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Active Enterprises is famous for their extremely bad game releases for both the Nintendo Entertainment System as well
as the Sega Megadrive (Genesis). But the company wasn't just some guy in a garage putting this together and then
that was it, no they even showed up at the Consumer Electronics Show back in 1994, with a quite nice stand showing off
their titles.
A few years ago I found the homepage for the company who designed and built Active's booth. It was made of wood and
had a few small office/meeting rooms on top of it, while games were displayed below. The maker of the booth said on
their site "It was very solid made. Not only for supporting the upper floor, but also because it is torn-down and
rebuilt several times a year in different cities".
It's unknown if Active Enterprises actually did use it again, as they kinda wanished totally afterwards, yeah they
went backrupt, not able to pay off the manufacturer of their games, and their latest invention, the sand-alone
game Cheetahmen 2 was never released, officially atleast, as the manufacturer years later cleaned up their warehouse
and found a couple of thousand Cheetahmen 2 cartridges, complete and ready to ship to retalers, though the Nintendo
Entertainment System was long dead at this time.
But a few retailers picked them up and they were sold at only US$10 in the beginning, however later going for US$50
and up to 200 as supplies were as good as gone.
Well just like a lot of other companies at shows such as CES, which has been replaced by the
Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) now though, Active Enterprices was handing out a ackage containing brochures
about their company and games. The box holding the papers was carrying the Action 52 box art and inside was a
business card listing, their Bahamas address, and ofcourse game specifications:
The planned Super Nintendo Action52, Cheetahmen 3 (for Active's own videogame system compatible with the SNES,
MD and NES), Sports 5 game (SNES/MD) or even the Cheetahmen action dolls planned, never were released, neither
was the videogame system, called Action GameMaster by the way.
Who actually ran Active Enterprises is still unknown, or even who wrote their games. It seems that the company
realized they couldn't sell enough Action52 cartridges in the US, they decided to give Europe a try, so countries
such as England, Holland and Spain got their fair share of Action52's, mostly the Megadrive version though.
If you know anything else about the company, or found their CES booth at some scrap yard years ago, then I would like
to hear from you :)
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