Untitled Motorcycle Games (lost Atari 2600 games by David Crane; existence unconfirmed; early 1980s)

Boxart of Suntek's Motocross, a bootlegged version of Madcycle. The game was confused with David Crane's motorcycle games.

Status: Existence Unconfirmed

Activision is known to many Atari 2600 fans as one of the best companies to make games for that system, making classics like Pitfall!, Spider Fighter, Dragster, Enduro, and more. However though, some games never saw the light of day. While some of them have been recovered like Thwocker, or Kabobber, others haven't.

David Crane mentioned 2 motorcycle games that he was working on while at Activision. The 1st one was similar to Atari's Stunt Cycle where you would jump over many obstacles. The game was abandoned because he couldn't display the buses properly, and ran out of objects he could use in the game. The 2nd game was a motocross style game with a large segmented motorcycle that would realistically move up, and down the terrain. The large motorcycle sprite ended up being too much space to make a game out of just an Atari 2600 game, so it was scrapped.

There is also a thread on AtariAge about Atari 2600 dumps, and rom comparisons. Apparently David Crane said that they didn't meet Activision's approval, and therefore weren't published. The game was supposedly then stolen by Home Vision, and released as Madcycle, which was then bootlegged by other companies like Quelle, Suntek, and Rainbow Vision under the name Motocross.

While there were instances of pirate companies releasing once unreleased games, it's highly unlikely that Motocross is actually one of David Crane's 2 unreleased games. The first being that he said to have abandoned them early, meaning that they most likely weren't sent to Activision for approval. Secondly, the 2 games described don't match Around the World at all, being a top-down Enduro with motorcycles. Thirdly, no trace of the Activision logos have been found in any version of Madcycle currently dumped.

Whether, or not these games did exist at one point is uncertain. It's most likely that David Crane might have some assets of the game, but only time will tell on if the actual games do show up.

See Also

• Birthday Mania (found rare Atari 2600 game; 1984)
• "Block moving game" (partially found builds of cancelled Atari 2600 game from Activision; 1983)
• Circus Charlie (lost build of cancelled Atari 2600 port of arcade action-platformer; 1984)
• The Core (partially lost Atari 2600 game; 1999-2001)
• Cosmic (partially found Atari 2600 game; existence unconfirmed; dates unknown)
• Crazy Cars (lost Atari 2600 port of Amiga game; existence unconfirmed; 1990)
• Edu Games (lost Atari 2600 games; mid 1980s-early 1990s)
• Home Vision (partially found Atari 2600 games from Taiwanese-Belgian game publisher; 1982-1983)
• The Incredible Hulk (lost build of cancelled Atari 2600 game; 1983)
• JimsToy (partially found Atari 2600 games from obscure developer; 1980s)
• Mission Omega (lost build of cancelled Atari 2600 game by CommaVid; early 1980s)
• Mr. Bill's Neighborhood (lost build of cancelled Atari 2600 game; 1983)
• Shove It! (lost build of cancelled CBS Atari 2600 game; existence unconfirmed; 1983)
• Smokey Bear (lost build of cancelled Atari 2600 game; 1983)