Super Rescue/Blazebusters (lost build of cancelled US localization of Famicom game; 1989, 1991)

Blazebusters box art

Status: Lost

Super Rescue and Blazebusters are US localizations of Flying Hero (飛ingヒーロー), a Famicom game released by Epic Sony in Japan on February 17, 1989. The game, in which firefighters use trampolines to save people from a burning building, was originally ported from the cancelled Sega arcade game Megumi Rescue (め組レスキュー).

The game's first US rollout was in 1989, when it was unveiled at the winter CES as Super Rescue^[1]. CSG Imagesoft became the publisher, but the game was not featured prominently after CES and was not released in the final. Then in 1991, the game made plans to be released by Nexoft as Blazebusters, but was not released there either. It was featured in magazines and received a rating of 2.8 for graphics and sound, 3.3 for play control, 2.7 for challenge, and 2.9 for theme and fun in Now Playing in Nintendo Power Issue 34^[2].

On October 20, 2017, in a collection stored in Game Informer's offices, several documents of cancelled NES games since 1991 were discovered, where the box art of this game was found. It was found that the player character was uniquely named Billy Bob in the US^[3].