Bieniek scanned at video-game-ephemera.com from an old media kit.

Any cancellation reasons are pure theory because no one has ever been asked on record about the game. Something to keep in mind is that Capcom didn't release SEVERAL games for the NES during that era, not just Black Tiger! Street Fighter, Maikai Island, The Speed Rumbler, Titan Warrior, Sweet Home, Shadow Hawk, whatever "Lord of Lightning" and "Play Isle" were...

Something people don't tend to realize about the NES era is that a game being announced didn't necessarily mean that the company had real plans to finish it and ship it. Often they would announce titles at CES to gauge interest from buyers and from the media, and if it wasn't high enough, they wouldn't make the game, which leaves the concept of "cancellation" pretty murky. It's like Phil Sandhop said when asked about Earth Bound...the game was never CANCELLED, they just never released it.

[ColecoFan1981]

There was another game that ran on the Commando hardware that never saw a release for the NES: Hyper Dyne Side Arms (1986). This Capcom effort is a horizontal (and vertical)-scrolling sh'm'up game in the style of such early Konami titles as Scramble, Super Cobra and Gradius.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjFY0QQ8EKE

~Ben

[ccovell]

...in the style of such early Konami titles as Scramble, Super Cobra and Gradius.

... that would make it a horizontal shooter then. Though your character in Sidearms faced horizontally, the game scrolled both horizontally and vertically, FYI.

Why was Mein Kampf never released on NES, as well? I wanna know!

[slobu]

A. Nintendo limited the amount of games companies could release in a year. Maybe other titles seemed more promising.

B. I always considered Black Tiger a sleeper hit. Capcom probably had more popular games to release (going back to point A)

[Tanooki]

It most likely was the limit as the game as I understand it is pretty fun (I've never touched it or forgot if I have it has been so long.) The thing is they just weren't as smart as Konami. You need to open up an added shell company with a fraud name to it you like Ultra Games, so you can double your output and profit potential. :D

[slobu]

A hobbyist developer that attempted a Sega Genesis port (http://devster.proboards.com/thread/749/little-black-tiger-update) moved on to create a similar game he hopes to have on Wii U:
http://www.moddb.com/games/insanitys-blade

So, in a way, this feels like a spiritual successor on a modern console!

[ColecoFan1981]

http://www.retrovideogamer.co.uk/index.php?topic=2273.0

According to the last post of the thread at the link above, it says the NES version was probably never released due to the apparent difficulty and the obvious lack of time it took to even program it for said console. I can't even imagine anyone at Nintendo of America ever having heard of it then.

~Ben

[ccovell]

http://www.retrovideogamer.co.uk/index.php?topic=2273.0According to the last post of the thread at the link above, it says the NES version was probably never released due to the apparent difficulty and the obvious lack of time it took to even program it for said console. I can't even imagine anyone at Nintendo of America ever having heard of it then.~Ben

No,

That quote refers specifically to "home micro ports", meaning home computers such as the C-64, Spectrum, and Amstrad.

No connection to the NES here at all, as US Gold had a contract with Capcom for home computer ports which were never programmed by Capcom, but in Europe by US Gold or their contractors. The quote 'various difficulties with the programming placement of the project' is likely a polite way of saying "the programmers we subcontracted were shit" as was indeed true for most arcade ports to home micros.

Let's stay in the realm of reality rather than quoting to suit fantasy, OK?

[TheRedEye]

My uncle works at playstation and he told me the reason black tiger didn't come out is because a parent complained that her child had nightmares after seeing the screenshot in videogames & computer entertainment

[Gentlegamer]

There was another game that ran on the Commando hardware that never saw a release for the NES: Hyper Dyne Side Arms (1986). This Capcom effort is a horizontal (and vertical)-scrolling sh'm'up game in the style of such early Konami titles as Scramble, Super Cobra and Gradius.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjFY0QQ8EKE

~Ben
NEC brought it out for TurboGrafx-16, published in NA by Radiance Software.

The closer comparisons are to Section Z and Forgotten Worlds.

[ApolloBoy]

Let's stay in the realm of reality rather than quoting to suit fantasy, OK?
You're asking a bit much of him I think.

[SparTonberry]

My uncle works at playstation and he told me the reason black tiger didn't come out is because a parent complained that her child had nightmares after seeing the screenshot in videogames & computer entertainment

Good call. :D

[Ozzy_98]

I always wondered if it had anything to do with the name. Nintendo was a wuss, and it sounds a lot like black Panthers. But renaming games when they came stateside is nothing new (What's this "fighting street" game with some red head named ryu?)