Former spokesman and editor for Nintendo Power magazine, Howard Phillips, revealed some startling news recently about the SNES: there are still prototype games floating around out there such as Reactor and Mer Wars. He posted photos of the games to his Facebook page so old-school and new-school gamers alike could witness two games they'll never be able to play on the SNES.
Sidequesting managed to spot the post over on Phillips' Facebook page. It features a few screenshots of the game's title screenshots and prototype gameplay. According to Phillips, Mer Wars and Reactor never quite made it to the distribution phases but obviously they look somewhat playable in the screenshots, which you can view below.
That Mer Wars looks awesome, like some kind of warrior mer-man? Yeah, we definitely don't get enough games where you go around playing what looks like a manta-ray shooting down evil things in an underwater subculture of good versus evil mer-mans. In fact, I think mer-mans are just underrated in today's gaming culture. Hopefully EA can do right by gamers and make a Mer-Man: Call of the Sea one day and revitalize both their image and sales figures.
Reactor, from Argonaut Software, looks kind of lame. Maybe the art-style is distracting me from recognizing some other awesome aspect, but based on the HUD and layout it kind of seems like a typical isometric shooter like Search & Rescue or Crusader, but uglier.
It may be two decades too late, but information about potential cartridge games that just never came to be are always interesting.
You can check out some more of the fascinating, nostalgia-ridden images over at Howard Phillips' Facebook Page.
