After becoming a tremendous success on platforms like the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga, EA and Bullfrog Productions' legendary God Sim Populous was ported to all manner of machines.
However, it surprisingly never ended up getting a retail version for the Nintendo Entertainment System — one of the leading home systems at the time — with publishers seemingly skipping over the popular Nintendo console.
It appears though that, at one point, an NES version was actually being considered for the classic machine, with Games That Weren't recently recovering a prototype that can now be played on the latest MESEN emulator, and also Nestopia.
According to GTW's founder Frank Gasking, 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 remarkably managed to recover a full prototype (thanks to the advice of Martin Pugh and Paul Hughes).
As Gasking notes, this version of the game was in development in 1992 and came about after the publisher Imagineer tasked the studio Enigma Variations (which was also behind the recently uncovered Sensible Soccer NES port) with porting the strategy title over to the 8-bit system. But, before it could be released, Imagineer put a stop to the development, believing the NES to be past its prime.
Gasking wrote about its cancellation:
"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."
According to Gasking, "the conversion looks pretty solid", but lacks a little in the colour for the main map. He reports, however, that "it all works and plays very well."
You can download the game here. More footage of the cancelled game can be seen in the YouTube video below:
[source gamesthatwerent.com, via bsky.app]
Comments 6
13 year old me rented the SNES version shortly after console launch and I fell in love with the title screen music. It's really cool hearing the NES version here. Worth it for that alone IMO!
This is wild.
The NES was such a forward-thinking console. The kinds of games this thing was playing at the end of its run would have been utterly unthinkable based on its initial "black box" launch.
I don't know exactly what mapper chips this cart would have been packing, but in an era of "pro" consoles, it's eye-opening to think back on a time when software was hardware, and that you could literally upgrade your console by just buying a different game.
Not surprising it was in development but I would imagine it would have came out so close to the release of the SNES version and much like Sim City that also got cancelled when it was close to completion.
The Master System version is pretty close to the Amiga version though and there was even an early prototype for a C64 version that didn't seem to get past that stage.
Well, dangit, now I want to play Populous.
I always loved this game, right up until you became too big and you had all these castles illogically close to one another. That was the only downside to this game.
Everything leading up to that point was an amazing time!
Last week was Sensible Soccer, this week it's Populous... crazy.
Yeah 1992 would have been crazy late to release this. Wasn’t there already a snes/sfc version at least a year earlier?
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