It is not all that often that we get news that a Sega Saturn prototype has surfaced. Armed, an unreleased game by Point of View who was developing it for Interplay, is a 2D side scrolling action game. Everything seems to feature pre-rendered graphics (you either love the style or hate it), some parts are missing music and there are no cut scenes in this build. This title was originally in development during the mid-1990’s with a possible release date set mid to late 90’s. According to the eBay listing, this build of Armed is fully playable. The Buy It Now price was set at $2,500 plus $20 shipping, it has since sold and is presumably on the way to its new owner. There is good news for those wanting to play this unreleased Saturn game, after the jump of course.

According to the Assembler Games forums (starting on October 5^th, 2017), the path of ownership for Armed, aka Aftermath, goes something like this:

A gentleman known as Don Russell purchased a Sega Saturn with 50 to 100 games off Craigslist at an undefined point in the past. According to Assembler Games forums member, A Murder of Crows, one of the titles included in this collection, among other unreleased/prototype Sega Saturn games, was Armed (Aftermath).

Mr. Russell traded Armed and another game called Bedlam to a person named Drew Kerns, residing in Oregon, for Delisoba and Eyeful Home. An agreement was reached regarding dumping the two unreleased Saturn games prior to sending them to their new home.

Mr. Russell, presumably the person that listed Armed on eBay (location is said to have been Sherwood Oregon), has allowed a ROM dump of Armed to be made early in October of this year. Heading over to the Assembler Forums you can grab a copy of the Armed ROM file for free, it is hosted on the Mega file sharing network. Please respect the original uploader and refer readers to the Assembler Games forums for the link rather than sharing just the link as there is a bit of history worth knowing on this one.

Update:

Special thanks to Ke Kona of the Sega Saturn Shiro podcast where you can listen to the discussion behind the release of Armed (Aftermath). Over on our Facebook page, Mr. Kona was cool enough to let us in on what the other unreleased games were in that Craigslist sale:

Heart of Darkness
Bedlam
Jewels of the Oracle (US)
Prize Fighter (Disc 1)
Crime Patrol

Also in that discussion was a bit of information on Prize Fighter. Unfortunately, it is not good news though, at least in the case of Prize Fighter as a large portion of the prototype disc is lost due to damage.

Source: Assembler Games forums, Retrocollect, eBay, and Twitter

Carl Williams

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