Dark Empire- Unreleased GBA Game

Hey there a few weeks ago I came across a very interesting lot on eBay, appears to be a unreleased game called Dark Empire, at the time Id id a quick search and found nothing about the game. I managed to snag the screenshots from the lot, they appear to be taken from a digital camera, and crop them a bit so they are must more viewable.

Overview:
Dark Empire is an unreleased GBA title. The game itself is only roughly 30%. The company who developed the game is supposedly Marvelous Entertainment. All of the text ingame is Japanese. There are 3 major scenes in this demo. A World Map, a castle area and a village.

Screenshots:

The Cart itself, looks like a GBC Cartridge with some sort of extension, maybe prototype development hardware? the label has "GBAKOF1012" Printed on the front. Along with a load of Japanese Text.


This is the Castle Area as you can see it's in 3D, two Characters are standing outside the Castle Gate (The black doorway) on some blue land. There is some debug text in the top right corner, the text below seems to be showing the frame rate, not too sure about the top bit of text.


Not too sure what's going on in the Screenshot, looks like the score tally you get after winning battles in an RPG game. So I'm guessing it's adding up the Experience total and money. Also, is that Mel Gibson!? I'm calling place holder picture.


Seems to me like a quick conversation with the party and more place holder pictures, the guy in the top left is from the film The Mummy, I think and the guy below is the Sheriff of Nottingham I believe from the Robin Hood Movie. Not sure about the other two.

EDIT: Oh and here is a .rar file of the uncropped pictures.


Looks interesting, shame I didn't have the money to buy it.

 

It's what the early GBA flash carts looked like. By now (almost 10 years old) they are not very reliable, so if the game was dumped from that cart it is not unlikely there would be some corrupt parts.

I reckon they were stopped being used back in 2001-2003 or so (as soon as newer models became available), so this game is most likely from back then.

Shiggsy

 

Ah thanks for the info.

 

I guess it would've been easier to just link to the auction: http://cgi.ebay.com.my/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=280369987660

$65 is quite a good price, especially since it contained a nice beta.

Shiggsy

 

I thought so. Should arrive this week, post strike aside.

Happy to get it dumped.

 

Ah wow, so you brought it, nice.

I'm glad you're dumping it, I was having a horrible image of it been brought and left for bit rot.

 

Hehe, turned from the dark err I mean Sega side have you. ^_^

 

Really? Sounds like I have a few carts I need to dump o_Ô

 

That Mel Gibson placeholder is hilarious. I can't stop laughing.

 

wow, cant wait for the dump

Also, "borrowed" from Shiggsy's site:

 

Yes, the 1st gen GBA flash carts are notoriously unreliable. I have had several of them stop working Often though, it is still possible to dump the contents but it's not possible to write any new stuff to the cartridge...the transfer software will just freeze.

(checks my own website to see when the newer flash carts became available...)

Ah, the newer flash carts were available in 2001 already, and I think most companies started to change to the newer carts straight away. The old ones were too bulky to actually use anyway!

But yes...I would dump your cartridges just to be safe.

Shiggsy

 

yup, not to far from when you last updated your site :lol:

Thanks for the info

 

How smooth is the 3D? Probably about as smooth as 3D on the SNES. Is it action RPG? Or turn based?

 

Any news about the game? Maybe some new screenshots or even a video... that would be great to share. I am really interested in the game and I would love to see it in motion.