Action 52 And Cheetahmen

[GLP]

Mark at Video Game Museum has written a superb set of articles with tons of pictures/screenshots/history about the elusive/mysterious/strange/awful ACTION 52 and CHEETAHMEN games

Here's a link:www.videogamemuseum.com
In the new article today, he links to his other two recent, detailed stories.

WORTH the read

[nensondubois]

I wonder what else was plagarized? So far we have the music, and now the menu. This is very interesting.

[TRM]

I wonder what else was plagarized? So far we have the music, and now the menu. This is very interesting.

Well we don't know that the menu was plagarized for certain though, that was just the article writer's opinion on the matter.

[Callin]

Well we don't know that the menu was plagarized for certain though, that was just the article writer's opinion on the matter.

The pirate and Action 52 prototype have identical backgrounds for all three menus, and both have game #5 selected as the default.

[TRM]

The pirate and Action 52 prototype have identical backgrounds for all three menus, and both have game #5 selected as the default.

Hehe, I know. It still doesn't mean that Active plagarized the pirates though, as dramatic and fun as it is to think that.

A long time ago I had spoken with someone connected with Active Enterprises for about ten minutes on the phone. Unfortunately, they did not have all afternoon to talk, and after ten minutes, the conversation ended. I tried to establish another communication but it never happened. During our brief conversation, however, I was told that Active Enterprises had designed the menu for American Video Entertainment's "Maxi 15" cartridge. I know nothing about coding, so this could have been some falsity being spoken in the name of pride, but it does not seem too unreasonable to me that Active could have made a menu, sold it out to pirate outfits, modified it for their own release, and then changed it even more for the Maxi cart.

[Zoe F]

Active definitely didn't write the menu for Maxi 15. The game's code (I'm not sure if it can be made to display during the actual game) credits the entirety of the menu to Odyssey Software. Odyssey had developed a number of games for Color Dreams and AVE, and three of those games made it to Maxi 15.

[TRM]

Okay, well thanks for clearing that up then.

[Ryaan1234]

Wait until we find out all 52 games are unfinished games stolen from Color Dreams

[TRM]

Haha, I just hope that the Cheetahmen action figures are recovered.

[ReTrO-pLaYeR]

It's fun to think that Active Enterprises was in fact so lazy that they couldn't even devise their own original menu screen. Every other factor of the cart seems cheaply and hastily prepared- so it would make sense to think that they'd try and speed up the process of creating the game by robbing the menu slides from the pirated cartridges out there. It would also explain why Active was a bit more secretive by only selling the game in catalog orders on magazines- they were afraid of being noticed by pirate developers who could assume the menus were stolen from their games. Not that it would make a big deal- I'm certain these same developers were afraid of commiting the even larger crime of copying entire games and selling them on a multicart.

The prototype Cheetahmen sounds very interesting. Hope they can pass level 1 so we can find out more about it. Somebody needs to upload this to Unseen64 and other beta/proto preservation sites.

[ReTrO-pLaYeR]

Haha, I just hope that the Cheetahmen action figures are recovered.

And what of the Active Handheld device- which was said to be about the size of an Atari Lynx? It was also supposed to be compatible with Nintendo and Sega carts, but knowing Active I doubt they had the intelligence to implement that feature. I doubt any of them are even in existence, since all we have are a few photos of Active's booth at gaming conventions and some propaganda promoting the handheld.