Action52 Megadrive Release Review

Probably the most mysterious NES distributor. Not much is known by the company itself other than they were located in Miami, Florida, and that they only managed to release one cartridge, eventhough another game was completed and packed, ready go ship. The game they did ship was called Action52. It's, as far as I know, the only 16megabit NES cartridge ever produced, besides the illegal Hongkong pirate carts. 

 

The cartridge features 52 unike games of star wars galaxy heroes hack, thats what Active claimed anyway, with a retail price of $199 in the US. The games on the cart are horrible though and a lot of people must've become very unhappy when they got home and popped in the cart, that is IF they werent totally scared off by the high price of the cart, and because of it only a limited ammount of carts were sold, leading to the end of Active's NES adventure and killing off their second release.Many of you may be thinking that I forgot about the Megadrive release, but well I didnt. It was programmed by fairlight, who probably also made the NES version. 

 

The Megadrive release of the Action52 is totally different from the NES version, but my guess is that it sold even worse than the NES version. Though the Megadrive version is actually still being sold brand new by a company on the internet at the low price of $99.99 :) The NES Action52 was released in the US around May 1992 and advertised in GamePro around that time. At first the adds were very limited, but when the Megadrive version was released early 1993 they ran full page advertisements where the Megadrive version was introduced and the NES version was sold at $79, which seems to me like sales weren't doing too well at that time. 

 

Now to the big surprise, Active Enterprises actually also tried to take the European NES/Megadrive market by storm too. I've recently found this 1/4 page add in an English magazine called Total! (Issue 22, October 1993). I dont know why I havent noticed this add before, but it kinda looks like a lot of other lame adds in the magazines, for gameswap stores and such, with a very limited advertisement budget. The add is the only one i've ever seen in a UK mag, and it wasnt included in any of the following issues of Total. If you look carefully at the add you'll see that they were looking for exclusive retailers. I havent tried calling any of the numbers, and probably wont, but if you live in the UK and wont mind doing it, please let me know. 

 

One thing comes to mind when I saw this add, did Active make a PAL version of the Actiont52? or was the UK PAL NES able to run the US verison? I know for a fact that the US Action52 doesnt run on my REV-B EURO NES, but the UK used a slightly different lockout chip than the rest of Europe, so they might've been able to run the US version. The Action52 showcase is 3 tigers(?) called "The Cheetahmen". The first Cheetahmen game is a six level, action/adventure which used enemies and such from the other Action52 games. A sequel was finished, packed and ready to ship, but rumor has it that Active wasn't able to pay the producer of the carts and they, the producer, withheld all Cheetahmen 2 carts. 

 

The Cheetahmen 2 was packed in leftover cartridge cases from the Action52, they actually still wrote Action52 on the front, but then had a small golden sticker on the back which write "Cheetamen 2", misspelled. After Active's death they were sold as scrap to retailers and today they're everywhere,
although its said that only 10.000 Cheetahmen 2 cartridges exist.

 

 A Cheetahmen cartoon show was also announced, the Action52 included a Cheetahmen comic (does anyone have a scan of this?), but that idea never made it into reality, it probably could've saved Active from their stack of unpaied bills. The common thought of Active Enterprises, is that it's "basically just some guy who in h igarage was putting out these carts", however it must've been just a tad more than that. 

 

The games does look like they were made by some amature, but Active Enterprices actually attended serveral game shows with their Action52, with a stand which was rather large. Its still a mystery what Active really was tho, I just wish someone would solve that one :)