The long lost Master System and Game Gear versions of Lemmings 2: The Tribes, developed by the same studio (Spidersoft) who did the Game Boy version, have been released today in the SMS Power community by courtesy of the main programmer, Matt Taylor. http://www.smspower.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=14722 Definitely a nice addition for both consoles.
I've played the Game Gear Version some minutes ago. It makes so much fun. It's a great game. Why didn't they release it way back in the 90's?
They are both fantastic conversions. I was a bit concerned about 8 way scrolling issues and how the fan control would work with just 2 buttons and a D-Pad, but they did a great job on this.
I find it so bizarre that Psygnosis pulled two complete ports so late in the game. Game Gear I can kind of understand, but Master System was still a major platform in Brazil up to that point, so it seems strange that it went completely unreleased everywhere.
AFAIK Psygnosis was more concerned with the European market, especially regarding Lemmings which was always very big in Europe compared to other markets. These two shelved versions were probably aimed to be released exclusively in Europe (the released Game Boy version, which shared development with the Sega 8-bit versions, was published only in Europe) and what Matt Taylor said about the high cost of cartridge production runs was definitely the cause of Psygnosis dismissing two consoles with declining sales in Europe (this was 1994 already, the European Master System support started to diminish that year and the European Game Gear didn't last much longer). If Psygnosis would have considered these 8-bit versions for some other major market like North America, I'm pretty certain the Game Gear version would have been released there at least. There were a lot of 1994 and 1995 Game Gear releases in North America which didn't make their way to Europe, as the console always did it better in the North American markets (the opposite tendency to the Master System).
