GB - TrailBlazers aka Death Track - Unreleased Cancled Argonaut GB Title

Ah Argonaut. A name that should be instantly recognizable to the long time gamer. A development team even Borman called wizzards. They truly pushed the limits of early 3D, and left behind a permanent mark on the gaming industry. Most known for Star Fox, they went above and beyond to make 3D a reality generations ago. However, what most people don't know is that they gave it 100% on a much less powerful platform, the GameBoy. This is the Argonaut game you've never seen before. TrailBlazers, aka Death Track for the original GameBoy.

This title was being published by Activision, perhaps as a port of their DOS combat racer under the same name, "Death Track". So why does the name "TrailBlazers" come up? For some reason this is what the game is called in the ROM header. There was also a magazine, Joypad issue #8, that had a very small article for this game with this title. If it ever came to release, who knows what title it would have had, but we can always speculate.

In playing the game, it feels somewhat early, and not ready for a release at this point. Gameplay wise it's solid and gets the job done. It's surprising that the steering doesn't feel vague, and it's not hard to keep good control over your vehicle. A couple issues they would have to tackle is having no audio at all, and the non functional password system. I haven't found a date for this so I'm unsure of just how early this is, but it was slated for a 1992 release.

As far as we know, this is the only copy surviving of this game. It's one that would have pushed the GameBoy to it's limits. Before this I didn't know the GameBoy was even able to render four basic vehicles and a track in wireframe 3D. It's nothing short of what Argonaut was capable of, and on a very low powered platform.

I hope you've enjoyed this read, and I hope you enjoy this 16 minute video fully documenting the first cup in the game, titled Vector Valley. If you'd like you can subscribe to my recently overhauled YouTube channel, called Proto & Knuckles where I'll be posting all of my videos from now on.

Thanks go to @Paulweeze71 , as I wouldn't have this cart without his help. Enjoy guys.

 

Can you post a rom?

 

This person is no longer in the community and sold the cart on ebay.

I did make a video on this though, if you want more info.

 

It reminds me of this..

 

I'm sorry to bother, but will you be able to release a rom?

 

As I explained in the video I'm not sure I should.. I know the owners I knew no longer have it, but would that not be a dick move to the current owner?

What are peoples thoughts on this? Should there be a certain amount of time before I just assume the new owner is gonna lock it away? Is it a bad idea? I'm torn on this one, any thoughts from the community would help.

 

In my opinion, you should not share it. I do have roms that I made for some people but I don't feel like I have the rights to share these roms, even if they don't have the games anymore. They probably sold their game stating it was Unreleased and not available online.

But this is just my opinion. Even if this Death track game looks very intresting, I don't think that you should share it

 

Thank you for the input, that's how I was thinking about it too.

 

Yes and that is why games like Dragon Hopper won't see the light of the day anytime soon.
I mean let some reasonable time pass is more than okay but from a preservation point of view it would be better to release prototypes at one point in time. Internet is the best preservation for that kind of stuff.

 

That is a sad thought..

What would you consider a reasonable amount of time to wait?

 

Personally I am not too interested in that specific rom as the game looks impressive but I don´t feel it´s fun playing... But maybe I am wrong???

In case of dumping the rom and making it available to the public, I feel you really should share it!
As some rom sites like emuparadise shut down recently, it might feel not to be that important for game preservation anymore. But I personally think it´s still the best way of preservation.

When you ask about some waiting time for release, it really depends.

If the game is for an old system and the developer is defunct, you should share the game with no waiting time. The new owner of the development cart has now rights to the code at all.

If the developer is still active, it is their property. Maybe you can try to get in contact with the original programmers? Otherwise I don´t know...

But that´s only my opinion!

 

It's fun enough, but the difficulty is too high. I suspect 2 player would be quite fun.

The rom is dumped and spread across multiple hard drives, and I'm sure there's two other people that have it too.
The problem is I don't know the new owner of the dev cart, so out of respect I'm waiting a while see if they want to come forward and release it. As for how long I'm waiting, that was my question as I still don't know.

I have been in contact with the developer, although we didn't specifically talk about a release. I don't think he'd have a problem with it though, he seemed happy that someone found it and was interested in it.

 

Yeah, like someone is going to release a new retail game for gameboy In 2018.. Get real, this game is not some indie game, it was canned, scrapped and abandoned. I don't think the dev even gives a rats ass about this game anymore. It's not like the company can't loose anything from dumping the rom. Your acting like the game was recently canned and its 1994. For God's sake, you even have a folder titled "gbc roms" on your everdrive, so it seems you haven't cared about how many games you pirated there. Only god knows how many games are in that folder, and those devs actually released those games commercially and your worrying about releasing a unreleased old Rom, that the dev won't even make the slightest bit of profit on in the generation of today.

 

The point is that the original owner sold it saying it was genuinely unreleased. If he releases it now then the new owner 'might' be a little upset. (protos do tend to devalue once they're dumped, a little bit) The answer is in the question really - you need to make a measured guess as to how long you should wait. I would give it at least another year or two and then people probably won't even notice - during that time the owner could even contact you and you could negotiate directly. Let them enjoy the videos for now - it's the best way not to upset anyone imho.

 

Be like Arnold, he read my post correctly

Thanks, I think that sounds like the best answer