JUDGE DREDD
Original Release: Midway, unreleased (in development 1992), Arcade
A nearly-complete beta that was scrapped just before production, an interview with one of the programmers indicates that it was tested in Chicago in 1992 and was canceled based on poor response from the test audience
Judge Dredd (Arcade, unreleased, Midway)
Where to Buy: unavailable for purchase, the ROM is widely available and can be emulated with MAME
How to Emulate: Arcade Emulation Guide
Review by: C. M0use
Judge Dredd is one of those prototype games that was 95% complete or so but ended up not getting released for whatever reason, then years later a ROM of it makes its way to the internet somehow. There's no point giving it a formal review/rating since it presumably won't ever be commercially released in this form, though it is pretty much complete and playable.
It's your standard arcade beat-em-up, but it's actually interesting due to a couple of notable novelties. One is that it uses Midway's Mortal Kombat-style digitized graphics rather than sprites. The other is that it makes use of eight directions on the playfield, meaning you can walk and attack straight up or down, instead of doing everything on a fixed horizontal plane as in just about every other beat-em-up. Combining these two things probably meant a lot more work for the artists, and while the 90s digitized graphics are fully capable of looking cheesy and silly, there's some bits here that look really neat, too.
It's actually a pretty competent and decent beat-em-up, and probably the only one in existence that has its own Teabag button. The one thing that really kills it is how fragile Dredd is; three hits from even the weakest common punks wipes out his life bar totally, sending him flying to his juicy death.
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