Years ago I was lucky to get in contact with Phil Mikkelson who used to work both for Color Dreams and American Video Entertainment. Through the years Phil let go of all of his NES prototypes and while my first
purchase from him, the final version of the unreleased game Cuestick was lost in the mail, or actually my package was stolen at the post office because they forgot to close a window at night.
Well a few years later I managed to get another batch of protos from Phil and while most of it wasn't anything interesting really, other than Robert Byrne's Pool Challenge - the original Cuestick title, one proto
for sure went under the radar and right down into a storage box.
From my American Video Entertainment research earlier on I had learned that American Video Entertainment had a game in the works called Dudes II, or Dudes with Attitude 2. This game as supposed to be included on the
Maxi30, a multicartridge with no less than 30 games on it. The Maxi30 however never happened, but a trimmed down version was released late in the American Video Entertainment lifespan, called Maxi15.
Dudes with Attitude was the work of Michael Crick and his daughter Cam Crick. It was released in 1990. Now we know that a sequel to Dudes with Attitude was released in 1992, called Trolls on Treasure Island, so
somewhere between 1990 and 1992 this Dudes 2 build was made.
A lot of graphics and such were shared between Dudes and Trolls, even the titlescreen music is the exact same. Well Dudes 2 is no exception as it's built off the Dudes 1 engine, and no new graphics were made at this
time, at least not for the titlescreen which is the exact same as Dudes with Attitude and that was what lead me to believe that this was nothing more than a final build of the first game and that Dude 2 maybe had been
hosted in the cartridge at some point in time, but now it probably was lost forever.
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| Dudes with Attitude |
Dudes II |
Trolls on Treasure Island |
The character select screen was once again the exact same as the one used in Dudes with Attitude, as well as the map screen. Now when the levels starts that's where the fun begins.
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| Dudes with Attitude |
Dudes II |
Trolls on Treasure Island |
As you can see Dudes II and Trolls feature the same levels, so I believe it's safe to say that Dudes II did indeed turn into Trolls on Treasure Island and that also goes well with what Michael Crick said in an interview
a long long time ago, but it also kinda states that Dudes II was never meant to be, it was going to become Trolls on Treasure Island right from the start.
Michael Crick;
I knew Richard slightly when I was at Microsoft so when I left Taito I contacted him and I told him a game I wanted to program -- and he said go for it. Then later I saw the Trolls craze emerging so I suggested we
revise it with new levels with Trolls as the players.
So while I thought was justa sample of Dudes with Attitude, it turned out to be a work in progress version of Trolls on Tresure Island featuring Dudes! kewl! :-)
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| Dudes with Attitude |
Dudes II |
Trolls on Treasure Island |
From level 2 however it gets a little weird, it seems that this second level became level 3 in Trolls and so on...
Now what puzzles me about the label on this proto is that it also says "Cheetahx-vf8l".... what's that about? Cheetahmen?
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