When we talk about obscure or “lost” games, we normally need to have known about them in the first place to know they were missing. It’s not often we see a case like this, where a collector buying a cartridge off a former Nintendo employee is the first time anyone has ever heard of a game.
YouTuber Stephan Reese, aka Archon 1981, has got hold of a copy of a wrestling game that was made during a very strange point in the sport’s history.
It’s called UWC, which stands for Universal Wrestling Corporation, the placeholder name that was used by WCW (World Championship Wrestling) during its purchase by Ted Turner in 1988.
UWC was developed by the now-closed Japanese studio SETA, and is dated 1989 on the game’s title screen. Its roster of wrestlers includes Ric Flair, the Road Warriors and Sting, and it looks in pretty good shape for a game that was never even announced.
Reese says he bought it off a former Nintendo employee who was given the game for testing simply because he was a wrestling fan, and … that’s where it’s been for 30 years.
If you’re interested in playing the game, Reese says he’s going to dump the ROM online soon so that people can mess around with it.
Comments
5 responses to “Unknown NES Game Found After 30 Years”
I wonder where copyright would be on something like this…
Sometimes places have all their assets bought cheap when they go belly up. Since this was never announced, if their assets or IP were bought, this was probably never listed, so I’d say no one officially owns it now.
Yeah I don’t think anyones gonna come knocking on the door asking for it back, but with the UWC, Ric Flair, Sting, etc references, there would be residual copyright that might go beyond the project and gifted asset.
Was Nintendo even legally allowed to gift it in the first place? What I’m getting at is the game was clearly being made for a third party, who might feel like protecting their interests, even now.
So what happens if this ROM hits the internet and gets played on an emulator? Would people be breaking copyright laws? Something doesn’t have to be released to be protected, the creation itself entitles it to those protections and this is clearly in a playable state. Again, I think they’re redundant questions that wont get action, just more asking out of curiosity.
That’s true, there are probably licensing issues with the wrestler’s likeness. It was probably never all worked out if the game was never released.
Nintendo didn’t gift it. An (ex?)employee happened to have it and gave it away. It wasn’t official, just describing why he had it.
Absolute hero.