What is by now quite a few years ago - but "back when" I was lucky enough to get in contact with Phil Mikkelson, he actually emailed me one day, who used to work for both Color Dreams and later American Video Entertainment. I managed to strike a few deals with Phil for some of the NES prototypes he had held on to since the NES hey days. While my first purchase from him, the final version of the unreleased American Video Entertainment game, Cuestick, was lost in the mail - actually my package was stolen at the post office because they forgot to close a window at night. The wrapping from the package was found a few kilometers away from the post office, but sadly the content was missing.

Anyway a few years later I managed to buy another batch of prototypes from Phil and while most of it wasn't anything too interesting really, other than Robert Byrne's Pool Challenge,  Cuestick but with the title changed as a licensing deal was struck with Robert Byrnes the pool legend. Well one proto for sure went under the radar and right down into a storage box.

From my American Video Entertainment research earlier on, I had learned that American Video Entertainment had a game in the works called Dudes II, or Dudes with Attitude 2. This game was supposed to be included on the Maxi30, a multicartridge with no less than 30 games on it. The Maxi30 however never happened, but a trimmed down version was released quite late in the American Video Entertainment lifespan, called Maxivision 15 in1 Volume 1.

Dudes with Attitude was the work of Michael Crick and his daughter Cam Crick and it was released in 1990. Now we know that a sequel to Dudes with Attitude was released in 1992, called Trolls on Treasure Island, so somewhere between 1990 and 1992 a Dudes 2 build was made, and actually it might never have been thought to be Dudes with Attitude 2, but it could merely have been a working title.

I knew Richard slightly when I was at Microsoft so when I left Taito I contacted him and I told him a game I wanted to program -- and he said go for it. Then later I saw the Trolls craze emerging so I suggested we revise it with new levels with Trolls as the players. My daughter Cam helped me with both the design and the animation for both these games. Michael Crick

So somewhere along the way in the transition from Dudes with Attitude, to Trolls on Treasure Island, the Dudes II prototyping happened. A lot of graphics and such were shared between Dudes and Trolls, even the titlescreen music is the exact same. No new graphics were made at the time the Dudes II prototype was compiled, at least not for the titlescreen which is the exact same as Dudes with Attitude and at first I actually thought that the protype shown on the right was nothing more than a final build of the first game and that Dudes II maybe had been hosted in the cartridge at some point in time, but now it probably was lost forever.

But boy was I wrong...

Dudes with Attitude	Dudes II	Trolls on Treasure Island

The character select screen was once again the exact same as the one used in Dudes with Attitude, as well as the map screen. Now when the levels starts that's where the fun begins.

Dudes with Attitude	Dudes II	Trolls on Treasure Island

As you can see Dudes II and Trolls feature the exact same level design, at least for level 1. I believe it's safe to say that Dudes II was never intended to be Dudes with Attitude 2 - instead it must have been a working title for Trolls on Treasure Island - also based on a very short email correspondance I had with Michael Crick way back.

Dudes with Attitude	Dudes II	Trolls on Treasure Island

From level 2 however, things get a little weird, it seems that this second level became level 3 in Trolls and so on...

Peoples memories are not always a 100% reliable source for information, maybe Dudes II was meant to become Trolls on an Island, but maybe it at some point was considered to be a true second Dudes With Attitude. The Video Game History Foundation has some old American Video Entertainment footage on file and the following titlescreen was found in the footage.

The footage was likely raw footage to be used in the Maxivision infomercial, and maybe the "II" that was added to the titlescreen could have been done to differenciate the entry from Dudes with Attitude which was also on the Maxivision 30in1 - but it's nothing but guessing at this point.  

Now what puzzles me about the label on this proto is that it also says "Cheetahx-vf8l".... what's that about? Cheetahmen?

If you would like to give the Dudes II Prototype a try, you can now find it over at Hidden Palace.