CheetahMen II
Part of a series on Action 52. [View Related Entries]
About
Cheetahmen II is an unreleased Nintendo Entertainment System game developed in 1992 by Active Enterprises. This game is literaly "unfinished", parts of the graphic objects are missing and uncolored or just plain invisible. It's widely known as being virtually unplayable because of bad programming, and its music has been the subject of many remixes and MADs on Youtube and Nico Nico Douga.
History
In 1991, Active Enterprises released Action 52, an unlicensed multicart containing 52 games. It became notorious for its high price (US$ 199,00) and for the poor quality of the games included. There was also a featured game in the pack called Cheetahmen, an action game where three half-cheetah/half-human creatures, named Aries, Apollo and Hercules, would battle against mad scientist Dr. Morbis.
Cheetahmen was intended to be a very popular franchise designed to compete with Battletoads and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. There were plans for a line of merchandise, from T-shirts and comics to a television cartoon. However, because of negative reviews, high debts, and failure to properly license their content, Active Enterprises left the videogame industry in 1993.
A sequel for Cheetahmen was planned and partially-developed in 1992, but was never released.
Unsubstantiated rumors tell a tale of 1500 copies of the game found in a warehouse in 1997 which were then sold or otherwise distributed.
Meme origin
In 2007, videos showing gameplay of Cheetahmen 2 were posted on Nico Nico Douga. The background music proved to be popular, as more videos were uploaded as MADs and remixes.
At Comic Market 73, December 31 2007, Dangerous Mezashi Cat released the album Cheetah in the Dark, containing 6 tracks with Cheetahmen remixes.
