An unreleased Days of Thunder NES game has been uncovered. Based on the 1990’s Tom Cruise movie of the same name, the never-before-seen Days of Thunder NES title was lost in its developer’s archives for decades before the folks at Video Game History Foundation brought it back to life. Head below for all the details and to see the game in action.
Unreleased Days of Thunder NES game
The game in question was created by the late Chris Oberth but was canceled for unknown reasons and effectively shelved. The folks over at Video Game History Foundation acquired some of Oberth’s floppy disks and old computers from his family, where they found a single disk containing a game called Nintendo Hot Rad Taxi Final. However, the VGHF’s Frank Cifaldi also found a 21 floppy disk hard drive backup, created across multiple years, containing the long-lost Days of Thunder NES game.
Recovering the game was no small feat, either. Engineer Rich Whitehouse was tasked with recovering and reassembling the data to see if the game was still intact somewhere in there. According to reports, it took Whitehouse a couple of weeks and an old-school, barely running DOS program to recover and digitize the data, plus a few extra days to actually assemble the game itself. The process also apparently required a volunteer running ancient hardware to recover everything, and even then, missing data, including a binary file had to be hunted down to actually get the thing back together again.
While the game isn’t entirely recovered, we can see it action, and it is playable to a certain degree. You can qualify and race and even see what appears to be Tom Cruise holding up the winner’s trophy. With permission from Oberth’s family, the VGHF has uploaded a video (seen above) of the game in action and will publish the original Days of Thunder NES game source code on GitHub to let the world get their hands on it.
Electronicsforward’ Take:
It is always interesting to see these obscure or unreleased games from back in the day resurface so many years later, especially with what appears to be a licensed NES game. While it is amazing to be able to see this thing working and even play it at some point, it’s even better knowing that a physical NES cartridge release is in the works with the proceeds going to Oberth’s family.
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