Wardner no Mori (lost build of cancelled PC Engine port of arcade platformer; 1988-1989)

A screenshot of the game

Status: Lost

Wardner no Mori (ワードナの森) is an arcade platformer developed by Toaplan and published by Taito in 1987 and released in North America under the title Wardner, or Pyros. The game was ported to the Famicom Disk System, Sega Genesis, and other home platforms, and was planned for the PC Engine, but was cancelled.

The publisher of the PC Engine port was NEC Avenue, and it was supposed to be the second game released by the company. PC Engine Fan's review of the game said that the game was close to completion, but why it was then cancelled is not known. And we do not know if the game could have been completed. A prototype ROM has also not been found, which is now lost.

Release Date

The scheduled release date for this game was September 1988 in Gekkan PC Engine Special June 1988 Issue 1^[1]. Then it was changed to November in August Issue 2^[2], and late December in October Issue 3^[3]. In subsequent issues, it was placed in the "TBD" on the Coming soon list, and in December Issue 15, the title disappeared from the list.

In PC Engine Fan, the release date was February 1989 as of the December 1988 first issue^[4]. In the February 1989 issue^[5], the scheduled date was changed to April, and the title was placed in the May issue's list under "TBD" and disappeared from subsequent issues.