Cheetahmen II

This game was never completed and/or given a public release. As a result of this, keep in mind that the developers might have used or deleted some of the content featured here, had the game actually been released.

To do: Add some rips of the otherwise-inaccessible boss and possibly more.

The successor to one of the 52 games from Action 52, Cheetahmen II is arguably as bad as - if not worse than - its predecessor. This is largely because of its inaccurate collision detection, subpar graphics, and a nasty bug that effectively ends the game at Level 4.

1,500 cartridges containing this game were found in a warehouse in Florida in 1996, shortly after Active Enterprises' demise, all of them being reused Action 52 cartridges bearing the label "Cheetamen II" (sic). These cartridges are (ironically, given the state of the game) now considered one of the most sought-after collector's items.

Unused Enemies#

To do: Can these spawn in-game?

Level 1, 2 and 4#

A bottom-half frame of the giant bug.

Level 1#

A simple little bear-trap-like trap.

Level 5#

The wolves (with a different haircut on one of the frames), rats, and giant snakes(?) have graphics and loaded palettes for them in Level 5, but with every level having its own CHR-Bank, these are technically unused.

Most interesting, though, is this completely unused dragon(?) enemy, only seen in the CHR-Bank of Level 5 and nowhere else. It has no palette that fits it well, but seeing as Level 5 loads a palette that's completely skin-color (36 36 36), maybe this enemy's palette was supposed to go there, but didn't.

Level 6#

Same case with most of Level 5's unused enemies, this snake also has its graphics on Level 6's CHR-Bank but goes unused in the level. It doesn't seem to load any palette either, but seeing as Level 6 uses a different palette for the bird, which had a consistent palette so far, this snake could have been meant to use one of the palettes loaded.

Unused Text#

Copyright 1992 - Active Enterprises Ltd., All rights reserved

This is scattered several times throughout the ROM and is slightly different to the actual copyright, which is in graphical form.

Action 52 leftovers, including the menu text for "Star Evil" and "Operation Full Moon", can be seen from 7B8A-7E80 along with the default "Game Name" text found all over the ROM:

STAR EVIL     
OPERATION FULL MOON
ONE PLAYER
TWO PLAYER
MAIN MENU

GAME NAME     
ONE PLAYER
TWO PLAYER
MAIN MENU

Unused Levels#

Watch on YouTube

Although there are six levels present in the game, the game effectively ends at Level 4 instead of Level 6. The reason for this is because the game never recognizes when the player has killed the boss in question, which ultimately causes the player to remain on the screen where the boss first appears indefinitely. The only way to reach the last two levels with a regular copy is through a very rare glitch involving the power-on state of RAM.

The layout of Level 5 is a near-copy-and-paste of Level 2 from Cheetahmen, with the part where you drop down from the top and the boss being missing. The layout of Level 6 is a complete copy-and-paste of the 3rd level from Cheetahmen and both are referred to as Level 3.

This patch will allow access to these last two levels, which can be seen below.

References#