It seems there was almost a Roguelike for the NES...

[getter77]

Perhaps it will turn up on the internet one day at an almost completely developed state?  :crosses fingers...all applicable ones even for an English translation:

Dungeon Hourouki  looks like it was the work of ASCII?

http://www.ne.jp/asahi/oroti/famicom/mab02.html#1

[Yyrkoon]

Very cool, but what are the chances at this late date that any more undumped protos exist.  Lost levels occasionally discovers the odd unreleased game, but they have been few and far between the past few years.  Also the fact that nobody has ever traded this game online suggests that if found it would go for an astronomical sum.  So unless a group effort was made by the general public to secure it, it would undoubtably go to some rich collector who wouldn't see it in his interest to get dumped.  Look at all the confirmed Neo-Geo prototypes that have been hoarded out of existence.  I'm not saying it isn't possible, but it's probably about as likely as seeing Super Monkey-Ball for the Dreamcast or other games that were known to be developed but have never leaked out.  Very slim.

[getter77]

I'm prone to crazier dreams than most(Let's just be honest and say all!) around here.      :nods in the general direction for part 3 of the Jaunt Trooper series still stuck on some DEC Machine someplace in the world..and that crazy rare Dicing Knight followup stuff:

Still, the Japanese Roguelike community does "stuff"...just so obscured I can never find anything close to a reliable beat on it/an actively known Rogues Gallery the likes of which somewhat exists on the Goggle/Newsgroup and here in terms of folks out and about working/trying to work/having worked on something(s).

Step one would be a good translation of the scan to reveal the gist of the setup/system at play for it/better zoomed game screens for little details---was it in a Dragon Crystal/Fatal labyrinth style, something ahead of its time in a proto-Mystery Dungeon configuration, or unique construct?

[Yyrkoon]

Actually it has a nethack/rogue look to the big map, the mystery dungeons pretty much follow a standard formula and rarely look as randomly devised as that big map.  Also whats all that stuff on top, are they showing the programming team at work, or is that completely unrelated?  I also think it quite humorous that the company working on it was called ASCII.

[getter77]

I think it is the team at work.  Also IIRC, it was ASCII that put out that Graphical Remake dealie of Rogue for the PS2 many a year later.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsXgeDrPiNs   A few seconds of video in the first few seconds of this clip.  Uploader apparently has quite a lot of these preview/early video dealies out of Japan----Famitsu is crazy as anything from watching just the other 4 parts to this episode.

That said, this makes me wonder if there are other Unreleased Roguelikes on the various handhelds/consoles out of Japan's side of things as it was very random that I happened upon Dungeon Hourouki here....

Perhaps NicoNico has more to this one....if I could remember that bookmark of that site I found that lets you search/view vids without signing up for an account......

[zzo38]

Perhaps if you know how to program the NES, you can even create one today if you want to. (I wonder if anyone is doing that. I do know people are still programming other stuff for the NES even today.)

[getter77]

Perhaps if you know how to program the NES, you can even create one today if you want to. (I wonder if anyone is doing that. I do know people are still programming other stuff for the NES even today.)

http://www.nesicide.com/  That'd probably happen via something like this.  There's a few ways to go about such a thing though, either a stock game that could've happened on a NES...or something more of an NES homage to what never was.  I've my secret ideas on the latter, though oddly none to mind on the former.  The biggest efforts are the Chinese super hack "ports" of latter day Final Fantasy games.