Was scrawling through the SEGA Video Magazine VHS tapes after it popped up on the 'Other Knowledge' post for stuff on Sonic The Hedgeblog, and spotted this: Here the boss ‘Bearenger’ has a completely different design, more like Disney's Peg-leg Pete. Was this originally a Mickey Mouse game? It certainly makes ‘Witchcart’ make more sense. Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJmv0yhWi2c
Skypatrol has always been a bit of an oddball in the serious so this doesn't actually seem too far-fetched. It does however use many resources from Sonic the Hedgehog 2, such as the Whisp Badniks and zones such as Emerald Hill, and Casino Night.
Problem is, Mickey can't fly. It's not outside the realms of possibility that they were originally recycling art from other games though.
He could just use a flying machine like the boss characters, including "Pete" in the video. In fact, that would explain why they gave flying machines to all bosses, rather than granting them flying capabilities of their own: originally, all major characters were going to be on flying machines, player character and bosses alike.
I mean one of Mickey's first cartoons was Plane Crazy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCZPzHg0h80 Also if you look at a lot of the Mickey Mouse games of the era, enemies / bosses are usually a mixture of Pegleg Pete, Big Bad Wolf, and a Witch like Mizrabel. That basically makes Bearanger, Falke the Wolf and Witchcart those 3 characters. Don't know what Carrot girl would have been though.
I'd always suspected that Tails' Skypatrol was a re-skin of a game intended for another IP, in no small part because of the off-brand looking bosses. But this means that Bearenger was the end result after "Sonic-ing it up". Weird! Sega released a bunch of Mickey/Donald games in the early '90s. Excluding Sega Pico titles, the last entry in the series was Legend of Illusion on Game Gear, which released 13 January 1995. Tails' Skypatrol was released 28 April 1995. It certainly seems possible that Skypatrol began life as a Disney title but was reworked as they were about to lose the licence.
It's always a possibility. Another possibility is perhaps it was changed to avoid any legal action. It reminds me of the first boss in Alex Kidd in Shinobi World who was named Mari-Oh. The final product changed both the name and likeliness, possibly to avoid any legal wrangling. While typing this it also occurred to me that the Witch boss from Skypatrol reminded me a little of Mizrabel. The same Mizrabel who was the main villain in the Castle of Illusion game starring Mickey Mouse (who in turn bears resemblance to the disguised queen from Snow White)
Sorry in advance if this is old, redundant info, but I don't believe this was brought up before. I came across this "talk" page for the game developer Biox on the Game Developers Research Institute wiki. http://gdri.smspower.org/wiki/index.php/Talk:Biox It more or less confirms that it was indeed a Mickey Mouse title before Sega snatched it up. Further, it was not originally intended for the Game Gear but an unnamed canceled system with similar specs to the GG. Apparently the game was set to later be published for the Nintendo Game Boy as Boon Boon Kabun with redrawn assets, but that was canceled. The page also contains development notes on the Game Gear version of Ristar.
Hey, I was just looking at this thread the other day! Good find, I don't think that has been brought up before! Fascinating game history!
That's new information around these parts, what a great find! Funny how they acknowledge the enemies still have the same design sensibilities as the original IP. They never did quite fit the Sonic mold stylistically.
That's some really interesting behind the scenes information, I certainly didn't know of it! And there's even information on Ristar! So that's why they cut those levels from Western Game Gear releases. "American kids won't understand walking across clouds and rainbows"? Wow, really, SoA?
Fascinating! So it was for some.. other black and white system? Also the twitter links provide an image of the unreleased BOON BOON Kaboon. Yup, that's Tails Skypatrol alright.
Very interesting - good to see confirmation that Tails' SkyPatrol was a repurposed version of another game, albeit a specifically-made port of an otherwise unreleased title. For an entirely unreleased system, no less! = O
I can't help but wonder if the contractual reason Boon Boon Kabun was canceled was due to Sega finally securing the entire rights to Tails' Skypatrol. It could explain why, a), the game never saw an actual GG hardware release outside Japan, and, b), why Sega has seen fit to republish TSP within compilations several times hence. (Royalties may also explain why Yoshi's Cookie has been delisted from Nintendo's digital services.) As for what the mystery system was, I haven't got much clue. My first guess would be Epoch, who were in the handheld market with their Game Pocket Computer (aka, GamePokekon) which predates even Nintendo's Game Boy, but not nearly to the same level of success. My second is it was Bandai's system that they axed in favor of Gunpei Yokoi's WonderSwan. It could've been any of the entertainment industry's giants, really; the Game Boy pie was danged huge.
It seems to me that the Wonderswan started to become a thing in 1996 (taking until 1999 until it was released). Given the timing of Tails' Skypatrol's launch in April 1995, development for this so-called "X" system would have stopped during 1994 at the latest. I'm not sure the numbers add up for it to be Bandai. But I don't know the company too well - it might be an entirely different scrapped system, as opposed to a proto-Wonderswan.
