Atari 7800 Rescue on Fractalus! Prototype Cart

[Video 61]

This is a review of a "Rescue on Fractalus" Prototype cartridge for Atari 7800 ProSystem. Rescue on Fractalus was developed for the Atari 7800 by Lucasfilm Games and was never released. I made this video with my friend Steve who filmed it and helped with production. Steve is a member here in the Atari.io Forums under the name BlackCatz40.

 

The game looks like its searching for ram or a video chip. The game allows you fly around left, right, up, and down. There is very smooth animation and the cockpit is very well detailed. This would have been a very good looking game on the 7800 had it been released. What were they thinking? When you press the fire buttons you don't get any action and you don't see anyone to rescue or to shoot at but it's possible it's a complete game.

 

This isn't a very long movie, I just wanted to show you what Rescue on Fractalus might have looked like and how it would play if it had been release on the Atari 7800. Steve also demonstrates the Video 61 Grip-Stick joystick that is 100% 7800 compatible. Steve and I made this video special for Atari.io:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKS-qZvqxug

[RickR]

Looks like they  had something special going on that one.  Shame it was never finished.

[Clint Thompson]

Fascinating, never knew this existed for the 7800 in any form. Have you messed around with the difficulty switches before after and during playing around with this proto to see if they do anything?

[Yo-Yo]

It's neat to see an original prototype running on real hardware. I wonder if it's the same Rev. as the other rom dumps out there of this game.

[Atari 5200 Guy]

As much as I have placed the 7800 on the back burner of Atari consoles, mainly due to how limited I felt the system was because of being backwards compatible with the 2600, I have learned that the system is really the most expandable gaming console Atari ever released.  For an 8-bit system it's really amazing just how much it can be expanded on with the cartridge port alone.  With that said it is possible that Rescue is looking for a proprietary processor that would have been placed on the cart board that was also a prototype and never came to be.  Knowing the relationship between Lucas and Atari at the time it is also possible that what it is looking for can be found on a Ball Blazer cart.  It might have been designed to work with a POKEY chip as well.  Lucas was the only 7800 developer to put a POKEY chip on their cart boards so it might be looking for that, too.  Just a thought.