EA and Bullfrog Productions’ legendary God Sim Populous was a hit game and received versions for all manner of platforms, but one it didn’t touch was the NES, which was one of the leading platforms at the time. That is not to say it was not planned though, as Games That Weren’t recently recovered a prototype of an NES version of the game that can now be played on the latest MESEN emulator, and also Nestopia.
GTW’s founder Frank Gasking revealed that he initially came across a backup of the game earlier this year, after being entrusted by Enigma Variations CEO Mark Greenshields and producer Darren Melbourne with recovering data from a bunch of development disks and managed to recover a full prototype. Gasking noted,that this version of the game was in development in 1992 and came about after the publisher Imagineer tasked the studio Enigma Variations with porting the strategy title over to the 8-bit system. It was stopped before it could be released though, because Imagineer believed the NES to be past its prime.
“Mark Greenshields tells us that the client just decided not to proceed with publishing the title. Darren Melbourne (who was a producer for the game), informs us that Imagineer decided that the NES was probably past its prime and they wouldn’t achieve the necessary sales. Darren was pretty upset because they had put a lot of time and effort into creating the game.”
Gasking, also noted that “the conversion looks pretty solid”, but lacks a little in the colour for the main map. He did ass, however, that “it all works and plays very well.”
Those interested can download the game here.
