Sega proto found: Hammer Away (vertical STG)

[gameoverDude]

A vertical STG from Santos (team behind Airgrave & Stahlfeder on PS1), Hammer Away was developed on Sega System 18. Sega was going to publish this but decided against it- from the 1991 date, the cancellation could've been due to fighting games eating up the arcades at the time.
This PCB isn't encrypted, FWIW.

Looks a bit like Under Defeat with the way the helicopter rotates.

Discuss.

[James]

Details over here at shumps.com. Looks like the dump of the game should be making its way into the wild soon.

Only a short bit of gameplay is showing but, while it looks a bit like there was a final pass of polish needed (the tanks going under the trees looks pretty bad even by 1991 standards) I like some of the other details like shooting the roofs off houses. The video only shows the first few minutes, all level 1 easy, so it's a bit early to tell whether this is a great lost game or just a saved piece of gaming history.

[gameoverDude]

Sure glad there's no suicide battery in this. It did come with a bad System 18 board, so the board's owner did have to take the ROMs off and put them on a new S18 PCB. Then, the encrypted 68K had to be taken off and replaced with a normal one.