About a month ago, video game collector Steve Lin presented an unrealased NES port of Chip’s Challenge to the public at the Retro Gaming Expo (Lin himself might have acquired the game on an eBay auction at the end of the previous year). A single cartridge was produced and auctioned for charity. Yesterday, the game’s ROM was made available for download at Lost Levels, Frank Cifaldi’s website focused on cancelled and unreleased games (interestingly, according to Dropbox the ROM was uploaded four weeks ago, around the time of Expo).

Chip’s Challenge NES port was first announced in 1991 but according to Cifaldi, the build available for download was created about a year and a half later. The details surrounding its cancellation are not clear. The version available for download is in playable but incomplete state: some of the levels are missing, there is no music or sound effects and it’s possible to warp to next level by pressing ‘A’ before moving.

Chip’s Challenge is a 1989 tile-based puzzle game originally released for Atari Lynx but most known for its 16-bit Windows version. The NES version seems to be an attempt at faithfully replicating the original game’s puzzles while introducing some changes to the presentation due to the difference in hardware: the graphics are now obviously limited to 8-bit color palette and the playing field is larger because of difference in resolution. This version also features an exclusive level near the end of the game.