Crazy Land (found build of cancelled US localization of Famicom platformer; 1991)

Crazy Land Title Screen

Status: Found

Date found: 9 Dec 2022

Found by: Ed Semrad, Video Game History Foundation

Crazy Land (a.k.a. Crazyland! The Ride of Your Life) is a US localization of the Famicom platformer Doki! Doki! Yūenchi: Crazy Land Daisakusen developed by KID and published by VAP in 1991, which was planned for release by NTVIC in the US. The game was also exhibited at the Consumer Electronics Show in the summer of 1991. The release was later postponed and the decision was made to release the game in November 1992 from American Softworks Corp as Trolls in Crazyland with the character changed to Troll, but this was only for Italy and Western Europe, and the US release was cancelled.
The first prototype ROM was found by YouTuber Steven Seventyeight and a gameplay video was posted^[1], but it was never dumped and never surfaced.

Availability

In 2021, Frank Cifaldi of the Video Game History Foundation was invited to the home of Edward J. Semrad, former editor-in-chief of Electronic Gaming Monthly. In the basement, a large number of prototype ROMs for games such as NES, Atari 2600, and SMS were discovered, and Crazy Land was among them^[2].
Ed allowed us to preserve the prototype ROMs digitally, which allowed Hidden Palace to release the game along with other prototype ROMs on December 9th, 2022^[3].

Region Deferrence

The title screen has clear differences from the Japanese release, with the logo and copyright as well as the background amusement park, land, and cloud graphics being reworked.