Blaster Master, Sunsoft’s English localization of Japan’s Metafight, turns out to have an unreleased arcade version for the Vs. Unisystem. The Unisystem was substantially Famicom/NES hardware with some changes, so it makes sense that there were once plans to make an arcade version.
No known public copies exist, and I don’t think any ROM dumps have been released. The sole record of its existence may be a video (8 minutes) on the Youtube channel of higenekodo:
They have more videos on their channel than this one, including one of another possibly-unreleased Unisystem adaption of a Sunsoft Famicom game, the Wing of Madoola (16 minutes):
Both games have added scoring systems and other changes to adapt them for arcade play. Without ROM dumps though, we can’t know the full extent of the changes. Wing of Madoola seems to have been given an English localization, and had Gauntlet-ish timed health loss added to prevent player stalling, but it’s not known what changes were made to Blaster Master’s play to keep them moving. Blaster Master was also made less free-roaming: once you defeat the boss of an area and collect the powerup, the player is taken directly to the entrance of the next area, and each area begins with a map screen giving an overview of the area. And collected vehicle weapons appear in the corner of the screen, which suggests that the pause screen was removed.
I love hearing about games being adapted in design to meet different needs, like arcade play, and I’d love to try these modified versions some day to see what other changes were planned. Maybe they’ll come to light, eventually. I can only hope.
