Proto:Action 52 (NES)

This page details one or more prototype versions of Action 52 (NES).

While a prototype of the NES Action 52 is known to exist, it is not currently fully available. What is available is two levels of a ROM that served as the original concept of game #52. The player had to complete the last level of all the other games to unlock this last game. (Interestingly, the Genesis version of Action 52 did implement a mode like this as its 52nd game.) However, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was all the rage, so the original idea was (partially) scrapped in favor of the big yellow feline trio to try and capitalize on this craze. What remained of this early concept in the final product of Cheetahmen was the intro cutscene featuring a gamer by the name "Action Gamemaster" getting pulled into the TV, and the enemies from the rest of the games appearing, among other things.

This portion of the prototype was sold as a standalone reproduction cartridge in 2011 under the title "Cheetahmen: The Creation". Only videos and reviews of the game in action (sorry for the pun) floated around the internet until it was finally dumped on November 27, 2023.

However, it appears to be, the actual prototype has a menu similar to another unlicensed multicart known as Supervision 52-in-1, which had the same number of games as this one. However, Greg Pabnich was queried about buying copies of Action 52, so Vince Perri gave him a prototype of the game.

In the thread, the cartridge was supposed to have a blue motherboard, another one with a black motherboard

Download Cheetahmen: The Creation File: Cheetahmen-_The_Creation.zip (37 KB) (info)

Unknown Game

Download Unknown Action 52 Game (hacked, incorrect CHR) File: Unknown prototype action 52 game (incorrect chr).zip (40 KB) (info)

The first 32k of the PRG, inexplicably, is an entirely different game; this game does not 100% match any game included on the final Action 52 release. Since this is some terrible, cut-down reproduction cart sold for literally $200 USD, the CHR for the game is not present, with the game as a whole being inaccessible without hacking. To access the game - among numerous byte-cutting and iNES header adjustments - at addresses 32-35, bytes AD FF 07 must be replaced by A9 00 EA.

The game is a 2D side-scrolling platformer; the player has some sort of kick or weapon-like attack. For whatever reason, jumping is mapped to Up, whereas every other Action 52 game uses B to jump. The game's music is similar to the song used in Evil Empire (game #34), though it is played with different instrumentation. There do not seem to be any further games built-in to its coding (as many other games on Action 52 have).

Action Gamemaster

Despite the title, the game still features the Cheetahmen: Apollo in Part 1 and Aries in Part 2. If you find that difficult, activate these codes: 0334:22 to enable invincibility, 004C:00 to jump endlessly, and 0063:00 and 0064:00 to not fall down and die.

Part 1 is a copy of Level 5 of Ooze with minor differences. This includes the lack of the blue blob enemy as well as different colored bullets fired by the stationary enemies.

Proto	Ooze (Level 5)

Notably, the level uses a unique arrangement of the music from Ooze:

Action Gamemaster	Ooze

Part 2 is a copy of Level 3 of Robbie N The Robots. The enemy that is a palette swap of the player character in Robbie N the Robots appears to be a scrambled version of Aries' sprite.

Proto	Robbie N The Robots (Level 3)

Action 52 Leftovers

To do: More leftovers. Such as: The 128KB Portion of the ROM itself. Graphics and other leftover data.

In the Action Gamemaster build, there are leftovers from a unknown Action 52 build that predates when Cheetahmen was game #52. The data for this build was nearly erased, so there are a few leftovers included

These graphics are loaded in level 1. The player graphics from Ooze now points to graphics for Apollo's CHR data, and the player palette was changed. The 1-up graphics are not used in any of the levels, and additional tiles that appear in Action 52. The graphics are also loaded when selecting "MAIN MENU", since the Action 52 menu no longer exists and the rest of the levels point to garbage data.