The NES was an important console and is credited as giving the gaming industry a new lease of life after it had crashed in 1983. While the NES had many overlooked releases amidst its high profile games like Super Mario Bros. it also had titles that never made it to launch. The team at The Video Game History Foundation has now uncovered and abandoned project by the developer Chris Oberth who passed away in 2012.
Oberth had programmed some hugely influential games including the likes of Anteater, Ardy the Aardvark, and Commodore 64. The majority of the programmer's work was released on the Apple II, but his work also included titles like NBA Live 2001 for the PlayStation. A family friend gave a collection of the backups and floppy disks that were owned by Oberth to The Video Game History Foundation and what was uncovered was an interesting game which is a cut above most unreleased NES games.
The team who were attempting to recover the files was left with nearly 40 floppy disks and amongst them was a label with “NINTENDO HOT ROD TAXI FINAL” on it. In an interview, the programmer revealed that they were commissioned to make a prototype of Days of Thunder for Mindscape, and this set the expectations for the search. When the team booted up the game, it seemed to be very much a driving demo and they concluded that the game was not finished version of a racing game spin-off from the film Days of Thunder. It turns out that this was merely an early venture into developing for the NES, but fortunately after plenty of routing around, the team managed to find a more substantial Days of Thunder game.
After experimenting with ways of extracting and emulating the files in a long process, the team managed to find corresponding files and put together the unreleased Days of Thunder game. The result is impressive as it is a game with different points of view which include first-person and an angle above the car as well as the ability to pit stop and allow players to change elements of the car. While some NES games never made it to global audiences, it seems unfortunate that this racer never made it to release anywhere.
Players can access the game through The Video Game History Foundation and many will be interested in seeing the work of the late Chris Oberth who made some landmark titles. There are rarities in the history of the NES, but this version of Days of Thunder is a gem that was found through considerable effort.