On June 4, 2025, Frank Cifaldi of the Video Game History Foundation dumped 125 Taito prototype Famicom and MSX2 ROMs (mostly Famicom) live on stream. During and after the stream, others tried to examine and piece together these assorted ROM dumps. What did they find? Lots of prototypes of Bakushou!! Jinsei Gekijou (Taito's take on The Game of Life [Jinsei Game]) and Arkanoid 2. But there were still a couple of more interesting finds.
First was what turned out to be graphics data from a prototype of the action RPG Kagerou Densetsu. (No program data, unfortunately.) Kagerou Densetsu was published by a company called Pixel, the same company profiled on GDRI (I've checked before. They have the same address.), but it's been noted that Taito's name could be found in the final release. Was Taito going to publish it originally? They never announced it, but two different Taito logos appear in this prototype data.
The name Kagerou Densetsu and the Taito connection would suggest a relationship to The Legend of Kage, but a different title can be seen in this graphics data — Shinobi Densetsu: Ushinawareta Makimono (忍伝説 失われた巻物) (Shinobi Legend: The Lost Scrolls). A cursory search finds no evidence that Taito announced a game under this name.
By the way, Pixel was mostly a contract developer that previously published three original games for the MSX, but Kagerou Densetsu was developed by yet a different contractor called I.T.L, which did a lot of work for Taito.
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| Shinobi Densetsu graphics data (Image source) |
Then we have what appears to be graphics data (again, no program data) for a seemingly unannounced, unreleased game. Taito announced a few Famicom games they never released, but this doesn't match up with any of them. This looks like some sort of sci-fi adventure, but there's no title; otherwise, it's a complete mystery. The second number font (see image below) was also used in the Hot-B published strategy game Takeda Shingen, developed by Nova (as confirmed by one of its co-founders in an interview), so it may have been developed by them.
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| Graphics data from a Famicom game with an unknown title (Image source) |
