A Copy Of The Lost Famicom Title Moeyo Butaman Has Been Found

Back in 1992, Sigma Enterprises was working on a 2D platformer called Moeyo Butaman for the Famicom which was shown off in Japanese gaming magazines.

Starring a pig-like hero, the game's character designer was anime artist Gen Sato, who had previously worked with Square on the Famicom Disk System game The Quartz Dragon (Suishō no Dragon). According to Famicom archivist @oroti_famicom, it was a "vertical and horizontal scrolling action game featuring comical attacks such as snorting, farting and earthquakes."

Outside of a few screens, little else is known about the game, as it was never actually released and was feared lost for years. Now, it seems that Sato himself could be in a position to preserve Moeyo Butaman, as he has revealed that he has a playable cartridge in his collection.

"Remnants of my old job that I found while cleaning up after my death lol," says Sato. "We were also working on a lot of game-related stuff, so we had a lot of software in development. I think that Moeyo! Butaman was cancelled due to the production company's reasons, so this is a rare piece. (I got it for debugging purposes, so it's playable.) Everything feels so nostalgic... (^_^;)"

@gdri notes that the game looks a lot like a game called Time Zone, which was developed by Kenji Eno's company EIM.

Hopefully, Sato will be able to dump the game so it is properly preserved for future generations.