This past weekend was the Midwest Gaming Classic, a retro gaming convention in Milwaukee. Since it is based around old games, the chance of news releasing from this event is understandably slim. But then neo-geo.com user NeoTurfMasta revealed that he had stumbled upon a mysterious Neo Geo ROM, and things got interesting.
This ROM is a prototype of a fighting game that nobody knows anything about. There’s no title screen, the UI is half done, and most of the twelve planned characters don’t even have sprites. But this game has a unique gimmick that ties it to a very American franchise. Each character can swap between a Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic alignment that changes their sprites and attacks. This is an obvious reference to Dungeons and Dragons, but who knows if this was supposed to be a licensed DnD fighting game or if these labels were stand-ins for future alignments that wouldn’t get the developers sued.
USGamer’s Jeremy Parish took video of the prototype in action, but you can try it for yourself in MAME and read more straight from NeoTurfMasta here on the neo-geo.com forums. My guess is that this was a pitch for a DnD game that got turned down, and that’s why it was seemingly tossed aside.