If you cast your mind back to the '90s, fighting games were all the rage thanks to the success of Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat.
While those two franchises have endured over the decades since, history is littered with also-rans which have been largely forgotten by the mainstream – and Atari's Pit Fighter certainly falls into that category.
Like Mortal Kombat, Pit Fighter employed digitised actors, giving it a realistic look – in its arcade form, at least.
The home ports were somewhat hamstrung by the fact that home consoles weren't quite as powerful as coin-op hardware at the time, but that didn't stop Tengen from working on a Genesis / Mega Drive sequel, which was supposed to launch in or around 1993 – but never did.
Developed by Polygames, Pit Fighter II was to be published by Tengen. The ROM was reconstructed from a selection of mystery ROMs that were unearthed and preserved by The Video Game History Foundation on December 17th, 2025.
The ROM fragments' last modification date is listed as April 13, 1993. The archive appeared to be corrupted, but it was later restored, allowing you to actually play the prototype.
Alongside Pit Fighter II, The VGHF also includes other unreleased discovered titles such as Xybots II (Genesis), Power Wing (Genesis), Spider-Man, Prime (Game Gear), The World of Sport: Golf (Game Gear), Wayne Gretzky and the NHLPA All-Stars (Jaguar) and Magical Puzzle Popils (NES).
These ROMs were dumped during a recent live-stream.