FOUND & DUMPED - The Fairyland Story - Unreleased NES/Famicom Game 

Kubo family's childhood corememory. Imagine some random kid playing this game for hours and hours not realising that they are one of the few people in the world able to play this version of the game!

I hope someone does a documentry on TOSE someday. These guys apparently developed thousands of games that shaped generations of gamers on multiple platforms and never got the credit for any of them. Some of the most notable games from my gaming past that TOSE apparently shadow developed: Famicom Detective Club Pinball Quest Almost every NES baseball game Yoshi's Cookie Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters Almost every SFC Dragonball game Mario's Tennis (Virtual Boy) Metal Gear Solid Ghost Babel all the GBC Dragon Quest titles the Stafy series Thousand Arms Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth Super Princess Peach Resident Evil: Zero Resident Evil: Code Veronica Fire Emblem Fates Paper Mario: The Origami King Famicom Detective Club Remake Zelda Breath of the Wild Switch version - Nintendo developed it on WiiU and TOSE did the Switch port. Just madness.

I'd love to see someone come in and create the other half of the levels. The idea of old, unreleased games being finished is something that gives me joy.

"dump very slowly" is a good piece of advice for many facets of life

I was actually digging through those j4u cartridge lots looking for odd variants and I completely missed that. Glad it got into the hands of someone who knew what it was and dumped it!

This was a really fun adventure to be a part of. Thank you so much for your help with getting it dumped!

Fun fact about TOSE is that they would later go on to develop the Densetsu no Stafi series (also known as The Legendary Starfy).

Years ago in the early 2000s, I got a lot of 20 random fami games for $25 + shipping, titles unseen. There was a Holy Diver cart!!! The label was half torn off, I had to really clean it...but in the end it was such a bargain. Same seller sold me a "broken" twin fami for $75, including shipping! Some idiot in replacing the belt, did not use a marker to make a line on the gears and put them in the right order, but random position. I tinkered with it for a month and finally got it to load without errors. Another good buy I got was a fami disk drive with an "A" board. I put it in my twin, put its "B" board in the drive and resold it. It was a great time to collect.

Regarding the dumping process, please don't hesitate to share the details with us! I personally find it to be my favorite part of your videos. The wide variety of issues that arise from beta hardware/software and how preservationists deal with them never ceases to amaze me. Maybe because you work with this stuff so often, it might be that you don't see the coolness of it all, but I'm always thankful for you sharing your experiences in that area with us.

Taking five years to port an old arcade game is a bit long, especially as the Super Famicom was on the horizon. Maybe Taito realised it wouldn't cut it by then.r

Amazing. I love that it was just some random eBay lot an unreleased game was just sitting in haha. You never know what you might find.

It’s pretty crazy how often unreleased games are being found these days. We appreciate all the work you do H4G!

I played a bit of the original arcade game in preparation of this release and while I don't find this single screen game to be very much fun I am still very happy to see this get preserved it's always a win seeing unreleased games pop up

Such a great time to be a retro gamer, always more treats coming out of the woodwork :D

I liked the research part i was researching some games art tutorials of NDS, wii u and found there are gems under tiny games on a sdcard or cd, is just crazy!

Oh my! That looks great. You know what is also great? Your shirt. 10/10 shirt right there.

I say it "toe-say" and "chack-n-pop"

Today i learned if you take a dump too fast you'll mess your bits up.

Japanese translator here. The company name TOSE is pronounced Toh-say.

Chack'n Pop's first sound is the same as in check or chicken. Tose is pronounced as a Japanese word, so in English, you could say something like Toe-say to get a somewhat similar result.

Oh sadly the Gaming Alexandria link is no longer working for the time being, not sure what happened. I really like the Fairyland Story Arcade game though and want to give the unreleased Famicom port a try too. It's a lovely predecessor to Bubble Bobble. Hats off to you and everyone involved for getting this dumped. Thank you very much. Another little piece of gaming history that's now preserved.

Very great find ! Thanks to the dumpers who helped release this to the world and my man Fenris for paying up the couple of bucks and sussing it out in the first place! Stuff like this is literally how history is preserved. 🔥

I think that might be a broomstick power-up?

Nice find!

Found and dumped sounds like the story of my love life.

I spent a couple of my favorite testing years in Lotcheck. The team only cares that the game functions and conforms to the guidelines, not whether a game is good.

No way! This is awesome!! 🎮

Cool and interesting find. Ever since I heard of this game, it seemed odd that it never got a NES port. It's not for everybody, but I enjoyed the arcade version quite a bit when I played it. It was on Taito Legends 2, as I recall. The continue system is annoying. Best to play it with save states, just in case. I definitely could feel a lot of elements in it that helped make Bubble Bobble so fun.

There were a lot of arcade ports to Japanese computers like PC88, Chack'n Pop also was released along with Arkanoid, Hudson SMB Special / Punch Ball Mario Bros for those NEC Japanese PC gaming platforms. This game definitely reminds me of other Taito titles but I bet those late 80s / early 90s hackers had all this old game code around from doing ports.

The NES version of Fairyland Story was developed by Micronics, who also developed the NES versions of Elevator Action, 1942, Ghosts ‘N Goblins, Ikari Warriors, Tiger Heli, Twin Cobra, and Chack ‘N Pop. Micronics were known for their subpar NES conversions of hit arcade games.

Probably if it had come out, it would have appeared on many bootleg consoles.

Fun fact: the Famicom port of the game lacks an ending and only contains about half of the arcade stages, which loop endlessly in the Famicom port. This is likely due to the fact that the higher-ups at Taito were actually *opposed* to the original arcade game having an ending, or it could simply be due to laziness or to accommodate for the lack of a continue feature in the NES version.

Pumped n dumped. Badass looking game. Reminds me of a advanced Bubble Bobble style arcade game.

Why does the audio sound like early Jaleco was involved? It reminds me of Ninja Jajamaru-kun. Also, for all we know, the 1990 version might have been something that Ocean Software did, because they did a version of Rainbow Islands exclusive to Europe, due to getting some rights from Taito. This is speculation, though.

Nice a new nes video love them have a nice week end Tony

nice t-shirt you are wearing!!!. really love it

0:59 "Kubo Taketo" or "Kubo Gouto"

remember everyone, if you take your time while dumping, you will have a clean workable dump lololol

Hot B. and Tose.... jeez, thats like hearing LJN and Acclaim teaming up...

For the initial Famicom build that was dumped, not a bad game. Compared to some of the stuff we had released in North America, that version was gold for getting the basics right. Still a better game than most of LJN's library in comparison.

Massive fan of Fairyland Story what an awesome find!

This reminds me of another Taito game called Bubble Bobble.

2:00 ~ 2:12 The player does not need to collect the item, the game has a built-in level skip through the *Select button on controller 1* and it loops forever starting from Round 51 (on Arcade, it is 100 unique levels with a boss fight in the end).

I believe Tose' is pronounced "Toe-Say". At least that's how Jeremy Parish pronounces it (and I believe he speaks Japanese).

6:46 Yes, and eating Taco Bell!

you and whoever bought this is a legend

HOT-B is also the publisher of "Hoshi wo Miru Hito" which is affectionately known by fans as "The Legendary Crappy Game" Look it up, there's a fella who did a speedrun of it at an event, and he shows off why it has that awful nickname

the link to the dumpped rom is down

Tose - interesting - they also developed some games like Starfy and Super Princess Peach if I recall

I buy the Famicom versions of games specifically because they are much more beautiful IMO. There's so much variety. I love them.

It's not like this style of single screen platformers was completely outgrown by the 90s. There was Rodland, Snow Bros, Tumblepop, Zupapa and Nightmare in the Dark on the Neo Geo and others. Most likely, The Fairyland Story looked too much like 1985.

Yay!!!

I got this confused with the Genesis game The Fairy Tale Adventure, which I believe is a PC port of a Western/PC RPG.

Too bad it wasn't released. I like this game. At least now we have a prototype.

I'm amazed that a bunch of Taiwanese bootleggers got ahold of this game before it was dumped. They're really that dang dedicated! Oh wait, this isn't a bootleg copy? An official prototype? Dang, that's even rarer than the bootlegs that have been circulating around undumped!

I was just thinking about Taito strangely enough. Ever heard of Graffiti Kingdom or Magic Pengel?

sick shirt

🌟 Hey!? When can we play this? It was dumped online on a Rom site? This is such wonderful very cool news because this is one of the best 80s gems. I play it on Taito Legends 2 for PS2. I am very interested in playing the Famicom demo that never got released. It is different than the Arcade one I read. ❤ You guys all rock. I subscribed. Please let me know how I can play this. Thank you

It's pronounced as it's written, "Chak'n Pop", not "Kak'n Pop"

They're so haaaAAAARDDD, they're HARD FOR GAMES

So. where is the dump at?

are you persian

Why the fuck would you put NES before Famicom, especially when this is a Famicom-only game? Cringe to da max.

I am sick of you people dumping unreleased Famicom games and I am VERY angry that a hoarder didn't outbid you on this game and I want whoever dumped this game to delete the rom forever and give it to a Japanese hoarder right now or I WILL contact Square/Enix to sue you into oblivion.