Porting games between different console releases is nothing new for the games industry, as titles like Commandos 2 made it to PS2 and the original Xbox along with its PC release. However, it appears that an early Game Boy Advance version of the game may have finally come out of obscurity, although not quite in the form fans might have originally expected to see it.
Posted to Twitter by dedicated Nintendo preserver, Forest of Illusion, an early demo of Commandos 2 for Game Boy Advance has made its way to PC. Forest of Illusion has previously posted these types of lost games, as well as development notes and datamines of older titles published by Nintendo, like an early title screen for Yoshi’s Story labelling the game as Yoshi Island 64 in early development.
The game itself is a very limited demo of what was intended to become a version of Command 2 that would be playable on handheld, however, it would seem that development never moved beyond the pitching phase. As a result, Forest of Illusion’s rom release is a bare-bones version of the game that really only seems to allow for players to move a simple character around a fairly empty map of a war camp. It’s unclear as to why the title never made its way to the Game Boy Advance or SP, but it may have been as simple as the more realistic war-strategy title not fitting in well on Nintendo hardware.
This particular build of the GBA version of Commandos 2 comes from as far back as November, 2002, having been developed by Toyonaka Studios before being set aside after being rejected. The studio itself doesn’t have any reported developed games, so this may have been the first and last attempt at development, with the failed pitch having either sunk the company or forced a rebranding. There doesn’t seem to be a connection with Commandos 2 developer Pyro Studios or publisher Kalypso Media, so this may have simply been an internal Nintendo studio that was contracted to explore the viability of this type of port.
The extremely limited nature of the Commandos 2 demo doesn’t exactly put it at the top of the list of the best GBA games available, but this is the kind of interesting tidbit of gaming history that fans of Nintendo could be interested in. Seeing the early stages of development for this type of game isn’t something that players often get a look at, and may go a long way of explaining exactly how much work went into fans’ favorite titles.
Commandos 2 HD is available now on PC.
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