Friendly Neighborhood Obscurity

Brazilian site Odyssey 2000 reports that a gentleman by the name of Bas Kornalijnslijper has come into posession of the world’s only known prototype of Spider-Man for the Odyssey 2 console.
If you recognize the game from the provided screenshots, don’t be too surprised. Parker Bros. later released a very similar game for the Atari 2600.
Thanks to Digital Press for the tip.
BACK IN THE BOX!

A reader by the name of Rob Budrick has beaten all of you lazy sods for our coveted Most Awesome Reader Award by mailing me a CD-R containing scans he made of an original Square Soft sales pamphlet for the NES version of Final Fantasy II: Dark Shadow Over Palakia, which you may recognize as the game written about in the article to your immediate right.
The CD-R also contains, among other things, some Frank Zappa MP3s. Which is never a bad thing.
Final Fantasy II. For the NES.

Have you ever wondered why certain games from Japan aren’t translated and brought to the rest of the world for sale? Or how only some parts of popular game series are translated while the rest of the series remains a mystery to the general gaming public?
More specifically, have you ever wondered why Squaresoft didn’t bring more games from the Final Fantasy series to the rest of the world? Read on, and find the answer to your questions in this month’s Spotlight feature: Final Fantasy II for the NES.
Oh, and Happy Holidays from the Lost Levels crew.
Getting to know you…

The Staff page is now available for your viewing pleasure. Get to know the people who are involved in bringing this site and the articles contained here to you, the reader.
This page would also work better if the rest of the staff would give me their information, but you can’t always get what you want. In the meantime, take a look and get familiar.. we’re going to be bringing more stuff your way really soon.
Dept. of Castlevania

In other exciting news about unreleased games (though this one is actually unreleased), the Castlevania Dungeon has posted a copy of the intro movie for the long canned Dreamcast Castlevania Resurrection.
The specific file can be found here, but the whole site is worth checking out.
Also, please be aware that Castlevania Resurrection has no connection to former Judas Priest lead singer Rob Halford’s album Resurrection.
The Ball is MAGIC!

OlderGames, in conjunction with Good Deal Games, have just released two “amazing new games for the Sega CD!”
First up is Battle Frenzy, a first-person 3D shooter designed by Warrior Kings and Microdot programmer Jim Blackler. This game was previously released by Domark in several parts of Europe, as well as in cartridge format for the Mega Drive.
The second “new game” is Marko, aka Marko’s Magic Football. This game was also previously published by Domark for the Mega CD in Europe, as well as in cartridge format for both the Sega Genesis and Game Gear.
Information is vague on both of the co-publishers’ sites, but we’re assuming by “new” they mean that these are previously-unreleased NTSC versions of the formerly PAL-exclusive games.